This is an ongoing series of features giving overviews of affiliate programs, affiliate program technology and companies that provide the technology, including case studies. It will also feature successful affiliate programs, how they became successful and how they manage to stay ahead of the rest.

What’s an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is a marketing program that offers a commission only based incentive to either individuals or businesses to refer leads and turn them into customers. The affiliate program is run in slightly different variations depending on the type of business, but on the whole, the principal is the same across the board. Some companies pay for leads and others pay only when the lead turns into a paying customer. Some companies pay a flat fee, others a percentage of the customer’s purchases. In addition, over time and working with many affiliates with many different requests, affiliate marketing technology has been developed accordingly.

How does affiliate program technology work?
The technology, although based mainly for online use, should also possess the functionality to perform offline tracking. The online affiliate technology consists of an affiliate database with the following functionality:

i. Create, amend, login and delete affiliates (special care should be taken when deleting affiliates)
ii. Assign corresponding affiliate tracking codes to each affiliate
iii. Allows the affiliate to setup online campaigns using tracking urls
iv. Allows the affiliate to recruit new affiliates into the program using tracking urls
v. Facilitates the creation of campaign creative for online affiliate marketing campaigns
vi. Reports specific information and statistics for affiliate campaigns
vii. Administrative access determines affiliate reward
viii. Affiliate Payments

The most predominant form of offline affiliate tracking is usually through the use of bonus codes or aptly named urls.

The next feature in this series will go in-depth with the providers of affiliate program technology.