How to Manage Magento 2 Affiliate Programs: Configuration Guide, Trends, and Tips

Affiliate marketing is one of the top three channels to acquire new customers, claimed by up to 54% of brand marketers (Pepperjam). The principle is based on a mutually beneficial relationship: Affiliates will try to introduce your product and brand to their social circle in exchange for a small amount of commission for every successful referral. Compared to other customer acquisition methods, this is considered a cost-saving but effective approach.

In this post, let’s discover how to manage affiliate programs for your Magento 2 store, in terms of commission earnings, withdrawal, affiliate banner tracking, and related trends to follow and mistakes to avoid.

Related posts:

• What is Affiliate Marketing?
• Guidance to launch an affiliate marketing campaign
• 8+ affiliate marketing strategies
• 10 affiliate marketing courses
• Best affiliate marketing books

Table of Contents

• How to manage Magento 2 affiliate programs?
  • How to setup commission earnings?
  • How to manage commission withdrawal?
  • How to track an affiliate banner?
• Affiliate marketing trends in 2022
  • Virtual shopping
  • Video content
  • Link building and Co-marketing
  • Affiliate automation tools
  • Micro-influencer marketing
• Mistakes to avoid
• Mageplaza Affiliate’s Highlight Features
• The bottom line

How to manage Magento 2 affiliate programs?

To configure the general settings of the Affiliate extension, please follow our user guide.

In this section, we’ll show you how to manage a Magento 2 affiliate marketing program, including commission setup and banner tracking. Let’s explore!

How to set up commission earnings?

Admins can let affiliate partners earn commissions from different fees. Besides, it’s easy to calculate affiliate commissions.

• Earn commission from tax: Select Yes to allow earning commission from tax
• Earn commission from Shipping: Select Yes to allow earning commission from shipping fee

In the Commission calculation process section:

• Allow Affiliates receiving commission when Invoice created:
  • Affiliate partners receiving commission when Invoice created = Yes: Customers receive commissions right when an invoice is created
  • Allow Affiliate networks receiving commission when Invoice created = No: Customers only receive commissions after the order is completed
• Hold commission transactions for:
  • After the set period of time, the transaction will not be hold
  • If the field is left empty or 0, no transaction will be kept
• Deduct commission from Affiliate’s balance when the order is refunded/cancelled: Choose Yes so that in case the order is refunded or canceled, the commission will be deducted from the balance.

How to manage commission withdrawal?

• Allow withdrawal request: Select Yes to allow customers to request commission withdrawal requests in the frontend
• Payment Methods:
  • Three withdrawal methods include Offline payment, Bank Transfer, Paypal payment, and Store Credit (coming soon).
  • Set the withdrawal fee for each withdrawal method. You can charge a fixed amount or a percentage of the withdrawn total amount.
  • To show a withdrawal form, select Active = Yes
• The minimum balance in the affiliate account for requesting withdrawal:
  • The linked account has to meet this minimum balance requirement to request a withdrawal
  • If it is left blank or 0, there is no limitation requirement.
• Minimum withdrawal amount:
  • Enter the minimum amount required for each withdrawal, including the withdrawal fee
• Maximum withdrawal amount:
  • Enter the maximum amount required for each withdrawal, including the withdrawal fee

How to track an affiliate banner?

With the Ultimate version, you are able to place affiliate banners and see their efficiency via a report.

Enable Banner

• Enable Banner: If Yes, affiliate networks can view the banner on the My Affiliate page.
  • Show Report for Banner on Frontend: If Yes, each banner’s report of Impressions, Clicks of customers will be shown.

Add a new banner

• Title: Add the banner’s title to your affiliate program
• Content:
  • Upload the image for the banner by clicking on Insert Image. The below text box shows the image link, or you can add text or HTML link.
• Redirect URL:
  • Insert the goal URL. If left empty, the default location is the homepage
• Related Campaign:
  • Choose the related campaign. When customers buy products through that banner link, they can get the related campaigns’ promotion. Moreover, that banner can only be seen by the Affiliate of related campaigns.
  • You can choose the default affiliate campaign
• Rel Nofollow:
  • If selecting Yes, the attribute rel = “nofollow” will be put into the banner link in your affiliate program.
• Status: Select Enabled to display banner in the frontend

View the full user guide

Affiliate marketing trends in 2022

Virtual shopping

The pandemic has brought about various changes in the way people shop. They tend to spend more time online and less time at brick-and-mortar stores. That is why virtual shopping has become popular in recent years. It even evolved in other directions, such as Livestream shopping, where customers can gain discounts from affiliate marketing.

Video content

Images and sound can affect people more than text. That’s why when social media is becoming more common, affiliate marketing can be conveyed through video types such as short videos or live streams.

Link building and Co-marketing

Putting your website link on other affiliate sites can be a good way to drive more traffic to your store. What’s more, this approach also allows you to have a higher position on Google or other search engines.

Affiliate automation tools

Multiple affiliate campaigns need to be managed automatically. Recent affiliate software have been created to improve the efficiency of acquiring new customers. Mageplaza Affiliate extension is one of them, where you can set up these earnings and commission tiers, as well as track the campaigns via detailed reports.

Micro-influencer marketing

Convincing customers to act is the main goal, but while large companies have wider choices, medium and small brands can only come up with a low budget. Therefore, they are using micro-influencers to spread the word, especially in a niche market where micro-influencers have more authority. Also, due to the personalization trend, shoppers are way more likely to stick with low-key influencers, leading to this micro-influencer usage becoming more popular.

View actual Magento 2 case studies

Mistakes to avoid

• Focus on selling instead of helping: Getting conversions is important, but it is not everything. You should focus on creating more value through blog posts to help customers solve their problems. Banner ads in your affiliate marketing program are useful, but only when it is used wisely.
• Ignoring evergreen content: Specific and timely content can be popular and may attract lots of clicks in the short term. But only evergreen content can support your long-term link-building.
• Lack of communication with your affiliates: Communicating with your affiliates helps keep them motivated and updated with the latest news. This relationship can benefit both of you in the long run.
• Ignoring the page speed: When customers go to your site, a slow-loading page will make them impatient and prevent them from exploring more.
• Not focusing on SEO: Important SEO factors need optimizing for readers to find the related content.

Mageplaza Affiliate’s Highlight Features

Magento 2 Affiliate extension simplifies the affiliate programs management:

• Create multiple affiliate programs: Based on each goal, stores can set different affiliate programs for specific groups.
• Create multiple commission tiers: Different commission tiers can encourage affiliates to reach higher referral levels.
• Set up commission payment methods: The affiliates can get the commission via Paypal, bank transfer, offline payment, or Skrill.
• Refer a friend via numerous channels: The invitation can be sent via a link, email, or shared via social media channels, and even as a snippet or banner (for Pro and Ultimate version).
• Track the affiliate efficiency via reports: The Ultimate version comes with an additional feature, when all affiliate data such as Best Sellers, Accounts, and Sales. can be tracked with ease.

The bottom line

Online stores can attract more customers with small investments, and affiliates can get extra commissions, and customers can explore new products. Affiliate extension by Mageplaza drives new traffic to your store and increases your search engine rankings.

We hope you’ve learned useful things about affiliate program management, withdrawal methods, and banner tracking. For other purposes, please refer to our full user guide, or contact us for more support. That’s all for now, and let’s wait for future feature updates from us!