If you’re not involved in marketing, you should be. A 2019 study released by Redburn and PwC estimates the global marketing sector to be worth an astronomical $1.7Tn. Lead generation affiliate programs are one way to tap into just a tiny sector of the global marketing industry. Even that’s valued in the billions.
You’ll understand why shortly…
Many of the programs have recurring commissions and second-tier referral programs.
As lead generation is a challenge for many a business, a lot of sales managers and business owners would thank you for introducing possible transformational tools that increase ROI and ROAS.
- ROI stands for Return on Investment
- ROAS stands for Return on Advertising Spend
In every marketing budget, a large portion will be dedicated to lead generation, which is the responsibility of marketers. Not sales.
In larger companies with sales and marketing teams, the marketing team is responsible for generating leads, then qualifying prospects before handing them off to a sales rep.
A huge problem that needs solving between teams is agreeing on what qualifies as a lead.
That’s one problem affiliates for lead generation tools and SaaS providers can help solve by recommending the solutions different platforms have.
Think of the range of things needed for lead generation to get results and you’ll be able to spot opportunities in many areas.
- Lead scoring systems can qualify prospects
- Dynamic landing pages can improve sign-ups
- Live webinars or group meetings can be used to host online events and recorded to repurpose events for content marketing
- Cinemagraphs, otherwise known as living photos can get better attention and clicks from paid advertising across social media
- Services offering 360-degree analytical data of customer journeys make it easier for marketing teams to view the customer journey at a glance.
- Of course, all the data being generated needs to be stored somewhere and that’s where CRMs become essential to lead generation campaigns.
As an affiliate in the marketing industry, earning opportunities are plentiful with lead generation affiliate programs.
Lead Generation Affiliate Website Ideas
- Review SaaS platforms and tools that focus on lead generation services.
- Build a blog focusing on stacking lead generation technologies discussing integrations with different platforms to show what services work well together.
- A narrower angle is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), which is useful for businesses with no problem generating leads but a big problem getting people to convert into paying customers.
- Web and graphic designers can take advantage of lead generation affiliate programs by positioning yourself in what could be described as a value-added reseller. As an example, creating dynamic landing pages with motion graphics to improve engagement, retention, and email opt-ins.
- Marketing consultants can take the advisory role by recommending SaaS providers that provide data analytics to show where leads are leaking from the sales pipeline.
12 Lead Generation Affiliate Programs
- Mimeo
- Kinetic Promotional Product Services
- Hunter.io
- Lead Formly
- Sharp Spring
- Flixel
- Just Uno
- Pipedrive
- Log Me In Inc.
- Engage Bay
- Sale Swing App
- Live Chat Inc.
1. Mimeo
For anyone involved in direct marketing, partnerships with good printers is needed. Mimeo offers value, a wide range of print options and various add-ons clients can use to make their branded content really stand out.
Where they excel is the fast turnaround time (next day) and that’s positioned them as a leader in outsourced printing of proposals (RFPs – Requests for Proposals) which take so long to craft, they often needing printing yesterday.
Unsurprisingly, the how-to guide for writing winning RFPs is one of their lead magnets.
The Mimeo affiliate program is managed on the LinkShare network, uses 120-day cookies and pays monthly provided you’ve met the minimum threshold of $50 USD.
For companies providing outsourced print services, they do allow you to order through your own affiliate link, therefore, marketing agencies and graphic designers adding a print service could partner here and earn commissions without the need for clients to place their orders.
Sign up for the Mimeo affiliate program here.
2. Kinetic Promotional Product Services
Businesses of all sizes have been using branded swag for years. Nescafé does it with mugs, Insurance companies send branded pens with application packs, dentists give away toothbrushes and gyms give new members an entire bag of fitness goodies when they sign up.
Kinetic Promotional Product Services has over 600,000 merchandise and they cater to tradeshow branding too. If you’re unsure how this fits into lead generation, the process involves giveaway contests or live events.
The Kinetic affiliate program pays between 30% and 50% commission across all their products. Client terms are payable upon delivery and once Kinetic gets paid from your referral, you’re paid your commission on the 1st or the 15th of the month.
There is the potential to earn up to 75% commission on special promotional items when they’re announced. When this is the case, read through the terms because to qualify for a higher commission rate on promotional items, you’ll need to meet minimum order thresholds, which is currently $350.
Once approved to the affiliate program, you’ll be assigned a dedicated manager and given access to their affiliate resources. This is where you’ll find banners, links to various categories and educational material showing you how to position their offerings by industry.
Sign up for the Kinetic Promotional Products affiliate program here.
3. Hunter.io
Any business owner, startup or established, as well as sales teams in larger organizations, can benefit from using the few email services provided by Hunter.io, aka, Email Hunter.
With it, you can search for verified email addresses by domain to find the right contact in a business to connect with, verify email addresses or do lookups for information on people within a company.
The results returned give you a list of verified email addresses that can be used to get emails to the right person. The decision-maker. Its main use is for cold pitching.
Blogs and online courses discussing cold pitching techniques or providing sample templates to scale up email outreach campaigns could do well with the Email Hunter affiliate program.
They use Rewardful.com to manage the technical side of their affiliate program and pay a 30% recurring commission for the first 12 months of any referrals.
There is a free account option that lets users run up to 50 requests per month but those have no premium features.
Sign up to the Hunter.io affiliate program here.
4. Lead Formly
Lead Formly is a plugin that’s compatible with most CMS platforms including WordPress sites, Joomla, Drupal, and Squarespace.
The target audience is not those starting out with email marketing as it’s used to improve conversions, aka, Conversion Rate Optimization by increasing user engagement.
The primary use is to provide professionally designed and interactive lead capture templates, rather than simple forms like your standard opt-in template, while simultaneously verifying the quality of each lead.
The affiliate program is managed by Refersion.com, uses a 30-day cookie and pays a 20% recurring commission based on annual license renewals as all their plans are billed annually.
Sign up for the Lead Formly affiliate program here.
5. Sharp Spring
Sharp Spring is likely better described as a full-stack marketing platform. While it has a CRM, it’s better suited to marketers, or business owners prepared to put in the time to go through their training resources because they have a lot of tools.
For companies using various subscription services such as autoresponders, social media automation tools, landing page builders, CRM software etc…. All those tools are included and it’s billed per account. Not per user. That’s a decent selling point worth noting.
The prices aren’t cheap though and that’s reflected in your commissions. Prices start at $550 monthly based on an annual contract and require a $1,800 onboarding fee.
Dedicated support is provided to your referrals and affiliate partners get an account manager too.
They pay for each qualified lead, then again when your referrals attend a demo call and again when their team closes the sale.
In total, the earnings possible are over $1,200 and the cookies are set for 90-days from click to qualifying as a lead, which is when someone books a demo call.
Naturally, it’ll be easier for existing users to recommend this program, but if you know your marketing tools and are in a position to recommend marketing automation tools to your list or any audience, the Sharp Spring affiliate program could be worth considering.
Sign up for the Sharp Spring affiliate program here.
Note: Sharp Spring acquired PerfectAudience.com, which is used to run retargeting campaigns. As it’s now part of Sharp Spring, affiliates won’t earn commission on signups from existing customers of Perfect Audience.
6. Flixel
Flixel makes it easy to create motion graphics that get noticed on social media. They’re best known for their cinemagraphs (living photos), but the software is also handy for creating timelapse videos on the fly, which is perfect for Instagram engagement.
A few audiences that find the Flixel platform helpful are content marketers, web and graphic designers, photographers and videographers. It can also be used alongside Adobe Creative Cloud to create true-to-life visual imagery.
Once the images are created, they can be hosted by Flixel and shared on social media or used in emails, which can be good for email nurturing campaigns because motion graphics drive higher engagement.
The Flixel affiliate program gives your referrals 10% off monthly or annual plans and earns you a 10% recurring commission paid monthly.
Sign up for the Flixel affiliate program here.
7. Just Uno
Just Uno solves the problem of capturing leads on-site and then provides the data site owners need to improve conversion rates across their sales funnel.
While it can be used on WordPress sites in any niche, it will have more impact on e-commerce stores as there’s a range of features to reduce cart abandonment, improve conversions, provide on-page promotional banners, and deliver targeted messages while people are browsing.
E-commerce store owners can drastically increase the quality of their leads by using the spin-to-win wheel to implement gamification marketing.
Rather than asking for an opt-in to receive 5% off the first order, upon sign up, new subscribers can be presented with the chance to win random coupons, adding a fun element to the sign-up process.
Naturally, if all the offers are discounts, free shipping and a chance to win a free gift on 1st orders then people signing up are expressing buyer intent.
The Just Uno affiliate program pays a 10% recurring commission for the first 12 months and the cookies last for 90 days. Partnerstack.com manage the affiliate program and pay affiliates monthly.
Sign up for the Just Uno affiliate program here.
8. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is one of the leading CRMs with hundreds of integrations, however, some of the most powerful are those that connect marketing to sales.
In larger companies, there’s a huge disconnect between the marketing teams generating leads and what the sales team would agree is a qualified lead.
With Pipedrive being cloud-based, it’s suitable for in-house use and for remote teams. Teams can log in, see a visual process of sales pipelines, where leads are in a sales funnel and automatically route people to the right reps at the right time.
The CRM is a selling point in itself but more powerful for businesses focusing on lead generation is Pipedrive’s LeadBooster – a customizable chatbot similar to other Live Chat, Messenger-style apps.
All data captured from any forms, chatbot, survey or other lead generation methods are automatically fed into the CRM.
The Pipedrive affiliate program pays a 33% commission for the first 12 months, uses 30-day cookies and pays monthly after you’ve met the minimum payment threshold of $50 USD.
They also offer a premier program suited to consultants and those providing marketing services. If you’re eligible for the Partner Program, they’ll pay a 20% commission for the lifetime of your referrals.
Sign up either of the Pipedrive partner programs here.
9. Log Me In Inc.
Log Me In Inc is a partner network that represents various brands including all GoTo branded products. Two, in particular, are super for lead generation and you’ve likely heard of them, maybe even used them.
- GoToWebinar
- GoToMeeting
Both are similar but serve different needs. GoToWebinar is suited to businesses hosting a live event to up to 5,000 attendees.
GoToMeeting caters to smaller meetings with the starter plan having the capacity for 150 attendees. The Enterprise Plan can seat 3,000 attendees.
GoToMeeting is priced affordably but it lacks some of the interactive features like live polls and Q and A’s that’s available with GoToWebinar.
Both the services have automated recording and transcription and the ability to edit the final version so they can be re-purposed, such as adding a library of on-demand webinars to a website to continuously generate leads.
All GoTo branded products are part of the Log Me In Inc. Partner Network and they use Impact.com to manage the affiliate program with both using 45-day cookies and paying $100 per paid sign up.
Sign up to the GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting affiliate program here.
10. Engage Bay
Engage Bay is like the Swiss Army knife of marketing tools for SMBs who know they need full-scale marketing automation but can’t afford astronomical prices.
The service is an affordable alternative to many marketing automation platforms for a multitude of tools.
Some of the tools they provide include dynamic landing pages, web forms, CRM software, marketing automation, push notifications, live chat, and email marketing. The tagline says it all: “… acquire, nurture, engage and convert”.
The affiliate program for Engage Bay is managed in-house and pays a 30% recurring commission with payments made monthly after the customers’ 30-day refund period has passed.
The cookies are set to first click attribution meaning your referrals need to be introduced to Engage Bay through your affiliate link. If they go off to a comparison site or search for reviews about the platform after that, you’ll still be credited.
Coupon affiliates and comparison sites won’t be hijacking commissions that should have gone your way. Needless to say, this won’t be suited to software comparison sites, review sites, or coupon affiliates.
Sign up for the Engage Bay affiliate program here.
11. Sales Swing App
The Saleswingapp.com service is suited to larger marketing campaigns. It gives detailed overviews of what prospects do once they’ve signed up. Its main focus is gathering more intelligent data for qualifying leads, profiling prospects and showing marketers where people are in the buyer journey.
The service integrates with SalesForce and Pipedrive and other email marketing services to add an extra lead qualification layer making it easier for a sales team to know where to focus their efforts instead of wasting time chasing leads that aren’t as hot as they’d prefer.
At the core of the service is lead scoring, customer journey tracking, and profiling.
The affiliate program for SaleSwingApp.com pays 25% commission on any paid subscription and uses 180-day cookies. It’s suited to anyone with sales managers in their network, such as LinkedIn and consultants can also add revenue by offering consulting services around using the service.
If you’re promoting other services that integrate with Saleswingapp.com, there is deep linking functionality so you can send more targeted traffic to the appropriate landing pages.
Sign up for the Saleswingapp.com affiliate program here.
12. Live Chat Inc.
For those familiar with LiveChat, or any message bot, you’ll know they’re mostly used to drive engagement. However, used creatively, message bots can put lead generation on the fast track.
Live Chat Inc. is one of the longest-running and largest providers of Live Chat automation services. The marketplace has a bunch of integrations and add-ons designed to turn strangers into prospects and smoothen the customer journey.
B2B leads are better informed when they land on a vendor’s site. A lot of times, a webinar or lead magnet doesn’t cut it because they want to contact sales ASAP.
With a few questions with multi-choice buttons, visitors can confirm their intentions and be routed to sales faster. An often-used phrase in B2B sales is that the first to respond wins the deal.
The Live Chat affiliate program pays a 20% recurring commission and uses 120-day cookies. There is a partner app for affiliates to build and manage campaigns and track earnings. Once the payment threshold is met, commissions can be withdrawn anytime but only to a Verified PayPal address.
There’s also a 2nd tier affiliate program that pays 5% of the income generated by other affiliates you refer to the affiliate program.
