PRM software can help organizations manage their network of affiliates in an effective and efficient fashion to increase revenue and reduce costs.

1. Automating Profitable Growth™
www.zinfi.com
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How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

2. © ZINFI Technologies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Over the past several decades we have seen the rise of affiliate networks in parallel
with the rise of software for partner relationship management or PRM, which can be
a highly effective platform for managing such networks. Affiliate networks have
existed for centuries, starting with early evangelists in almost every religion who
spread the holy word from one part of the world to another. Over the last few
decades we’ve seen the rise of commercial affiliates where, in exchange for
promoting a company’s product or brand, the affiliates earn a commission. In this
article, we will discuss how PRM software can help recruitment, onboarding, training,
payment and management of an affiliate network.
How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

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The purpose of an affiliate network is not to sell a product through it, but rather
promote a product or service to a targeted base of end-users or buyers. Most affiliate
networks focus on a product or on a brand selling multiple products. A classic
example is Amazon’s—yes, the #1 etailer in the world—affiliate network. If you sign
up for Amazon’s affiliate network, which you can learn about on many free YouTube
videos, you will see that Amazon very likely uses a home-grown PRM tool to enroll,
onboard, train, enable and pay its affiliates.
How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

4. © ZINFI Technologies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Traditionally, consumer brands have relied heavily on affiliate networks, whereas
industrial brands or products have tended to flow through organizations that are
referred to as agents, resellers, value added resellers, wholesalers, distributors, and
similar labels. The primary difference between an affiliate and a reseller is that the
latter actually sells a product (physically or digitally) to its customer base, while the
former focuses primarily on promotion, generating awareness of a brand or its
associated products.
How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

5. © ZINFI Technologies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Partner relationship management or PRM software traditionally has focused on
managing resellers, because management of resellers require a lot more capabilities
to manage segmented or profile-based access, training, lead generation,
enablement, payment, and so on. Simple affiliate management software, on the
other hand, tends to have very limited capabilities because all the affiliate
management software needs to do is to sign up affiliates, track referrals and pay
partners. While it’s true that for a business like Amazon, affiliate marketing can be
highly complex, the vast majority of affiliate networks do not require sophisticated
PRM software capabilities.
How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

6. © ZINFI Technologies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
As the world rapidly evolves, driven by various macro forces like climate change,
geopolitics and financial crises, delivery channels also evolve rapidly across almost
all verticals. As a result, we have now started to see hybrid channels in which
vendors not only need to manage a multiple affiliates across many countries, but
also manage their reseller base. In the past, a business selling through the channel
tended to select automation either for affiliates or for resellers, but not both.
However, with the rise of the hybrid partner network with affiliate, reseller and
perhaps other types of channels, there has been rush towards procuring PRM
software.
How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

7. © ZINFI Technologies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
We at ZINFI, a leader in PRM software, have started to see this change over the
past few years. More and more of our customers across multiple verticals are now
asking for a PRM platform to manage their affiliate networks, but at the same time
these customers are also using the same platform to manage their reseller base.
The prior model was to have two sets of software: one for affiliate management and
another for reseller management (or agent management, etc.). With a Unified
Channel Management platform like ZINFI, however, today’s organizations can
manage both activities seamlessly using a single tool.
How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

8. © ZINFI Technologies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In this hybrid scenario, PRM software must be able to provide granular profiling, so
that vendors can easily configure access settings for different types of customers—
for example, onboarding an affiliate partner through one set of steps while
onboarding an agent or a reseller through another set of distinctly different steps.
Training and other necessary enablement content can also be differentiated by
customer profile types and configured for access accordingly. Partner performance
can be tracked not only by profile type, but also analyzed over time to identify
specific areas for improvement.
The unprecedented flexibility that PRM software provides today was unthinkable just
a few years ago. Today, however, the cloud has arrived, and that has made it
possible for platforms like ZINFI’s Unified Channel Management SaaS solution to
address an increasingly broad range of business challenges, including effective
management of affiliate and hybrid channel networks.
How to Use PRMs to Manage Your Affiliate Network

9. Automating Profitable Growth™ www.zinfi.com
Automating Profitable Growth™
© ZINFI Technologies Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ZINFI Technologies, Inc.
6200 Stoneridge Mall Road, Suite 300
Pleasanton, CA 94588
sales@zinfitech.com