Best CRM for Affiliate Marketing in 2022

If you’re in affiliate marketing, having a great CRM is key to success. Here are the best CRMs for affiliate marketing in 2022, and what they can do for you.

Table of Contents

What is CRM Software?

A CRM, or “customer relationship management,” is a sort of software that helps businesses manage, track, and organize their contacts with clients. A CRM can aid you in maintaining customer information such as user activity, how long a consumer has been with your firm, purchase documentation, and notes on sales interactions so that you may improve sales and marketing processes while also improving client service throughout the company.

The goal of CRM software is to follow the actions and behaviors of your existing or potential clients through your company’s website, social media, or email marketing efforts, then guide them through the sales or purchasing funnel by sending a triggered email or alerting a sales representative.

How Does CRM Make Sales and Marketing Easier?

CRM software like Salesforce lets you automate and coordinate your sales and marketing operations more effectively than ever before. If your CRM is linked with sales and marketing automation, you can construct a sales and marketing engine that will take your company to new heights.

Sales – Sales CRM software makes the sales process smoother for everyone involved by providing better visibility, prioritization, and follow-up.
Greater Visibility – A CRM is necessary for a sales team’s visibility. Having all customer and lead data gathered together in one place allows easy access to information and makes it simpler to keep track of changes between teammates if the account owner is responsible for changes. As a sales representative, you can monitor a lead’s activity, permitting you to tailor the conversation and advances appropriately. For example: if you see that they have watched your company overview video but haven’t looked at any case studies yet, during your talk with them you could encourage signing up for a consultation or webinar. Inbound calls are more quickly identified and logged by CRM systems, in addition to VoIP phone systems. A lead’s phone number is recognized when they call a sales rep, and their account appears on the sales rep’s computer screen immediately. Sales management may also benefit from a CRM system through increased visibility. Sales management can watch individual sales reps’ activities and performance as well as track the entire sales pipeline with ease using a CRM.
Clear Prioritization – A CRM is a valuable tool for the sales team as it allows them to prioritize their outreach efforts. This is done through lead scoring, which calculates a lead’s interest in your product or service. The leads with the highest scores are pushed to the top of the sales team’s tasks list. Additionally, your CRM can prioritize outreach to customers by flagging records with approaching contract renewal dates or those customers who may be interested in trying out a new product.
Better Follow-Up – Utilizing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system enables improbable follow-up rates (which in turn drives more sales). By automating lead and client interaction, you don’t have to rely on yellow sticky notes or manually copy + pasting the same generic email response. Your new CRM will take care of initiating contact at opportune times, creating a uniform customer experience that converts curious onlookers into paying customers.

What Does a CRM System Do?

Any customer information system, including CRM software, relies on contact management as its core function. The point of a CRM is to store and manage data for every type of contact, from leads to business partners.

What a CRM Doesn’t Do?

CRMs are designed for backend operations like production, warehousing, shipping, engineering or finance. And of course, CRM tools manage what they can see. So if people work leads or deals outside the system, that lowers its effectiveness for the whole team.

11 ways CRM can benefit your business

A CRM solution can be used in various ways, but its primary purpose is to manage customer relations. By doing so, it offers 11 benefits that could help your business succeed.

Better customer service – Even though CRM software has many functions, its original purpose was to improve relationships between businesses and customers–which is still its main benefit. A CRM stores all your contacts’ information and important customer records such as demographics, purchase histories, and previous messages sent via different channels. This makes it easy for anyone in your company who needs the information to access it. Having quick access to this data allows your employees to provide better customer service experiences more easily, which usually leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Increased sales – By using a CRM tool, you have the potential to not only streamline your sales process but also build and analyze a sales pipeline, all while automating key tasks. This would lead to an increase in productivity as well as Sales. Having such data centralized in one place helps establish a step-by-step sales process that can be relied upon by employees every time, whilst also being easily tweaked if any issues were to arise.
Improved customer retention – It’s crucial that you work to retain customers and promote customer loyalty once you’ve procured and converted leads. High customer turnover can have many negative effects on your business, like diminished revenue or disrupted cash flow. Use your CRM to encourage repeat business by providing sentiment analysis, automated ticketing, customer support automation and user behavior tracking. This will help you determine problems quickly and address them with your customers effectively.
Detailed analytics – There’s a big difference between having data about your customers and knowing how to use it. CRM software typically includes analytic capabilities that help you understand what the data means and how to use it. For example, metrics such as click-through rates, bounce rates, and demographic information can help you see how successful a marketing campaign is and make changes accordingly.
Higher productivity and efficiency – CRM software is amazing because it uses marketing automation technology to automate menial tasks like drip campaigns. This way, your employees’ time is freed up to focus on more important work that only humans can handle, like creating content. Additionally, a CRM can show you a dashboard of how your business processes are working and where your workflows could improve.
Centralized database of information – Having CRM software is valuable because it gives your company one organized place to store information on customers that can be seen by anyone working for the organization. From this centralized database, sales representatives are able to see what products interest the customer and if they have had any past interactions with your business. In addition, this also tells future marketing plans and shapes how salespeople should pitch their products. Having this information readily available, it will save time for employees who would otherwise need to look through old files or records. As a result, both employees and customers experience improved productivity within the company
Managed communications with prospective leads – Nurturing is a difficult and time-consuming process that includes numerous stages for interacting with prospects. A CRM manages the procedure, sending your workers alerts when they should contact the prospect and tracking every interaction, from emails to phone calls.
Improved customer segmentation – A contact list of hundreds of individuals might be unmanageable and stressful. How do you know which clients wish to hear about your new retail product, for example? Your contacts will be automatically separated into groups according to your requirements, making it simple to locate the ones you want to reach at any moment. You may sort contacts by industry, gender, age range, buyer status, and more.
Automated sales reports – The CRM software’s dashboard and reporting capabilities allow your staff to automate and manage their pipelines and processes, allowing them to quickly gather and organize data on potential and existing customers. The CRM can also assist your team members in evaluating their performance, tracking their quotas and objectives, and checking the status of each of their projects at a glance.
More accurate sales forecasting – With any company endeavor, you must be able to analyze your past performance and strategically plan for the future. You can learn more about what to anticipate from your forthcoming sales cycle performance by analyzing automatic sales reports in CRM software.
Streamlined internal communications – Aside from allowing your company to interact with its consumers, a CRM can help your staff communicate with one another. A CRM makes it simple to see how other workers are interacting with a potential client, which helps your team maintain a uniform brand voice. It also allows employees to collaborate in one system by sending each other notes, tagging each other on tasks, and sending messages and emails.

Top 15 best CRM Specifically for Affiliate Marketing

Act! – Act! helps companies close more sales and better manage their client relationships by providing the appropriate metrics and analyses. It provides a number of features, including contact and lead management, opportunity tracking, quotations and invoices, marketing automation, and reporting. The program is offered in both on-premises and cloud-based versions, allowing users to choose which solution best fits their needs. There are no hidden fees or costs with this software; instead, you know exactly what you’ll pay before you start it up.
Agile CRM – Agile CRM is an all-in-one CRM that focuses on automating your marketing and sales efforts while pooling them onto one platform. It’s a cloud-based SaaS solution that’s also among the most cost-effective software available.
Pipdrive – Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM that uses AI to automate repetitive tasks and manage leads and sales. They support over 90,000 customers and have had $24 billion in deals pass through their platform.
Monday – Monday.com provides users the ability to personalize their workflows in order to sales aspects of the sales cycle, from lead generation all the way to post-sale support. Essentially, if you want to control anything related to your sales pipeline, workflow or customer data–Monday.com is perfect for that giving companies a comprehensive view of both their customers and sales data.Monday.com offers a dashboard where you can access all of the information that you may need in one place—all at once, so to speak. With this dashboard, it’s easy to spot any potential bottlenecks or issues in your sales cycle.
Freshworks CRM (formerly Freshsales) SalesforceIQ is a lead scoring, email activity, and email capture management tool that uses artificial intelligence. One of its most prominent features is the fact that it gives you a 360-degree view of your business.
Salesmate – Salesmate is perfect for anyone looking to boost their business earnings and create stronger relationships. It’s a cloud-based sales performance customer management software that makes it easy for both your sales team and customers to have access to the information they need when they need it. Making sure your prospects get personalized attention will guarantee they receive the correct data at all times.
Zoho CRM – You can have a 360-degree perspective of your business with Zoho CRM, track critical sales and marketing possibilities, and improve conversion rates. Zoho CRM is one of the most popular tools on this list, with over 150,000 clients worldwide.
Nimble – The Nimble CRM software tool is an excellent and easy-to-use program that works within the G-Suite inbox or Office 365. It allows you to update contacts, access company & contact insights easily, and manage deals from within your workflow with other great features included.
Nutshell CRM – Nutshell CRM is a cloud-based software that aims to solve a wide range of business process issues. It’s a comprehensive tool that can handle all elements of a company CRM, as well as keep thorough records. It runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) technology.
Insightly CRM – Insightly is a CRM platform that helps you forge longer-term relationships with customers so that your business can grow at an accelerated rate.
Engagebay – On Demand Software is a cloud-hosted customer relationship management (CRM) system that connects all company processes and functions, such as sales, marketing, and finance. The software also emphasizes automation to improve efficiency.
HubSpot – HubSpot CRM is an all-encompassing marketing suite that includes comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) software. HubSpot CRM is ideal for salespeople because of its powerful capabilities and time-saving tools. It’s also an excellent choice for marketing teams that can collect, track, and develop new leads within a database. They provide a 100 percent free version of their software with the option to upgrade and obtain access to their whole suite of marketing solutions.
PipelineDeals CRM – PipelineDeals is a cloud-based all-in-one CRM software that works well for small and medium businesses. Sales and employee empowerment are emphasized, with strong capabilities.
Salesforce – Salesforce is one of the most popular CRM software platforms, with over a million users worldwide. It offers cloud-based solutions for sales, service, marketing, analytics, and more.
Adsoup CRM – Adsoup is a multi-platform CRM program that aims to simplify the flow of information between your company and clients. It’s best for sales and may be quite beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses.

Why use a CRM at All?

You should use CRM software for your business because it optimizes marketing techniques, improves upselling efforts, and increases client interactions. In addition to these, having these tools will allow you to utilize your customer data to make changes to your operations as well as automate a variety of sales and marketing activities.

More Optimized Marketing Strategies – A lot of our visitors are startups or low-tier service providers just getting started in the CRM market. This isn’t all that surprising, given how beneficial CRM software may be in getting clients to choose a certain provider. CRMs help companies understand their customer’s behavior and needs, so they can target them more effectively. They also identify the best times to promote and present services to customers and use that data to expand their list of prospects. CRM systems positively affect how businesses allocate their resources. If a business wants to be profitable, then it should use reputed software that is favored by other successful businesses. In other words, a CRM product will help you target leads efficiently and with the appropriate level of resources.
Increased Workflow Efficiency– CRM systems don’t just manage and store customer information– they also save businesses time and money by automating tasks while still making each customer feel special. How? CRM software solutions bring together different methods, practices, and tools needed to track customer activity. This way, you can avoid double entries and the dull, automated approach customers find so frustrating. With a good system in place, you will eliminate all costly manual errors.
Enhanced Customer Data Analysis – There’s a lot to learn from how your consumers accept and evaluate your service, but marketing optimization is by far the most important data you’ll get. The greatest benefit of CRMs is that they teach you how to “energize” promotional campaigns. Your CRM system will show you how to “energize” promotional campaigns in order to target customers who are statistically likely to be interested in them. Most CRMs also provide detailed insights into each operation’s health, agent performance, and overall relationship management strategy sustainability.
Better Customer Relations – CRM systems are essential for anyone running a customer-focused business, as they help ensure that your customers are always satisfied. By streamlining your marketing, invoicing, and selling efforts, CRM systems help you keep your customers happy and coming back for more. Additionally, CRMs can also help you collect valuable feedback from your customers that can be used to improve your products or services. Also, the fantastic thing about this strategy is that it doesn’t require any money to get started. All you need are a few friends who care enough about your brand and business to share it with their network of contacts (and themselves!). You can have everything up and running in just several weeks. Furthermore, because all things are done online, there’s no risk of encountering an error or missing anything vital! As a result, when you provide excellent service on multiple channels at all times and on every channel (email, phone, social media, web forms, surveys), you’ll be warmly recommended to clients’ acquaintances and expand your customer base using nothing but what you’ve already invested.
Easier Customer Data Access – A knowledge base is a set of records that all agents can access (in most cases, depending on the roles and permissions they’ve been assigned with). It’s usually hosted in the cloud, and all you need are the correct credentials and an adequate internet connection. As expected, most of today’s popular CRM systems are fully mobile-optimized and thus accessible from any device, browser, or operating system. Some of them also have specialized Android and iOS apps.
Simplified Agent Performance Tracking – CRM systems are crucial for business owners who want to understand how their agents are performing and develop smarter strategies for lead and task assignments. CRMs also show which employees are available at any given moment, so businesses can route inquiries to other departments if the requested agent is unavailable. In short, CRMs make everyone’s schedule visible and help managers see who is closing the most (or least) deals.
Improved Cross-Selling and Upselling – The CRM system’s aim is always to trigger a deal closure, which is why the best systems always support practices such as upselling and cross-selling. With upselling, the intelligence from the customer’s current purchase draws similar products to his attention with tags and categories you’ve previously inserted. Cross-selling tracks a customer’s previous purchases to suggest new products and get an idea of what he’ll be looking for; all details are stored in one centralized database. Ideally, in a client profile, the agent can always revert to see who he’s interacting with. A solid CRM will be given the job of identifying and seizing chances, resulting in increased earnings.
Streamlined Invoicing – Today’s CRM systems often feature basic financial management capabilities to prevent you from transferring sensitive sales data to a third-party system. In the ideal world, you’ll be able to generate quotations, prepare, and send bills from the same platform where you’ve completed their orders. You may also automate other time and cost-related paperwork, simplify your customer interactions, and guarantee that money arrives on time. To help users complete payments and checkouts without leaving your site, some CRMs integrate with prominent payment gateways.
Unified Social Media Management – It’s impossible to ignore the role that social media has played in the success of modern firms. Social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn are fantastic sources for finding potential contacts and business deals. At the same time, both large and small businesses struggle to keep an active presence on all of them while still personally responding to all inquiries and queries without losing concentration on their other responsibilities. Salesforce, for example, is a powerful CRM. Salesforce enables you to automate social media posts and manage all of your profiles from a single platform by integrating most cloud-based CRMs today. Some of them even notify you about deadlines and possibilities or collect every product-related mention and comment so you can respond on time. For example, you may simply change the settings of your CRM to display any desired sort of social interaction by selecting keywords such as “customer support,” “customer service,” and “service.”
Access to Scalable CRM Solutions – Just a decade ago, CRM systems were seen as enterprise-only products with their pricey spinning prices and difficult installations. Fortunately, software developers viewed small companies as the best target for such solutions and began developing cloud-hosted versions that do not require long implementation periods or huge expenditures. It’s becoming simpler to locate a great CRM at a fair price these days and to get confirmation that future recurring costs or upkeep charges will not apply. Some are even given out for free as CRM applications, which is why we encourage everyone, regardless of how recently they’ve launched their business. HubSpot CRM currently reigns supreme among free CRM systems, with a comprehensive bundle of features accessible for free.

Why Do I Need a CRM Strategy?

Utilizing a CRM in your business has several great benefits. Not only can it help you keep track of customers, sales, and leads, but automating marketing and sales processes through a CRM can also save you time and money down the road.

CRMs do more than just help you organize your customer data–they can also improve your customer service. Having all of your customer’s information in one place allows you to reach out to them quickly and easily, which builds strong relationships and keeps them coming back.

If you aren’t already using a CRM in your company, now is the time to start. There are several excellent CRM solutions available, so you’ll be able to discover one that meets your specific requirements.

What is the Best Free CRM?

The ideal freemium CRM is one that is both cost-effective and simple to operate. Zoho CRM and HubSpot CRM are two excellent choices for small businesses. Both of these platforms provide a free version that is ideal for small enterprises. They also have premium versions with additional features that may be upgraded as your company develops.

What is the Best CRM for Real Estate?

It’s widely known that many prosperous real estate agents utilize CRMs in order to develop relationships with potential buyers and sellers. However, picking the correct one can be arduous. With so many options on the market, we did the legwork for you and compiled a list of only the best CRMs out there. Not only does a great CRM communicate effectively with your leads for you – but it also keeps track of data analytics to help guide your business decisions.

Our top picks are based on the features they offer, pricing, and reviews from real estate agents themselves. Here are the best real estate CRMs proven to help you grow your business.

Best Overall: Top Producer
Best “Full Service” Option: Market Leader
Best For Solo Agents: Real Geeks
Best For Small Teams: Wise Agent

What is the Best CRM for e-Commerce?

Ecommerce CRM software not only provides the functions of general CRM software but also features tailored to digital sales, such as customer history storage, shipping preference tracking, and related purchase suggestions. In other words, the eCommerce CRM system tracks customers’ journeys through your digital store to give you a clear map of marketing and sales opportunities down the road. This is done by utilizing a variety of its several features.

What is the Best CRM for Marketing?

To save you time, we have gone ahead and evaluated dozens of today’s popular small business marketing CRMs. The best CRMs for 2022 are Zoho, Zendesk Sell, monday.com, Salesforce, and HubSpot–based on Price, ease of use, features and functionality as well as customer support.

Why Should You Use a CRM for Affiliate Marketing?

With CRM, you can keep track of all incoming traffic from your affiliate partner’s referrals or websites, making it simpler to profit. It offers analytic data and reports for your company as well as your affiliates. You may build unique workflows in a CRM to dispense automated payments once an affiliate reaches the goal.