Impact.com

Introduction

All businesses operating in the digital world require digital marketing to ensure they get maximum exposure for their business and increase sales. For small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the cost of doing digital marketing can be significantly high. This means they have to find other ways of conducting marketing, and one of the most cost-effective ways is affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based advertising model where individuals (affiliates) earn commissions by promoting another company’s products or services. Affiliates use unique tracking links on blogs, websites, or social media to drive sales or leads, receiving payment only when a specific action occurs.

Affiliate marketing is a low-cost channel to promote products or services; however, it requires a robust platform. One such platform is Impact.com (Impact).

What is Impact?

Impact.com is a leading partnership management platform that acts as a marketplace and automation tool connecting brands with affiliates, influencers, and publishers. It facilitates the entire affiliate marketing lifecycle – tracking, reporting, payments, and discovery, enabling brands to scale performance-based partnerships that drive sales and revenue.

What Does Impact Offer SMEs?

Impact has a range of features for SMEs looking to start their affiliate marketing campaigns. Features range from access to global vetted partners, automation tools, performance tracking and fraud protection.

Main Features

Cross-Device Solutions: Impact enables businesses to track and analyse customer interactions across various devices.

Branded Interface: Through Impact, users can create on-brand assets that create a more engaging customer experience.

Fraud Protection: Impact’s fraud detection tools can be used to identify and prevent affiliate fraud and unauthorised paid search bidding.

Tracking and Monitoring: Impact’s multi-layered tracking combats cookie blocking using digital fingerprints for accurate attribution.

Commission Structures: The platform allows users to set up flexible, performance-based payments, including Cost per Action (CPA) and performance bonuses.

Partnership Automation: Impact has tools that enable users to manage the full lifecycle, from recruiting and contracting to nurturing and paying partners.

Reporting and Analytics: Impact’s in-depth, real-time analytics can be used to measure ROI, conversion rates, and the incremental value of partners.

Integration: Impact connects with platforms like Shopify and HubSpot for streamlined management.

Pricing

Impact has four pricing plans options. Additionally, the platform offers a demo for its plans excluding the Starter plan.

Starter Plan – Priced from $30 per month. The Starter plan features:

  • Plug-in integrations with e-commerce platforms
  • Automated partner recommendations
  • Promo code and link tracking
  • Product feed automation
  • Basic performance tracking
  • Partnership Experience Academy
  • Chat support
  • Basic contracting functionality/ Global clearinghouse

Essentials Plan – Priced from $500 per month. The Essentials plan features everything on the starter plan plus:

  • Impact.com partner marketplace access
  • Unlimited contract templates and custom terms
  • Unlimited tracking across events
  • Multi-domain programmes
  • Performance bonuses
  • Automated campaign workflows

Pro Plan – Priced from $2500 per month. The Pro plan features everything on the essential plan plus:

  • Dedicated customer support
  • Cross-device tracking
  • API-based tracking
  • Data Lab
  • Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
  • Partner discovery via keyword search

Enterprise Plan – Contact the Impact.com sales team for custom pricing. The Enterprise plan features everything on the pro plan, plus:

  • Benchmark recommendations
  • Attribution risk protection
  • Fraud scoring
  • Forecasting and anomaly detection reports
  • Customer behaviour, customer value and partner contribution reporting
  • Advanced tracking
  • Additional payout incentives
  • Partner deduplication
  • Analyse interactions to drive conversions
  • Unlock insights in high-value customers
Pros and Cons

Pros

Access to a wide partner marketplace
Automation and flexibility
In-depth reporting

Cons

No trial or free version
Has no local pricing
Complex platform to navigate for beginners
FAQs

Yes, Impact has a one-time fee that is dependent on the number of technical resources your onboarding requires.

Yes, while a monthly SaaS fee is indicated above, you are able to pay on an annual basis.

A 2,5% transaction fee applies only to partner-driven transactions, charged only when a sale occurs.

If you need to increase payout volume, you can upgrade to a higher payment tier or pay an overage fee.

Redeem Offer

Stay in the loop

Stay in the loop