Big ShoutOut to these guys, they are fantastic!!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use ShoutOut as a way to manage our influencers and track their performance from a sales standpoint and also pay some of the affiliate commissions. Initially, we were using Commission Junction and weren't getting enough sales revenue out of it to justify the expense. This isn't necessarily a CJ flaw, but more of our problem. Most of the affiliates and influencers were are using to promote our brand aren't traditional affiliates and, indeed, are not very tech-savvy. Most of them still don't even have any clue on how to embed tracking code into their posts on Instagram. So ShoutOut allows us to focus on mainly providing them with a coupon code to track sales that they generate. The system has been really solid for us and easy to use.
Pros
- Great for simple, not very tech-savvy influencers or affiliates.
- Ties in seamlessly to Shopify Plus, which is a must for our organization.
- Simple dashboard, easy to manage affiliates.
Cons
- Not a vast network of affiliates to choose from if you need them to facilitate that side of your business.
- Sometimes the tracking by coupon code doesn't seem to work correctly, and the numbers don't match up with what we see on the backend of our Shopify numbers.
- Could make it easier to add creatives and deep linking for affiliates.
Return on Investment
- Very positive right off the bat because we dropped our Commission Junction expenses and got most of our bigger affiliates to switch over to keep their sales.
- Easy to use and much simpler for our affiliate manager to do her work.
Other Software Used
Shopify Plus, Tealium iQ Tag Management System, Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, Facebook for Business, Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Skype