Refersion Review – Is This The Right Platform For Your Affiliate Program?

Affiliate marketing (AM) has grown to become a $12 billion industry in just a few short years. There are a ton of reasons for this: namely, it’s effective and relatively easy-to-do. 

AM takes what people love about word-of-mouth marketing and puts it into our internet-connect world. From the biggest influencers like Kylie Jenner to the smallest blogs, AM gives everybody the power to monetize their web presence and with almost no initial investment. 

In this win-win environment, companies only pay a commission to marketers who’ve assisted a sale, while marketers don’t have to spend money on massive product/sales development costs. What could be better than that? Plus, there are tons of affiliate programs and networks out there, such as the Amazon Affiliate Program, Pepperjam, and FlexOffers.  

So, where does Refersion come in? The whole point of Refersion is to further optimize affiliate marketing through an integrated platform you can use to grow, manage, and monitor your promotions and affiliate network. 

Read on to learn more about Refersion. We’ll explore what it is, how you sign up for it, what types of marketers can benefit from using it, and a whole lot more. 

Is Refersion the ultimate affiliate marketing tool? Find out this and so much more in this Refersion review. 

What Is Refersion?

Since 2013, Refersion has worked with both merchants and marketers across industries to improve the way they market, track promotions, and grow online sales. In just 2018, they facilitated over $200 million in referral revenue and paid out of $20 million in commission. So yeah, they’re good at what they do. 

Refersion is designed to be a one-stop-shop integrated marketing platform. The goal is to make it as quick and easy as possible for not only you, but other marketers you refer, to sign up and leverage the network. 

You can track conversions in real-time across channels, manage your team of partners, send emails, calculate commissions, and more all from your dashboard. 

Refersion also plays well with all the leading marketing and email tools like MailChimp, Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, and others either through direct integration or its API. 

Pricing starts at $89/month for the Starter Plan for up to 130 orders tracked monthly. 

Refersion Features 

• Digital Sales Tracking
• Integrations
• Real-Time Clicks & Conversions Monitoring
• Commission Structures
• Automatic Commission Payments
• Team Management 
• Branded Affiliate Portal
• Analytics Dashboard
• Recurring Performance Reports

How To Get Started With Refersion

Refersion offers a 14-day free trial that you can get started using right away. You will have to provide your credit card number to access it. 

After this, you can choose which platform you’re using or create a custom Refersion API to use with your account. 

Then you’re ready to set up your platform. Refersion walks you through everything so you can generate your affiliate link in just minutes. And before you send anything out, you can test to make sure the link is working directly from within the app. 

Refersion Pricing

Unfortunately, Refersion recently got rid of its Starter $19/month plan, which offered up to 30 conversions per month. 

Now you only have either the Professional or Enterprise (custom-pricing options), which starts at $89/month, making it a pricier option for newer marketers. However, you can cancel your subscription at any time if Refersion isn’t working for you so give it a shot for a couple of months to see if you can make it work. 

The Professional Plan

• Up to 130 Affiliate Orders Tracked Monthly
• Unlimited Affiliates & Visits
• Flat Rate Pricing
• Email Support
• Free Refersion Marketplace Listing
• Developer APIs
• $89/month 
• Commission Setting by Product or SKU
• Sales Tracking
• Custom Reports
• Integration Assistance 

The Enterprise Plan

• All Professional features, plus
• Support for Integration
• Content Migration
• Unlimited Affiliate Orders per Month
• Training
• Multi-Shop Support
• White label 
• Custom Development
• Custom Pricing  

Refersion Features

Refersion is designed to be everything you need to succeed in affiliate marketing in one place. It includes these essential features: 

1. Affiliate Sign-Up 

AM works best when you harness the power of others to go out and spread the word for you. With Refersion, you can create offers and sign-up marketers to do just that. 

Each offer is paired to your unique registration page where they can either share a link directly via email or another channel or embed it on a site. 

Each affiliate will also have their own dashboard once you approve their application so they can track their progress, payout, and more. 

2. Conversion Triggers 

Refersion tracks AM via three main capabilities: emails, coupon codes, and SKUs. Each of these has its own useful channel. 

Coupon codes are super handy for social affiliates and can be made unique to each of your affiliates to credit them directly from specific coupon codes. 

Emails are effective for affiliates with large customer networks to allow them to get credits automatically with each purchase. 

Finally, SKUs are great for selecting specific products to trigger a commission, which makes them handy for direct promotion and other special events. 

3. Affiliate Segmentation 

Effective segmentation is the backbone of all great marketing strategies. With Refersion, you can create different offers to segment affiliates directly through your dashboard. 

The best way to do this is via your key KPIs like earnings per click, total revenue, average order value. This will allow you to quickly get the sense of how your affiliates are doing to promote the highest ROI-based affiliate strategy possible. 

4. Post-Purchase Channel 

The Post-Purchase Channel allows you to convert customers into micro-influencers/affiliates themselves. After check-out, you can create a pop-up that promotes your affiliate program. 

If the customer clicks, they automatically become an affiliate and can start promoting your products right away. 

5. Refersion Marketplace 

All Refersion users receive automatic access to the Refersion Marketplace. You can list offers here for free and connect with over 8,000 affiliates from across industries. 

Think of it like LinkedIn for affiliate marketing. You can even spy on the competition and see what commission they provide to make your offers more attractive. 

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, this is one of the best ways to grow your sales network. 

7. Integrations 

Refersion integrates directly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, ChargeBee, BigCommerce, and Stripe. But with its API, you can easily connect to nearly any platform. 

On top of that, Refersion works well many popular marketing tools, including: 

• Google Analytics 
• Klaviyo 
• Mailchimp 
• SkimLinks 
• ReCharge 
• Zapier 

Best of all, if something isn’t directly supported, you can contact their Refersion customer success team to find a custom integration solution for whatever it is. 

Who Should Use Refersion? 

Refersion is an overall excellent affiliate marketing tool for both new and experienced advertisers. Likewise, merchants of all sizes can also benefit from using Refersion. 

Unfortunately, when Refersion eliminated the starter plan, it did make things a little less affordable, especially for solopreneurs and those new to AM. Though you can start referrals during the trial, you can’t do much with it until you upgrade to a paid subscription. 

On the other hand, the Professional plan is well-priced and a feature-rich option for established marketers and SMEs while providing a great deal of creating flexible marketing strategies.

Finally, the Enterprise plan is definitely well-suited for large brands and marketing teams, and with custom pricing, it can be well-suited to match whatever your marketing needs are. 

Is Refersion Worth It? 

For newer marketers, maybe not. $89/month is steep. That doesn’t even include other costs you might have like a personal website, social media publishing tools, and more. As fantastic as Refersion is, you might be better off with Refersion’s more affordable competitors because affiliate marketing is in many ways a numbers game. And until you can guarantee a large number of website users or social media followers, it’s going to be hard to justify such a high monthly cost. 

Once you do have an established audience, however, Refersion can easily pay for itself. The 130 Referrals on the Pro Plan may not sound like a lot, but consider this, if each referral is only worth $10, then it pays for itself after just 13. 

Running your affiliate program through Refersion will be much cheaper than creating an affiliate program on networks like Shareasale and Commission Junction.

Remember, this is a tool for established marketers and businesses. The main thing you’ll do with it is not so much directly market yourself but harness the power of other affiliate marketers to do the hard work for you. 

When it comes to managing, segmenting, and growing teams of affiliate marketers, it’s hard to beat this comprehensive and easy-to-use software tool. 

Pros

• All-in-one platform 
• Easy to use 
• Easy to create a team of affiliate markets 
• Refersion Marketplace to make connections 
• Great customer service 
• Can base offers on SKUs, referrals, or emails
• API and integrations 
• Create micro-influencers 
• Effective tracking capabilities 
• Can do everything from one dashboard
• Easy affiliate payout

Cons

• Cheapest plan starts at $89/month
• Have to switch to enterprise pricing at just 130 referrals per month
• No cross-device tracking 
• Would be helpful to have built-in product search feature

Refersion Alternatives 

You’ll most often see Refersion compared to LeadDyno. Both consistently receive overall rave reviews. They also offer a similar set of features and are easy to both use and get started with. 

The main difference, however, is the pricing structure. LeadDyno is definitely a better option for those just entering the world of AM. That’s because they base your monthly charge on your monthly traffic—starting at $29/month for up to 1,000 unique visitors and going up from there. Even at this price point, you still get access to all of its amazing features. 

After you get to a certain point, however, their pricing structure starts to make less sense. They charge you based on ALL traffic—not just traffic from affiliates. So, if you’re already getting great traffic from other sources, you’re going to be kicked onto a higher plan than you might need making Refashion a better option for medium-sized businesses or larger. 

Another option worth looking into for newer affiliate marketers is Affiliatly. Although it isn’t quite as feature-rich as either LeadDyno or Refersion, their plans start at just $16/month and are priced based on the number of affiliates you have. It also includes an impressive 90-day free trial that’s worth checking out. 

Refersion: The Final Verdict

If you want an effective tool to maximize the efficacy of your affiliate marketing, it’s hard to beat Refersion. It’s easy to use, includes comprehensive tools, and makes getting started with it a breeze. The only downside is it can be a little pricey for newer marketers without established sales channels yet.