Top 10 SaaS companies for strategic partnership

SaaS (software as a service) companies have been gaining user trust rapidly in recent years as they set customers free from the bonds of having to manually maintain hardware resources, upskill staff, or do software installation. 

With the emergence of many SaaS companies wanting to digitally transform customer processes, exciting opportunities have arisen in building better networks and collaborating on providing customers with improved services. 

Software affiliate marketing is a strategic partnership formed with third parties. These parties can be either businesses or individuals who agree to help market and/or distribute the partner’s services to their audiences. 

The go-to-market strategy of channel partnerships (a type of software affiliate marketing where commissions are earned based on the number of customers referred to the partnered company) focuses on getting partners onboard for customer acquisition in exchange for a revenue percentage – a win-win for any business and its partners. 

This is precisely why renowned companies like ZenDesk, Hubspot, Zoho, and SEMrush are running partner programmes and why it makes for a great strategy for your business too.

Why should you form a strategic partnership? 

SaaS B2B strategic partnership is a great way to increase recurring revenue, improve networking, broaden the target audience, and enhance your business technology. 

Partnering up with other companies that share customer bases can amplify your sales and marketing. This allows businesses to leverage a well-known brand name with a broader network than what you alone would have access to. 

One key partnership option you need to consider is getting listed on a SaaS app marketplace. This will not only give you additional revenue streams, but also add authority your brand and domain courtesy of the backlinks you generate.

SaaS software affiliate marketing is a two-way street. As an incentive for helping the brand get more customers, you’ll in kind be rewarded with sales commissions or recurring revenue. 

Regardless of the SaaS affiliate partnership’s incentive structure, a key element always stays the same: The more referrals brought in, the bigger the partner’s reward.

Let’s look at 10 companies you should consider for a strategic partnership:

    1. Woorise

Woorise is a lead generation and marketing platform that helps businesses create engaging forms, surveys, landing pages, game content, and more. Its suite of tools allows businesses of all kinds to create effective campaigns and build better customer rapport. You can easily target many different audiences by building industry-specific campaigns.

You can also check and track lead conversions through dashboard insights, grow your online audience presence through embedded social media widgets, and integrate tools with other marketing applications you might be using. This allows you to keep tabs on your overall performance and conversions, which helps increase revenue by letting you make data-driven decisions.

Woorise’s affiliate partnership allows you to sign up for free and earn a 30% recurring commission. Once you sign up and create an account, you’re provided with a unique affiliate link through their affiliate tracking software. From then onwards, you continue to receive a commission until the referred user ends their subscription. The more accounts you refer, the more you earn.

The great thing about Woorise’s strategic partnership is that it’s easy to sign up for – and they offer a 90-day cookie life, meaning to be eligible for the commission, the referral has to be purchased from them within a 90-day timeframe. Further, you get access to all your referral statistics through the affiliate dashboard for a comprehensive look at your clicks, sign-ups, sales, and commissions. ‍

    2. Serviceform

Serviceform is a popular SaaS suite of tools that helps businesses solve bad customer service as well as problems with lead generation, conversion, and management. Serviceform’s mission is all about customer happiness as every customer account actually gets its own dedicated account and customer success managers. 

Serviceform is ideal for established companies that are less tech-savvy but want to accelerate their performance online. True to their mission, you don’t need any coding knowledge to implement or use Serviceform’s tools. Already leaders in the real estate industry, they further provide digitalising services across automotive, education, and e-commerce spaces. 

Serviceform offers two types of channel partnerships: White-label partnerships, and lead-based partnerships. 

Unlike most lead-based partnership programmes, Serviceform doesn’t provide you with an affiliate link. Instead, you can share with them any referral lead you feel could benefit from their tools. Serviceform takes care of the lead nurturing process from there. 

This means you don’t have to put in any extra effort – a considerable advantage to partners as they don’t have to follow up and convert the lead themselves. Serviceform can take over once you submit the lead and guide them through any introductions, onboarding, and optimisation. Because Serviceform is GDPR compliant, they’re also very much committed to the privacy of their customers. 

And once the lead converts to a paid customer, they get both an account manager and a customer success manager to help them. But the 20-50% commission will be yours once your referral lead is closed. 

White-labelling, on the other hand, is a software affiliate marketing partnership where Serviceform invites partnering agencies or consultants to sell their suite of tools under the partner’s brand. 

As Serviceform offers a comprehensive suite of both lead generation and website optimisation tools, you can partner with them and promote tools and services for either a lead-based or white-label partnership, depending on your business capacity and revenue goals. 

Read more about the benefits of partnering with Serviceform. 

To improve partnership success, Serviceform hosts webinars and shares case studies to provide training as well as detailed information on how partners can better promote themselves. They also have a monthly newsletter with ideas to help partners increase their recurring revenue. 

    3. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a popular SaaS accounting solution that helps with automating invoicing, tracking expenses, adding recurring billable clients, reviewing bank transfers, sending late payment reminders, and collecting payments. 

FreshBooks is user-friendly for businesses ranging from freelance writers to large corporations. Its automation and customisation features – along with support for multiple languages and currencies, allow business finances to be managed from anywhere in the world. 

The FreshBooks affiliate program supports bloggers, networkers, influencers, and businesses to bring in referrals. This is done through trackable links from the third-party affiliate network partner ShareASale. The affiliate partnership pays the affiliate commission in two ways. For every free trial sign-up, you get $10, and a $200 commission for every paid upgrade. Freshbooks’ affiliate link offers a cookie life of 120 days which begins at sign-up. They have a dedicated support team for assistance. 

FreshBooks has a strategic partnership ecosystem built heavily around integrations, so they pay extra attention to their API metrics. They track API usage to assess integration performance. Once you set up a partner account with FreshBooks and get access to the platform, you’ll be able to find a variety of text links, banners, infographics, videos, and other marketing materials to help you spread the word about FreshBooks. 

    4. ActiveCampaign 

ActiveCampaign is an automation tool ideal for inbound and email marketing automation. ActiveCampaign helps to create an engaging user experience through its sophisticated CRM functionality. It offers some unique features like creating custom fields based on the style of the customer’s lifecycle and synchronising the CRM with each stage of the customer journey. 

It’s also a great tool for personalising newsletters. For instance, you can add customised subject lines for different customer segments under one campaign. In addition, you can write a section only for users who use a mail manager and create much more accurate sales funnels.

This allows you to perform customer segmentation based on customer interest, and ensure that the newsletter skips over the spam folder and lands in the customer inbox. 

They offer an enticing strategic partnership with a starting commission of 20%, that recurs whenever referred subscribers renew. This can increase up to 30% for subscriptions that are continuously renewed. ActiveCampaign offers plenty of promotional resources for affiliates to feature in their content, including graphics, videos, and even access to webinars, which increase their chances of getting sales. And thanks to their dedicated partner portal, it’s easy for partners to access these resources, track sales, and reach out with any questions.

    5. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service platform that works best for support teams. As an omnichannel suite, it helps support teams have effortless conversations with customers across various channels. 

Freshdesk’s own multiple channels and helpdesk help businesses prioritise, manage, and take real-time action without repetitive tasks.

Freshdesk software affiliate marketing program is helmed by its parent company Freshworks. You can refer a customer to Freshdesk and earn 20% for the first full year of the customer lifecycle, and $5 for every valid lead. 

They offer two types of channel partnerships: digital marketing and e-commerce partnering, then individual or freelance partnerships. Digital marketing firms and e-commerce outlets can enter into a strategic partnership to refer Freshworks products (with Shopify integrations) to clients. Through this plan, the partners allow anyone using their site to experience Freshdesk tools. It works like a trial period where customers use Freshdesk through the partner’s site – and if interested, they can become a Freshdesk customer themselves through the referral link. For freelance and individual marketers, they offer a plan to recommend Freshdesk’s products through their content. 

    6. AWeber

AWeber is an email marketing tool where you can create a mailing list, design newsletters, automate email marketing, and analyse statistics related to your email marketing campaigns. 

AWeber offers one of the largest sets of HTML e-newsletter templates. It also has autoresponder functionality, integrations with third-party apps, and the option to add an unlimited number of users to your account. 

AWeber offers up to 50% of recurring referral commission to partners, which is one of the highest bids in the SaaS channel partnerships realm. Their affiliate partnership is suitable for freelancers, entrepreneurs, digital enthusiasts, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). You can become an AWeber advocate by signing up for free, and creating an account with a unique affiliate link. You’re then able to view referral statistics – like how many people are clicking your referral link, and how much money you make per visitor.

They also offer an advocate tool kit to help partners promote their services. The toolkit consists of a variety of marketing tools including articles, ads, and sales emails. Additionally, they send out a customer referral newsletter with tips on how better to utilise their resources and succeed in promoting AWeber’s services. 

    7. Iconosquare

For brands and agencies looking to enhance their social media presence, Iconosquare is a treasure trove. Its powerful analytics, management, and scheduling features help businesses and agencies alike easily manage and report their social media performance.

Iconosquare supports up to 10 profiles and an unlimited number of team members with free collaboration tools and even a social media calendar. You can generate automated reports and find insightful data on competitors, hashtags, community, and profile activity.

Iconosquare’s strategic partnership is ideal for media bloggers and influencers. For $49 per month, you can subscribe to their basic plan for social media management. Regardless of the plan you choose, you can become a partner at no additional cost, promote Iconosquare’s product to your audience, and earn a 15% recurring commission for it as an affiliate. 

Additionally, you also get high-quality content assets to promote Iconosquare and earn a greater commission. You can track your growth as an Iconosquare channel partner through their intuitive dashboard. 

    8. Privy

Privy is a cloud-based email marketing solution designed exclusively for e-commerce businesses. It captures customer attention and information through targeted on-site advertisements – such as pop-ups, banners, and leadbars. It then drives online conversions and sends automated emails to grow the customer base.

This helps e-commerce businesses to decrease cart abandonment, roll out custom campaigns, talk about their products, and generate new leads. Its key features include product recommendations, follow-up emails, building mailing lists, and a lot more.

Privy’s affiliate partnership in the SaaS niche offers commissions of up to 10%. You can become a Privy channel partner if you own an e-commerce business, or agency, or are a marketing consultant or e-commerce influencer. 

Privy offers complete training and marketing assets for all partners. A unique feature of this affiliate partnership is that your account is allocated to a dedicated Partner Manager. 

    9. Unbounce

Unbounce is an AI-powered landing page builder that helps e-commerce websites, agencies, and SaaS companies create smart landing pages in minutes. It’s a great conversion optimization tool that provides content for campaigns using its unique AI. Unbounce helps keep website visitors on your site longer, encouraging them to subscribe to relevant marketing efforts and buy more. 

Unbounce offers more than 100 ready-made templates and its drag-and-drop builder feature helps anyone (especially those without coding knowledge) to create a landing page in under 10 minutes. 

With the possibility to earn 20% of recurring revenue for each customer you suggest, Unbounce’s strategic partnership is amazing. Additionally, 20% off the first three months of Unbounce for both visitors to your website and social media followers makes the exchange worthwhile for both parties. 

Unbounce also gives you a tonne of resources to succeed within their affiliate program, such as a partner coach, personalised dashboard to monitor progress, as well as training and marketing materials to ensure you’re spreading the word about their company as efficiently as possible. 

    10. Moosend

Moosend is email marketing and automation software that helps you send powerful email campaigns. You can also automate your marketing flow, saving you time in creating beautiful landing pages with subscription forms and so on. 

With Moosend, you can create custom opt-in forms to capture any visitor data required and send it further to websites, blogs, Facebook pages, or other third-party sites. More, with its drag-and-drop newsletter editor, you can either create your own email template from scratch or customise existing templates. 

With its lifelong repeating commission, the Moosend affiliate partnership will get you one step closer to intelligent passive income. For each plan your contacts buy using your affiliate link, you make 30% per month. However, you also receive an additional affiliate commission when your connections upgrade, which can be a massive plus in the long run.

With a 90-day cookie and an easy-to-use affiliate dashboard, Moosend gives you the time and assets to maximise partnership potential. You’ll also have access to affiliate reporting tools after signing up, allowing you to keep track of your progress and improve your affiliate marketing strategy.

Which SaaS strategic partnership is best for you? 

Because of the additional income, strategic partnerships are a good idea whether you’re a large-scale business or a lone blogger. However, to find the right strategic partnership, you need to weigh a number of factors like the potential number of referrals that you can bring in, how much time you can allocate for the partnership, and the amount of commission you’re expecting. 

Don’t forget to check whether you’re doing GDPR correctly to stay out of the GDPR jail, and then the Top 4 B2B lead generation tools you can use to scale your business.