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Lifetime Commissions

Link your customer to an affiliate and to attribute commissions for that customer's future purchases

Maria avatar
Written by Maria
Updated over a year ago

What are lifetime commissions? 

Lifetime commissions are a great incentive for your affiliates to promote e-commerce business; this feature allows your affiliates to benefit from all subsequent conversions from a client they initially referred to your website.

When setting up Lifetime Commissions, there is no need for cookie tracking -so even if a customer deletes cookies from the browser, Tapfiliate will still know to which affiliate attribute the commission to. 

A typical affiliate program rewards affiliates for the individual conversions they have driven. The 'last cookie counts' rule will be followed, and a different affiliate can be credited for the same customer.

How does it work, exactly? 

When lifetime attribution has been set up, the following scenario takes place:

  • Your affiliate (A) drives a customer named Ellen to your website using assets you have shared. 

  • Ellen makes a conversion when she visits the site via affiliate A's referral link. 

  • Ellen then returns to make another conversion a few days later, but this time via affiliates B's link. Affiliate A is again credited for the conversion - not affiliate B. 

  • Ellen again returns to your website a couple of months later, this time on a different device. Affiliate A is credited for the sale again.

How do I set this up? 

E-Commerce + Lifetime

To track and reward an affiliate for a customer's subsequent purchases, amend the Javascript conversion code to retrieve the customer when a conversion takes place.  

For example, your code could follow the following format:
tap('conversion', external id, amount, {customer_id: "the-customer-id"})  

Please remember to enable Recurring / Lifetime commissions on your program. 

Some of our integrations already have this feature built-in - look for the highlighted "Supports lifetime commissions" feature at the top of the guide.

Note: If you're a SaaS company and looking for a way to set up (weekly/monthly/yearly) recurring commissions then see this article

Cap your commissions

If you'd like to set up a limit of how many commissions an affiliate can earn from a certain affiliate, you can set a time or frequency cap on commissions

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