What does it mean to track customers and conversions?
Customers represent people that signed up for your service (e.g. trial user), or filled out a lead form, but have not done anything yet you want to reward affiliates for.
Conversions represent actions (e.g. a one-off purchase, or monthly subscription payment) for which you want to award a commission to the referring affiliate.
Commission structures: Recurring, Lifetime or One-off?
One-off commissions means that you will reward the last affiliate that referred a visitor after they make a purchase. This is commonly known as last cookie counts.
Recurring commissions means that you will be awarding the referring affiliate for the monthly/yearly subscription fees that the customer pays you. This is often used by SaaS/subscription businesses to pay the affiliate a commission for each payment the customer makes.
Lifetime commissions are very similar to recurring commissions, however this is more often used by e-commerce businesses looking to reward the original referring affiliate for any subsequent purchases a customer makes.
Which Customer flow is right for my business?
SaaS / Subscription + Recurring
If you offer a free trial before the customer makes their initial payment, we advise you use the tap('trial', customer id) method on the thank you page the user reaches after signing up for your trial.
If you don't offer a free trial, but rather the customer starts paying right away,
use the tap('conversion', external id, amount, {customer_id: "the-customer-id"}) method. Modify the code on the thank you page reached after someone signs up and makes their initial purchase.
To add recurring commissions, you can use our API or Zapier to create Conversions for the Customer, in response to payments made by the customer.
Please remember to enable Recurring / Lifetime commissions on your program.
SaaS / Subscription + One-off
If you don't want to offer recurring commissions, use the tap('conversion', external id, amount) method on the thank you page, after someone signs up and makes their initial purchase.
E-Commerce + Lifetime
For cases in which you'd like to track and reward an affiliate for a customer's subsequent purchases, use the tap('conversion', external id, amount, {customer_id: "the-customer-id"}) method on the thank you page reached after someone makes a purchase.
Please remember to enable Recurring / Lifetime commissions on your program.
E-Commerce + One-off
Use the tap('conversion', external id, amount) method on the thank you page, after someone makes a purchase.
Lead-generation
Use the tap('lead', customer id) method on the thank you page, after someone fills out your lead form.
When the deal is completed, you can mark the recorded lead "Won". This can either be automated with your CRM or done manually through the platform.
Where can I find more information?
To read more about how to set up recurring and lifetime commissions, you can turn to this article.
For more information on how to track trial sign-ups or leads, you can refer to this article.