In this article, we will discuss our Customers feature. We will discuss:

We've also included a short FAQ section at the bottom of this article.

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For many businesses, it makes sense to track referred customers separately from the purchases those customers make.

For others, simply having a customer_id to help connect conversions to one-time shoppers is simply a nice thing to have.

Regardless of your use case, fetching your customer ids is great way to enrich the affiliate marketing experience for both Advertisers and their affiliates.

Our Customers feature will allow you to:

If Customers eventually start making purchases, or convert to paying subscribers, Conversions will show up on the Conversions page.
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It's possible to track both Customers and Conversions simultaneously. This is useful, for example, in the case that you have customers making immediate purchases.

To understand how you can track customers and conversions, and the different commission structures and attribution flows, keep reading below.

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Your commission structure determines how much your affiliates get rewarded, as well as how many times an affiliate can earn commission from a specific customer.

We've set out the three most common commission structures below:

One-off commissions means that you will reward the last affiliate that referred a visitor after they make a purchase, regardless of whether or not the customer has made a purchase before.

Recurring commissions means that you will be awarding the referring affiliate for the customer's monthly/yearly subscription payments.

This is most often used by SaaS/subscription businesses to pay the affiliate a commission for each payment the customer makes.

Some integrations already have this feature built-in - look for the green, highlighted feature box at the top of the integration guide.

Depending on your integration, setting up a recurring commission structure may require the intervention of a developer. Your developer can consult our Recurring/Lifetime commissions through the API or Zapier guide.

Lifetime commissions are very similar to recurring commissions. However, this is more often used by eCommerce/retail businesses looking to reward the original referring affiliate for any subsequent purchases a customer makes.

Some integrations already have this feature built-in - look for the green, highlighted feature box at the top of the integration guide.

If this isn't supported in your integration, setting up a lifetime commissions may require the intervention of a developer. Your developer can consult our Recurring/Lifetime commissions through the API or Zapier guide.

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With a commission structure in mind, you can build your code so that it matches your tracking goals and commission structure.

Below we have prepared some sample attribution flow examples that explain the best way to format your code according to your goals.

We have divided this section into three parts:

To add recurring commissions, create conversions for the Customer in response to payments the customer makes, using either the REST API or Zapier.

Remember to enable Recurring / Lifetime commissions on your program.

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Remember to enable Recurring / Lifetime commissions on your program.

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This flow is best suited for long sales funnels where conversions are tracked at a later date.

When the deal is completed, you can create a conversion to mark the recorded lead "Won". This can either be automated with your CRM or done manually through the platform. For more information, you may consult this article.

If you have a more complex set up and would like tailored advice as to how you can set up, feel free to drop our support team a message explaining your use case and goals in detail.

We'll carefully review your case & let you know the best approach to take.

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Depending on your type of business, we have three distinct status flows for customers:

Trial/Lead/New is the initial status for a new Customer. This means that no Conversions have yet been created for a customer.

Paying/Won/Active means that at least one Conversion has been created for the Customer. If you have enabled Recurring / Lifetime commissions on your program, the Customer can also accrue future Conversions/Commissions (depending on your integration method).

Capped If you have enabled Recurring / Lifetime commissions on your program, and have configured a cap, than this status indicates that the Customer has reached that cap, i.e. the maximum number of allowed conversions. Future Conversions for this Customer will be automatically rejected & not registered in your account. This feature is commonly used by SaaS businesses, limiting the maximum number of recurring commission to 6 or 12, for example.

Canceled/Lost/Stopped If you mark a customer as Canceled/Lost/Stopped, the Customer cannot accrue any future Conversions/Commissions.

Please note: Regardless of the alias/status flow you choose, once a customer has been tracked, it isn't possible to track them again. You may only add conversions or cancel them.

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No, it is not recommended to display customer IDs to your affiliates. Sharing sensitive, identifying customer information with a third-party (your affiliates) without the customer's consent can enter in direct conflict with the European GDPR or California's Consumer Privacy Act.

Customer statuses will change depending on the following:

No, rewards cannot be issued solely when tracking a customer. Rewards are typically associated with specific actions or conversions, such as making a purchase.

If you'd like to create a conversion alongside your customer, use the tap('conversion', external id, amount, {customer_id: "the-customer-id"}) attribution flow.

Of course! You can submit a detailed explanation of your use case and goals to our support team. We'll carefully evaluate your use case and give you tailored advice on what's the best approach for you to take.

If you have Recurring/Lifetime commissions enabled, you have the option to set a limit on the number of commissions that an affiliate can receive per customer. To read more on Caps, please read this article.