Creating an Affiliate Link Campaign

Affiliate Program Campaign Setup Example

In this example, we will build a very simple affiliate program. The process will go like this:


Affiliates fill out a form to become an affiliate.

They are sent a unique affiliate link they can use to market your products/services.

Any time someone converts from the affiliate link, send the notification to your affiliate.


The following steps will guide you through building the affiliate campaign.


Step 1: Create an Affiliate Link

Under Administration, <Account Settings there is an Affiliate Links section on the Account Setup tab. Click the "New Affiliate Link" button, give it a name and the URL you want your affiliate link to direct to. Then hit save.




Step 2: Create a Drip Campaign

Create a Drip Campaign, give it a title, and use the "Form Submitted" Trigger.




Step 3: Select Your Affiliate Signup Web Form

In the campaign workflow, select your affiliate signup form for the Form Submit trigger. You will need to make this form if you haven't done so already. If you aren't sure how to make web forms yet, you can start learning the basics of building web forms here.




Step 4: Select Your Email Template and Insert Your Affiliate Link

You will have to create an email for this action before activating your campaign, if you have not done so already. For this step in the example, we have already created a basic email that we will use to send out our affiliate links.

In order to insert the correct affiliate link into your email, you should note that when we made this link in STEP 1, it generated an Affiliate Link API Key:



If you have more than one affiliate link in your Account Settings, you will need to know what the Affiliate Link API Key is in order to select the correct link for your email.


Step 5: Setup The Workflow

In this step we need to add two items to our workflow - a "Wait For Change" decision, and a notification email that will go to your affiliate anytime someone converts using their affiliate link.


5.1: Add The "Wait For Change" Decision To The Workflow

In this step we have added the "Wait For Change" decision right after our initial email to our affiliate. We changed the name to an appropriate title, set the Query context to global, and built our query as shown in the image below.

This query will look for an affiliate link click that took place after the initial to your affiliate was sent out.




5.2 Add A Second Email Prospect Action

If you don't have an email created for this step, you will need to do that at some point before activating your campaign.

In this step we have dragged the "Email Prospect" action into the workflow after the decision. Notice that we have made a loop here between the decision and the last email action. This is important as we always want to be checking for link clicks.

What this logic is saying is the following: "Wait for a link click, email the prospect when a click happens, wait again for a link click, etc."


Press the "New Email" button to select your email or to start building it.




Step 6: Test Your Campaign & Activate

Now that you have built your form, emails, affiliate link, and workflow, start testing it. Submit your form, look for a unique link in the email, and then click it.

Once you can verify it works,

FAQ

How are unique links generated when I only made one affiliate link?

This happens behind the scenes in ActiveDEMAND. Your affiliate link will be appended with unique parameters before it is emailed to your affiliate.

Updated on: 03/10/2022