What Is the Affiliates Feature

The Affiliates feature lets you create and manage a referral program where other people or businesses — called affiliates — drive traffic and sales to your products on your behalf. In exchange, you can offer affiliates a commission on each sale they generate, either as a fixed dollar amount or as a percentage of the sale. Affiliates is located in the Marketing section of the app because it is a lead generation activity.

The Affiliates feature was previously called the Referral Partner module in Max Classic and has been simplified and relaunched as Affiliates for Ultimate. This article covers how to manage affiliates, commission programs, affiliate links, the affiliate portal, commission tracking, and affiliate settings. For a list of features that are not yet included in the current version, see the What Is Not Included in the Current Version section at the bottom of this article.

How to Manage Affiliates

An affiliate record represents a person or business that is driving referral traffic on your behalf. Each affiliate requires a name, a linked contact record, a unique affiliate code, and an Active status before they can begin referring customers.

1. In the left-hand navigation, click Marketing to open the Marketing section. Then click Affiliates to open the Affiliates page.

   

   The left-hand navigation displays the Marketing section with the Affiliates option listed beneath it. Clicking Affiliates opens the Affiliates page.

2. The Affiliates page displays a list of all existing affiliates. From this page you can add a new affiliate or click on an existing affiliate to view and manage their details.

   

   The Affiliates page displays existing affiliates in a table with columns for Name, Status, Code, and Date added. The Add new affiliate button is located at the top of the page.

3. To add a new affiliate, click the Add new affiliate button to open the Add a new affiliate form.

   

   The Add a new affiliate form displays input fields for the affiliate name, the associated contact record, the affiliate code, and a status selector. Fill in all required fields and set the status to Active. Click Save to create the affiliate. The new affiliate will appear in the affiliates list immediately after saving.

   

4. To find an affiliate on the Affiliates page, type the affiliate's name in the search field to filter the list. You can also sort the affiliates list by clicking any column header — Name, Status, Code, or Date added.

   

5. Click on any affiliate's name to open the individual affiliate record. Each affiliate record contains the following sections:

   • Info — Basic information about the affiliate, including their name, contact record, and affiliate code.
   • Commission program — Lists any commission programs the affiliate is enrolled in. See the Managing Your Commission Program section below for details.
   • Affiliate links — Lists the affiliate links assigned to the affiliate. See the Managing Affiliate Links section below for details.
   • Affiliate portal — Provides the affiliate portal link for this affiliate to share with them directly. See the Affiliate Portal section below for details.
   • Affiliate Ledger — Displays historical referral activity that has resulted in sales. The ledger defaults to filtering by month to date but can be adjusted to show earlier activity. Click the View ledger button at the bottom of the simplified ledger view to access the full referral ledger and payment management view.

   

   The individual affiliate record displays four tabs at the top: Info, Commission program, Affiliate links, and Affiliate portal. The Affiliate Ledger section is displayed below the tabs and shows referral activity for the current month by default.

How to Manage Commission Programs

A commission program defines what commission an affiliate earns when they refer a customer who makes a purchase. You can specify a commission as a fixed dollar amount or as a percentage of the sale, and you can customize the commission for specific products or subscriptions.

1. On the Affiliates page, click the ellipses menu in the top-right corner of the page. In the menu, click Manage commission programs to open the Commission Programs page.

   

   The ellipses menu is located in the top-right corner of the Affiliates page. Clicking the ellipses menu opens a dropdown with the Manage commission programs option. Clicking Manage commission programs opens the Commission Programs page.

2. The Commission Programs page displays a list of all existing commission programs. From this page you can add a new commission program or click on an existing program to view and edit it.

   

3. To create a new commission program, click the Add a commission program button. Enter a name for the commission program in the name field and click Next to proceed to the commission configuration step.

   

   

4. On the Edit Commission page, configure the default commission for the program. You can set the commission as a percentage of each sale or as a fixed dollar amount. You can also add custom commission rules for specific products or subscriptions that override the default commission rate for those items.

   

   The Edit Commission page displays the Default Commission section at the top with fields for setting a percentage or fixed dollar amount. The Custom Commission section below the default section allows you to add commission rules for specific products or subscriptions that will override the default rate for those items.

How to Manage Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are the tracking URLs that affiliates share with their audiences to drive traffic to your products. When a visitor clicks an affiliate link and makes a purchase, the affiliate receives credit for that sale according to the commission program they are enrolled in.

1. To manage affiliate links, click Affiliate links from the ellipses menu on the Affiliates page, or click the Affiliate links tab on an individual affiliate record. The Affiliate Links page displays all existing affiliate links and an option to create a new link.

   

   

2. When creating a new affiliate link, you will specify the destination URL that the affiliate link points to and how the link is associated. Each affiliate link can be associated in one of three ways:

   • All affiliates — Makes the link accessible to every affiliate in your program.
   • A particular affiliate — Restricts the link to a single specific affiliate.
   • A commission program — Associates the link with one or more commission programs. This is the recommended association method because it allows you to manage which affiliates have access to the link by managing their commission program enrollment rather than updating each link individually.

   

   The Create affiliate link form displays the link name field, the destination URL field, and the three association options. The A commission program option is the recommended selection. After filling in all fields, save the link to make it available to the associated affiliates.

Affiliate Portal

The affiliate portal is a page where your affiliates can access their program information without logging in to your account. Each affiliate's portal shows their basic affiliate information, the affiliate links available to them, the commission programs they are enrolled in, and a commission ledger showing their referral activity and earnings.

Note: The affiliate portal does not require a login. Because the portal is accessible without authentication, the amount of information displayed about referred customers is limited to protect customer privacy.

There are two ways to share the affiliate portal link with an affiliate:

• Share directly from the affiliate record — Open the individual affiliate record, click the Affiliate portal tab, and copy the portal link to share it with the affiliate directly.
• Send via email using a merge field — Send an email to one or more affiliates and include the Affiliate Site ID merge field in the email body. The affiliate portal URL is constructed from three parts: a base URL, your App ID, and the affiliate's Site ID. The full URL format is: https://affiliate.keap.page/?app_Id=APPNAME&siteId= followed by the affiliate's Site ID value. This URL is all the affiliate needs to access their portal.

The Affiliate portal tab on the individual affiliate record displays the affiliate portal URL in a text field with a copy button. Clicking the copy button copies the portal URL to the clipboard so it can be shared with the affiliate directly.

How to Track Commissions

Commission tracking for individual affiliates is available through the simplified Affiliate Ledger on each affiliate record. The Affiliate Ledger shows historical referral activity that resulted in sales and defaults to showing activity for the current month. To view earlier activity, adjust the date range filter on the ledger.

To access the full referral ledger and payment management view, click the View ledger button at the bottom of the simplified Affiliate Ledger on the affiliate record. The full referral ledger provides additional commission and payment management options beyond what is available in the simplified ledger view.

For information on the full set of commission tracking reports, see referral partner commission tracking reports.

The Affiliate Ledger displays referral activity in a table with columns for date, product, and commission amount. The View ledger button at the bottom of the table opens the full referral ledger and payment management view.

Affiliate Settings

Affiliate tracking settings control how the system determines which affiliate receives credit when a sale occurs. To access affiliate settings, click Settings in the left-hand navigation. Then click Referral Partner Defaults to open the tracking settings page.

The Referral Partner Defaults settings page displays three tracking configuration options. The three settings are:

• How to choose Referral Partner — Specifies whether the first or the most recent referring affiliate receives credit when a sale occurs. This setting determines how credit is assigned when multiple affiliates referred the same customer at different times.
• Referral Partner tracking method — Controls whether affiliate tracking uses cookies only, or a combination of referral history and cookies, to determine whether an affiliate should receive credit for a sale.
• Use IP address — Specifies whether an IP address can be used to identify a referral and assign credit. Note that IP address tracking can produce false matches because multiple different users can share the same IP address, such as on a shared network.

What Is Not Included in the Current Version

The current version of Affiliates for Ultimate does not include every feature that was available in the Max Classic Referral Partner module. The following features and options were removed or are not yet available in the current version:

Commission program limitations:

• Levels — Multi-level commission structures are not supported. Only a single commission level is available per program.
• Pay if unused — The Pay if unused setting has been removed. Because multi-level commissions are no longer supported, this setting is no longer applicable.
• Lead commissions — Commissions are currently tracked against completed sales only. Commissions for leads that have not yet resulted in a sale are not supported.
• Priority — Existing commission program priority settings will continue to be honored for programs created before this update. For new affiliate setups going forward, only one commission program can be assigned to an affiliate at a time, so priority is no longer configurable.

Feature compatibility:

• Affiliate referral tracking does not currently work with newer features including checkout forms and updated landing pages.