In this article, we'll cover a couple of different ways you can manage your Affiliate program, and a few suggestions for how to interact with your affiliates once they sign up.
For starters, you'll need to activate at least one of your Products or Offers under Settings in the Affiliate section of your admin dashboard's left side menu. We also highly recommend setting up your affiliate terms.
From here you have two main options for sharing your affiliate program:
Send your people straight to the Affiliate Center when they're logged into your site.
Set up an Affiliate Hub product that new and current members can join.
In order for your audience member to become an affiliate for you, they must have a member account in order to access the Affiliate Center + links.
For this reason, you may want to set up an Affiliate Hub if you have audience members who you want to promote your products but who wouldn't necessarily be students for those products (option 2).
Example: an online music teacher may want other teachers to have affiliate link access to share with their audience, but those teachers may not need to take the online lessons themselves.
If, however, you only want current members in your account to become affiliates, then you could create a landing page in our Pages feature with some introductory information about your Affiliate Program and then direct them to the Affiliate Center in your site (option 1).
Option 1 Suggested workflow for sending people to your Affiliate Center:
Activate your affiliate products + offers, and set your terms.
Create a page that introduces your affiliate program if you have other information not included in the terms you want them to read.
Direct your audience members to click on the top right menu in your account to access the Affiliate Center.
Once these members agree to the terms, have a Member Action set up to tag them in your email service when they agree to the terms and thus join your affiliate program:
In your email service, have an automated welcome email for your affiliate program set up to send when that tag is applied to a member's contact.
From here, you can send specific email updates to your affiliates if you want to check in with them, share any upcoming promotions they may want to tell their audiences about, etc.
Option 2 Suggested workflow for using an Affiliate Hub Product:
Create your product following the steps in this article.
Activate any products and offers you want to track affiliate conversions for, and set your affiliate terms.
In your Affiliate Hub Product Overview Text, let your members know how to access your Affiliate Center to agree to your terms and get their shareable links.
Keep the product in active or invisible status depending on if you want this to show in your marketplace or if you'd prefer to link it throughout your site.
When members join your Affiliate Hub, use an action to tag them in your email service.
Use a Member Action to tag your members when they agree to your affiliate terms (see step 4 in Option 1).
This way, you can send specific messaging to affiliates who haven't agreed to your terms yet directing them how to access your links.
These two options are not an exhaustive list for how to set up and manage communication with your affiliates, but they'll help get you started if you need ideas!
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Questions? Reach out to us at hello@membervault.co, within our Facebook group, The MV Collaborative, or via chat support within your admin account (not sure how to log in? look up your account here).