Email Newsletter - SMS Campaign - and Discord Group Onboarding Guide for Commerce

Overview

Unlike other affiliate platforms, Sovrn Commerce requires all sites to implement or install our affiliate links and generate clicks before reviewing a site for approval. If approved, you'll be able to affiliate with tens of thousands of merchants without the need to apply to these merchants individually. To help get you through our review process, we've developed this onboarding guide, which will give you instructions, tips, warnings, and extra resources to give your account the best possible chance at approval.

This onboarding guide is best suited for publishers who are looking to send affiliate links to a group of people (such as through an email newsletter, SMS campaign, or Discord Group).

If where you acquire your readers or followers has not been approved yet, you'll first want to start your journey with one of these guides:

After you're done adding your social Media profile or website, please come back to this guide to add your email newsletter, SMS campaign, or Discord Group.

This guide will walk through the following steps (and you can skip to a specific step by clicking an icon below)

Add Your Campaign ➡️ Installation ➡️ Generate Clicks ➡️ Get Approved ➡️ Next Steps

Adding your Campaign to our System

Email Newsletters, SMS campaigns, and Discord Groups can generally only be added as additional sites to an already approved account. If you don't already have an account setup and need help with first-time registration, see the Getting Started with Sovrn Commerce guide. Once your primary source of communicating with readers has been approved, you can begin this process.

From the Settings page in the Sovrn Platform, click the + Site button.

For email newsletters, please select the following:
- Put a descriptive name for your campaign on the empty field and click Apply Now.
- Send an example of your email blast to cq@sovrn.com
For SMS campaigns, please select the following:
- Put a descriptive name for your campaign on the empty field and click Apply Now.
- Send an example of your SMS campaign with screenshots to cq@sovrn.com
For Discord groups, please select the following:
- Put a descriptive name for your campaign on the empty field and click Apply Now.
- Send an example screenshot of your Discord Group to cq@sovrn.com.

Tip: We need to see examples of your Email newsletter, SMS campaign, and Discord group, along with specific examples of how you plan to promote our merchant partners. We cannot proceed with our approval process without these examples. You can also upload a full media kit or white-paper to Sovrn via this form.

Installation

You're making great progress! Next, you'll need to add Sovrn's affiliate links to your site.

Create Links is the best way to install Commerce for email newsletters, SMS campaigns, and Discord Groups. With this feature you'll be able to create a link that can be installed anywhere: social media sites, websites, blogs, and more. Please note that you will need to create a different affiliate link for each location (Email, Discord, etc) where you would like to post the link.

To create an affiliate link, we recommend the following steps:

Use the Approved Merchants tab to find a merchant you'd like to work with. Then navigate to the merchant's site and find the URL of a product that you would like to affiliate.
Navigate to the Create Links tab and click the +Create button in the top right corner. Fill in each field, including the site where you will post this affiliate link, the URL you are hoping to affiliate, and a name for this link.
Click Create. This will generate a shortened sovrn.co affiliate link. You can see this link in your Create Links tab and copy it to your clipboard using the Copy Link button.
Paste this affiliate link on your social media page or profile.

Tip: Write the surrounding content to describe the item, without including the merchant's name. Create Links gives you the ability to change the product your link routes to, by clicking the Edit button in your Create Links page. This way, if the item ever goes out of stock, you can update your link to go to another merchant that carries this item, without having to change any content on your page.

You can also create individual affiliate links through the Sovrn Chrome Extension.

Install the extension and follow the instructions here: Google Chrome Extension for Commerce to login and learn how to change “campaigns” in order to create links for your different sites.
After installation, you can click on the Sovrn extension when viewing a product or merchant's page! Clicking on the extension will return an affiliate link (if Sovrn works with this merchant), which can be copy and pasted into your content!

Clicking the extension will also display your estimated earnings per click and any other retailers that may supply the same product.

Generate Clicks

Once you've implemented Sovrn Commerce, we will need to see a few clicks routing through these links. This allows us to check on your installation and ensure that we are receiving traffic successfully. We recommend sending a few test clicks through these links, or having your users click on the links that you created.

Warning:

You won't be able to monetize on this traffic yet - so don't send through too many clicks!
You won't see this traffic on your Sovrn dashboard. Clicks, Sales and Revenue will only begin to appear if you are approved.
Here are some tips on how to drive high quality traffic to your site/page.

Get Approved

You've gotten through our implementation process! Now that you've generated a click, your site has been added to our team's list to review. We'll review this site as quickly as we can, but it may take 5 business days before you receive an email with your approval status.

Note: See the status of your site on the Settings tab in the Sovrn Platform.

If you have not received an update with your site's approval status, and you are not seeing clicks in your Sovrn dashboard after 5 business days, please reach out to support@sovrn.com.

Tip:

Please display your Sovrn affiliate link in a clear, easy to find location on your site. We need to see an example of this link to complete our review.
Make sure you adhere to the Sovrn code of conduct. Please review it here.
Laws and regulations require the use of using disclosure statements in your content. Review what a disclosure statement is, and how to use them here: Sovrn Commerce Disclosure Statements .
Want more info on our approval process? You can find more information here.

Warning: Our quality team needs an example of your email newsletter, SMS campaign, or Discord Group to review for approval.

If you haven't sent an example yet, please email cq@sovrn.com with screenshots, whitepapers, or a media kit. You can submit your media kit through this form.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You've successfully onboarded your first site onto Commerce. Here are some next steps to finish entering your account information, and to set you up for success moving forward.

Affiliate with Merchants

If your site is approved for Sovrn Commerce, you can now affiliate with tens of thousands of our merchant partners without needing to request additional approval! You can search for any merchant that you would like to affiliate with in our "Approved Merchants" page to find their individual rate information, including average commission rates, conversions rates, average order values, and average earnings per click. Read more here: Approved Merchants in Commerce.

You can also download a full list of merchants that your site is approved for via the "Approved Merchant Report" under the "Report" button in your analytics dashboard.

Looking for more information on how to best affiliate with merchants? We've included more tips here: 5 Tips for Getting Started with Sovrn Commerce

Add additional sites to your account and assure traffic is segmented correctly

Traffic Segmentation in Commerce.

Sovrn requires each unique location where you intend to add Sovrn affiliate links to be reviewed for approval individually. Not only does Traffic Segmentation help with reporting for your account, but it keeps your account in compliance with Sovrn and our Merchant and Network partners.

Tip: You only need to submit unique locations for approval (such as your Website, Facebook group, Instagram page, and App Store link). You do not need to add individual pages of a site for approval (such as website.com/page1 and website.com/page2).

You can add additional sites, profiles, or softwares to your account here. You can also find other types of onboarding guides to help with Social Media, Blog, and Newsletter integrations here.

For example, someone with multiple social media accounts and a website, a Settings page with correctly segmented traffic would have separate sites submitted for:

instagram.com/page1
instagram.com/page2
website.com

For more information on how to use the Settings tab, please see Settings in Commerce.

Payment and Tax Information

You'll want to finish setting up your account by adding payment and tax information. You can add your payment information here.

If you have multiple Apps in your Sovrn account, you will need to add payment information for each of your products. You can add payment information for a specific app by using the "Product" drop down menu.

You can read more about Sovrn Commerce payment methods, thresholds, and schedules here: Payments in Commerce.

More Resources

Sovrn Blog

Successful affiliate marketing requires an active strategy, a good understanding of data, and, of course, high-quality content. Sovrn posts industry trends, recommended holiday promotions, and deep dives into our product offerings on the Sovrn Blog. Improving your understanding by learning more about these topics (to name a few) will help you in this area:

Knowledge Base

We have a library of articles in the Sovrn Knowledge base to provide more information on everything from account setup, implementation, troubleshooting, analytics, and more. We recommend the checking out the following topics:

Learn more about how to read the Commerce dashboard, understand the metrics, and some of the caveats you may run into: Analytics in Commerce .
Find out about payment thresholds, cycles, methods, reconciliation, and more: Payments in Commerce.
Understand how to best utilize Commerce to affiliate with merchants: Approved Merchants in Commerce.

Support

As always, please feel free to reach out to Sovrn Support with any questions, concerns, or feedback here. We're happy to help with any questions you have!