Coupon Onboarding Guide for Commerce

Overview

Unlike other affiliate platforms, Sovrn Commerce requires all campaigns to implement or install our affiliate links and generate clicks before reviewing a campaign 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 have a coupon site, and are hoping to utilize Sovrn's affiliate links and Coupon API. There are a couple aspects that are unique to Coupon or Deal Publishers, which we will walk through in this guide!

This guide will walk through the following steps (and you can skip to a specific step below):

Registration  ➡️  Installation  ➡️  Generate Clicks  ➡️  Get Approved  ➡️  Next Steps

Registration

Sign up for a free account here using your email and password, or choose to sign up via a Google Account. You can review our terms, conditions, and policies upon account creation, and they can also be found here.

After signing up, you’ll need to confirm your email address. Once confirmed, you’ll be guided through the following steps:

All Products

You'll start here on the All Products tab in the Platform. From here, you can click Get started under Commerce box on the right, or click Commerce on the left-side navigation bar. Either method will take you to the Getting Started page for Commerce.

You'll be able to return to the All Products tab anytime to learn more and implement other products. 

Getting Started

From here, click on the blue Apply Now on the Affiliate marketing made easy page. This will walk you through a few steps you'll need to complete to start monetizing, which are described below: 

Submit Site for Approval

You'll be prompted to submit a site (or “campaign”) for approval. You will have the option to come back later and submit more campaigns using the Settings page, which will be accessible in the Platform after you have at least one approved campaign.

You'll also need to read and accept Terms and Conditions at this point. 

Installation  

You're making great progress! Now that you've gone through the Sovrn onboarding flow, we will need you to implement one of the Sovrn affiliate link options.

We recommend Coupon sites to utilize the Sovrn Commerce JavaScript option. It's a simple and effective way for you to affiliate all existing links to products and merchants on your website. However, you are also able to use the Create Links option, described in this article Create Links in Commerce.

Installing the Commerce JavaScript will automatically scan your page and convert your existing products/merchants plainlinks into affiliate links. However, you will only see clicks, and any corresponding revenue, from links to merchants that you are approved for within Sovrn Commerce.

You'll be able to find your campaign-specific installation script and instructions via the Settings page when you click on the < > icon next to your campaign. You can also follow the steps below, or reference our Implementation Guide for Commerce JavaScript article:

1. Obtain your Sovrn Commerce API key.

   1. If you do not have your API key, you can ask the owner of your Sovrn Commerce account. The API key can be found on the Settings tab by clicking on the "Key" icon next to the name of the campaign on which you're installing the Commerce JavaScript.

2. Insert your API key into the script below, and copy this script:

<script type="text/javascript">     
  var vglnk = {key: 'YOUR API KEY GOES HERE'};     
  (function(d, t) {         
  var s = d.createElement(t);             
  s.type = 'text/javascript';             
  s.async = true;             
  s.src = '//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js';         
  var r = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];             
  r.parentNode.insertBefore(s, r);     
  }(document, 'script')); 
</script>

3.  Paste this script into the HTML of your site.

   1. This code should be inserted just before the </body> tag.

4. Check the script installation.

   1. A convenient way to check if you have installed the Commerce JavaScript correctly would be to use the Check your installation section under the Settings page when you click on the < > icon next to your campaign. Input your site URL where you have installed the Commerce JavaScript, and the tool will inform you if the script was installed correctly, or else it will denote an error message.

   2. For other ways to check your installation or learn more, refer to the “How can I check that the JavaScript is successfully installed?” section of our JavaScript implementation guide.

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. 

Get Approved

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

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

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 campaign 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 on our Merchants page to find their individual rate information, including average commission rates, conversions rates, average order values, and average earnings per click. Learn more about affiliating with merchants here: Merchants in Commerce.

You can also download a full list of merchants that your campaign is approved for with the "Approved Merchant Report" that is available from your analytics dashboard and clicking on the blue Report button on the top right corner.

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.

What about Coupon Codes and Deals? 

The Sovrn Commerce Coupon API allows you to access Coupon and Deal feeds for merchants that you are promoting on your site.

Our network partner requires the following information to review your campaign for approval to utilize this API:

• Your Sovrn account email

• Your website URL

• Explanation of how you plan to add Coupons and Deals to your site

• Example of different locations where you are placing these codes and affiliate links

Upon approval, Sovrn will provide a link to our Coupon API, as well as next steps. Please note that, if approved, our network partner will monitor click and conversion performance. You will have a few weeks to begin sending clicks through the affiliate links provided through the Coupon API along with the Coupon codes. To maintain approval, you will need to keep sending clicks and generating conversions through these provided affiliate links.

Please reach out to us at support@sovrn.com to get started!

Add additional sites to your account: Traffic Segmentation

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.

To learn about traffic segmentation, please see this article: Traffic Segmentation in Commerce. 

You can add additional sites, profiles, or softwares to your account from the Settings page. For example, someone with multiple social media accounts and a website would have segmented their traffic out properly if they submitted their campaigns individually for review like so:

• instagram.com/accountname

• facebook.com/accountname

• examplewebsite.com

For more information on how to use the Settings tab, please see: Site 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 are utilizing multiple Sovrn products under one account, you will need to add payment information for each of your products. You can add payment information for a specific product by using the "PRODUCT" drop down menu.

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

More Resources

Sovrn Blog

Find the Sovrn blog here. 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:

• What is EPC?

• How to write a product review: a guide for affiliate marketers

• Secrets to Drive More Commerce Revenue (Webinar)

Knowledge Base

More information on how to use the Sovrn Commerce platform can be found in the Sovrn Knowledge base. You'll find 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, see: Analytics in Commerce.

• Find out about payment thresholds, cycles, methods, reconciliation, and more, see: Payments in Commerce. 

• Understand how to best utilize Commerce to affiliate with merchants, see: 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!