Automate Follow-Ups for New Affiliate Sales

Introduction

The New Affiliate Sale trigger allows you to create automated workflows that activate whenever an affiliate sale is recorded in your CRM. This tool helps you save time by automatically handling tasks like sending congratulatory messages, notifying your team, and organizing customer data following a successful sale. It is important to understand that this workflow typically operates on the buyer's contact record, so standard communication actions will target the customer unless you use a specific affiliate-focused action.

Understanding the Trigger

This trigger is activated for any new affiliate sale, including one-time purchases, recurring subscriptions, and manually entered transactions. You can use it to build automations that:

• Send congratulations or updates to affiliates
• Notify your internal team
• Assign tasks related to the sale
• Add tags to contacts for segmentation
• Perform a wide range of other automated actions

Important Note on the Primary Record: Workflows run on a primary record. For the New Affiliate Sale trigger, this is usually the buyer's contact record. This means that standard actions like "Send Email" or "Send SMS" will be directed at the customer. To communicate with the affiliate, you must use a dedicated affiliate communication action.

Available Filters

You can use filters to control which affiliate sales will start the workflow.

• Affiliate(s): Limit the workflow to sales generated by specific affiliates.
• Campaign: Restrict the trigger to sales associated with a particular affiliate campaign.
• Payout Method Status: Trigger the workflow based on whether the affiliate has provided their payout details.
• Tax Form Status: Trigger the workflow based on the status of the affiliate's tax form submission.

These filters allow you to create highly targeted automations for tasks like sending payout reminders or campaign-specific follow-ups.

How to Set Up the Workflow

Follow these steps to create an automation using the New Affiliate Sale trigger.

1. Navigate to Automations and select Workflows.
2. Click to create a new workflow or edit an existing one.
3. Add the New Affiliate Sale trigger as the starting point.
4. Apply any desired filters, such as selecting specific affiliates or campaigns.
5. Add the actions you want the workflow to perform.
6. Save your workflow to activate it.

Popular Use Cases

Reminder: Standard contact actions will message the buyer. Use affiliate-specific actions to communicate with the affiliate.

Congratulate and Motivate Affiliates

Keep your affiliates engaged by automatically acknowledging their success. Since standard email actions will contact the buyer, use an affiliate communication action to send a message like, "Great job on your latest sale! Your commission is on its way."

Send Payout Setup Reminders

Use the Payout Method Status filter to trigger a workflow that reminds affiliates to complete their payment information, helping to prevent delays in issuing commissions.

Tag Affiliate-Generated Customers

Automatically add a tag, such as "Affiliate Customer," to the buyer's contact record. This allows you to easily segment these customers for future marketing campaigns.

Known Considerations

A common point of confusion is that the workflow does not automatically switch its primary record from the buyer to the affiliate. This means that actions intended to affect the affiliate's profile, such as awarding community points, may not work as expected if the workflow is running on the buyer's record.

To reliably grant points to an affiliate, the workflow must be designed to run on the affiliate's community member record when performing that specific action.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who does the workflow run on, the affiliate or the buyer?

The workflow typically runs on the buyer's contact record. Standard actions will therefore affect the buyer. To interact with the affiliate, use an affiliate-specific action.

Can I use "Send Email" to contact the affiliate?

Not directly. The standard "Send Email" action is tied to the primary contact record (the buyer). You must use a dedicated action for sending emails to affiliates.

Can I restrict the workflow to certain affiliates?

Yes. Use the Affiliate(s) filter to select which affiliates can trigger the workflow.

Does the trigger work for recurring sales?

Yes. The trigger activates for one-time, recurring, and manually tracked affiliate sales.

Can I award community points with this trigger?

Yes, but the workflow must be configured so that the point-awarding action runs on the affiliate's community member record, as the trigger does not automatically switch the workflow's context to the affiliate.