​​​​Ontraport’s partner program allows your affiliates to earn commissions by promoting your products. This system helps you expand your reach by rewarding those who drive new leads and sales to your business. Referrals are among the most effective ways to dramatically boost your sales, as they cost far less than attracting new leads. They’re also likely to draw more qualified customers to your business. 

Table of contents

Use cases
How partner attribution works
Create a partner program
Add commissionable products
Tracking on third-party sites
Add partners
• From partner program settings
• Manually
• From a form submission
Create promo tools
• Delivering affiliate links
View referrals
Managing partner payments
Create a partner center
Customize WordPress settings
Customize and view the data in your Partners collection

Use cases

Here are some common use cases for partner programs: 

Program for high-ticket lead generation

If you sell expensive products or services with long sales cycles, you may want to reward partners who do the difficult work of finding brand-new leads and introducing them to your business.

• How it works: You provide partners with affiliate links to your high-value free content, such as a whitepaper, video series or consultation request form.
• The benefit: By paying the first referrer, you ensure that your partners are rewarded for the initial introduction. Even if the lead stays on your email list for months before finally making a purchase, the partner who grew your database is “locked in” for that commission.

Evergreen customer referral programs

Turn your existing customer base into a long term, “hands-off” sales force by rewarding them for referring their friends and colleagues.

• How it works: Use the automated sign-up feature to instantly give every new customer their own affiliate link via a merge field in their “welcome” email.
• The benefit: This creates a consistent lead source without extra effort on your part. Because these are often personal recommendations, paying the first referrer works well here to protect your customers’ referrals the moment their first opt-in to your system.

Influences and content creator promotions

If you work with bloggers, YouTubers, or influences who produce ongoing content, you can pay for actual sales results rather than just clicks or impressions.

• How it works: Influences place your affiliate links in their video descriptions, social bios, or blog posts, directing their audience to your order forms or landing pages.
• The benefit: In this model, paying the last referrer is most effective. It incentivizes influencers to create fresh, persuasive content that drives an immediate purchase, ensuring they get the credit for being the “final touch” that convinced the custer to buy.

How partner attribution works

Back to top 

Once you set up a partner program, you don’t have to manually automate the attribution process. As long as you are using Ontraport forms, the system automatically handles the tracking.
The primary mechanism for promotion is promo tools, specifically affiliate links. You choose the destination of these links, generally a lead capture page or an order form, and the system tracks the referral as follows:

• New Contacts: If a person is not already in your database when they click an affiliate link and fill out a form, the partner is set as that contact’s "First Referrer" forever. They are also set as the "Last Referrer" until the contact clicks a different partner’s link and fills out another form.
• Existing Contacts: If the contact is already in your database, the partner is set as the contact’s "Last Referrer."
• Commission Logic: You can choose whether you want to pay commissions to the First Referrer or the Last Referrer.

Create a partner program

Back to top

Before following these steps, be sure that you’ve configured the global settings for your partner programs.

1. Go to Partners  → New Partner Program.
2. Name: Name your program.
3. Program Type: Select the type of partner program you’d like to create, called the program type.
   • 1 Tier: Your partners make a commission when one of their referrals buys your product.
   • 2 Tier: Your partners can also make another — usually smaller — commission when one of their referrals becomes a partner, and one of their referrals buys your product.
     • This option rewards your partners for referring people who also refer.
4. Notify partner when they have earned a commission with an email: You can choose if you want to send an email every time your partner makes a sale.
   • Select “Send Email Notification,” and choose which email you’d like to send.
5. Click Save.

Add commissionable products

Back to top

Partners only earn commissions on the specific products you have marked as "commissionable" within your partner program settings. You won’t pay commissions on products in your account that are not connected to a partner program. You can have as many products as you want in the program, and the same product can appear in different programs.

1. Go to your Partners collection, and click on the name of your program.
2. In the “Partner program information” tab, scroll to the “Commissionable products” subcollection.
3. Click New Partner Product.
4. Fill out your partner product info:
   • Product: Select your product from the dropdown.
     • Or click New Product to create a new one.
   • Type: Choose if you want to offer a percentage or a flat rate for your commission.
   • Level 1 Commission: Add the percentage or flat rate for your level 1 commission.
   • Level 2 Commission: Add the percentage or flat rate for your level 2 commission.
5. Click Save.

Tracking on third-party sites

Back to top

If you want to track referrals on sites that are not hosted by Ontraport, you simply need to add the partner tracking pixel to your checkout confirmation pages.

Add partners

Back to top

There are three ways to add your partners to your program:

1. From your partner program settings
2. Manually
3. From a form submission

Note that if you’ve set up your partner program’s global settings to pay your partners via PayPal, you must also collect their PayPal email address in the “PayPal Address” field.

From partner program settings

Back to top

1. Go to your partners collection, and click on the name of your program.
2. Click on the Partners tab.
3. In the “Partners” subcollection click New Contact.
4. Select a contact from the dropdown.
   • Or click + New Contact to create a new record.
5. Click Save

Manually

Back to top

Adding a contact to your partner program is simply updating the “Partner Program” field in their record. You can do this from inside of the record or from a group action.

From a form submission

Back to top

You can create partner sign up forms to allow your partners to enroll in your programs themselves. Check out this article to learn how to set it up.

Create promo tools

Back to top

You can create promo tools that help your partners promote your product, and create affiliate links that track your partners’ referrals.

Check out this article to learn how to create promo tools.

Delivering affiliate links

Back to top

You do not need to manually format individual affiliate links for every partner. Instead, they are best delivered using merge fields, which can be found in the Affiliate links section of the dropdown. This allows the system to dynamically generate the correct, unique link for each partner when you send them an email.

View referrals

Back to top

You can view your partners’ referrals from your partner program settings and from contact records.

From partner program settings

You can see referrals from all your partners in your partner program’s settings.

1. Go to your partners collection and click on the name of your program.
2. Click the Referrals tab.

From contact records

You can view a list of all the contacts your partner referred in your partner’s record. 

1. Go to your contacts collection and click on the name of your partner.
2. Go to the detailed view and click the Referral Info tab.
3. View the “Referred Contacts (First Referrer)” and “Referred Contacts (Last Referrer)” subcollections to see the contacts your partner has referred.

Managing partner payments

Back to top

The system does not automatically send money to your partners, but it provides the tools you need to manage and track those payments:

• Approval: You can review and approve earned commissions within the system.
• Marking as Paid: Once you’ve sent the funds, you can mark the commissions as paid to keep your records accurate.
• Pay with PayPal: If you use PayPal, you can download a "PayPal Mass Pay" file from Ontraport to pay multiple partners at once.

Check out this article to learn more about paying your partners.

Create a partner center

Back to top

Adding a partner center is a great tool for managing your partner programs. You can build a partner center from scratch to track partners, monitor performance, and manage payouts from one central location.

Or you can set it up using Ontraport’s Partners app. The Partners app simplifies setup by toggling on essential features for you – all you need to do is customize your assets!

For detailed instructions on setting up and using these tools, click the links below:

• Build a partner center from scratch 
• Build a partner center using the Partners app

Continue reading to learn how to customize your WordPress settings for your partner program.

Customize WordPress settings

Back to top

If you are using a WordPress partner center, you can customize the data you want to show from your partner program’s settings.

1. Go to your partners collection, and click on the name of your program.
2. Click the WordPress settings tab.
3. Customize your settings:
   • Select how much information on referrals to share with partners: Choose how much information about contacts you want to share with your partners, such as share the full name or keep sales anonymous.
   • Show partners information on declined charges: Check this option if you want to share information about failed transactions with your partners.
   • Show partner complete purchase history for each referred client: Check this option if you want to show a referral’s complete purchase history with your partners.

Customize and view the data in your Partners collection

Back to top

Once you set up your partner program, you’ll be able to access your data by clicking Partners.

To customize the data you see, click to add any of the following columns to your Partners collection.

Here’s what each column tells you:

Check out this article to learn more about paying your partners.