I think being able to track an affiliate link or even an affiliate code would be helpful. It seems more and more people are working with affiliate programs. My understanding is even if you wanted to give a discount code for an affiliate to use, it wouldn't be trackable either. Is that correct?

Hi There,

We are super keen to have affiliate functionality, we ideally would like to be able to use a third party system that integrates so our affiliates can track their sales and we can provide them with marketing materials etc.

We invested in idevaffiliate but it does not work with Wild Apricot - two great systems its a pity they don't integrate. it would be the ideal scenario for us.

We are looking at developing a workaround so any suggestions more than welcome. I will post an update when/if we find one.

Thanks

I can't believe that I just asked for this and was told it was not possible to do this on WA. Now I find out that several people have requested this feature all the way back to 2007!

I want to use InviteBox or similar referral program and all they need is to be able to insert their widget on a page that uniquely says a certain step has been completed (in my case it can be when they apply for membership or pay for membership). I don't understand why this is difficult to accomplish but I am not a tech person. Right now, it really doesn't matter where in the process you offer it. What matters is that it is available.

If the fix above works, I'm all for it. Please consider making this feature available!

I was looking through this long thread and thinking - there is no way we can handle it in a full integration scale this year (of may be even ever). But can something be done as a quick substitute for the full integration? Well, there might be options.

I'm thinking about something like "callback" function on WA side. Imagine we have a special new setting page, where an admin can setup an URL to call when a payment transaction completes (actually, several URLs - for membership application, renewal, level change or event registration, or donation). Just several texboxes where admin defines an URL - e.g. as it was mentioned by ptorto1 at http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8825569-affiliate-program-integration-2986

The URLs can also use some macros that WA will supply - e.g. Contact ID, Invoice Number, Date, Amount, Transaction ID, etc.

This means that whenever the payment transaction for the listed cases occurs (e.g. membership application is paid), WA will call the URL defined by admin, substituting macros in emails with transaction specific data.

If we do this - and this is actually very simple to do and can be done quite quickly - can this be useful?

No, sorry. And we do not expect any in 2014.

Any update on this?

This particular feature is on the backburner and we don't expect to touch it at least until the end of 2013.

Hi,

I wanted to find out if Wild Apricot integrates with any affiliate tracking software and after reading this discussion I understand the background and why there isn't any.

I was looking into Post Affiliates Pro integration for tracking sales and a % based commission. I am using PayPal Payments Pro to accept payments for memberships. I'd like to track sales from affiliate sites/emails by using something like a special affiliate id in the incoming URL. Basically the same as what is outlined in the post by ptorto1 would work. We've got to know where the new member came from to determine what affiliate gets credit for the sale.

I currently have a group of affiliates ready to go if I can get some kind of tracking, possibly even having the system store an affiliate id into the new contact record. The id would be passed into the sign up form from the referring URL. Then the completed sale could be tracked manually at a minimum since the affiliate id would be saved with the contact record. Just an idea.

Can you give us an update on this feature? I'd like to know either way since I am making business plans that hinge on this.

Thank you for your assistance and Happy New Year

An affiliate system would be my #1 request.

it would seem it could benefit you to -- spread the word about WA

Here's a list of affiliate programs mentioned by one of the customers:
* iDevAffiliate
* Post Affiliate Pro
* 1 Shopping Cart
* JROX JAM
* Paydotcom

Sorry, can't do this - as I said, there is no single thank you page (this depends on various workflows, payment system selected, online vs. manual payment) so there is no quick fix.

So unfortunately this will have its turn in the queue and it is not very likely to be addressed in 2011.

Well - it seems to me that you have to start somewhere. I am willing to start as the test case so that you continue to broaden this as requested. I have a fairly basic setup with recurring monthly payments. The code I sent you is all that the AffiliateShop folks need added. Why don't we start there and see if it works. Worst case, it doesn't work and we move on. But adding a couple of lines of code to what would be called in my example shouldn't take too much time.

The confirmation page upon a successful transaction seems pretty standard - how many confirmation pages do you have? You only add this code to that one page.

Phil

The problem is, there is no single Thank you page - there are many different scenarios/workflows.

I have read through this entire post and have contacted two different affiliate software companies.

One company has asked that a very simple line of code be added to the Thank You page once the order is processed successfully. The code is: <img src='https://edge.affiliateshop.com/public/WIDLink?WID=2041&OrderID=ORDERID&percent_sale=SALE_AMT'; width='1' height='1'>
where 'ORDERID' and 'SALE_AMT' should be replaced by the unique transaction ID and the amount of sale respectively. This is for the AaffiliateShop program that I am using. But the iDevAffiliate program said basically the same thing. This seems pretty straightforward. The AffiliateShop Support team is willing to discuss this with you to finish this up. Obviously, I realize there are a number of affiliate management programs available - but if you were to add at least one - that would make this a whole lot easier for people - they could choose to use the one you integrated or not - then as you have time to investigate others you can expand the capabilities.

Getting this to work with PayPal would probably satisfy most of us.

How would it work?

New membership level: Affiliate. Affiliate membership profile shows links to all active packages with additional affiliate ID (members ID number?) tagged to the signup URL.

eg: http://mysite.com/signup?wstepNo=2&wctxId=16301a2dfb484a599ed6f0df0ce016bd

would become

http://mysite.com/signup?wstepNo=2&wctxId=16301a2dfb484a599ed6f0df0ce016bdAFxxxxxx

then the affiliate ID would be passed to PayPal as an additional field named affiliate. but not sure if this is possible,

so the other alternative is to maybe make new links to my signup page that are affiliate specific, so http://mysite.com/signup?AFIDxxxxxx would be shown on the affiliate members profile and if he posts that somewhere and a new customer clicks then a cookie is set in new customer browser with the aff ID.

This is then read when the make payment button is pressed and the value passed to PayPal as an optional field.

This would be enough to start with.

We could then track affiliate members via Wild Apricot, see their affiliate ID, then we would use PayPal monthly reports to show all payments received (and refunded) filtered by the various affiliate ID.

Thanks for the details. Unfortunately there is no quick solution for this. We have to consider how this would work with various payment gateways we support. Also most of them work asynchronously - meaning that payment confirmation to our system is sent in the background separately from the original workflow.

Anyway, we will keep researching the ways to handle this.

Sorry for the delayed reply. Still trying to figure out how to use this communications venue. I consider a paypal payment to be a conversion. I do not accept manual payments. All I need is a dedicated url that I can plug into google analytics. I believe this can and should be a url associated with a landing spot after a member has made a paypal payment.

@GFweekly - what would you ideally like to track as a conversion, can you elaborate in as much detail as possible? (Including situations with manual payment)

My need is on the simple side -- consistent with RobO's. I just need a place to track conversions through google analytics. It looks like this is not available yet, but I want to be sure I'm not missing something.

We had 50 items on our 2010 roadmap, including this one. First two releases has taken more time than planned so we will not be able to complete all original 50.

For affiliate program the biggest issue for us is that we still do not have enough understanding of what the real needs/goals are to properly analyze and design this. I would appreciate additional comments and details on this thread.