All Grow partner programs pay by awarding a commission for a specific action. The term CPA, or "cost per acquisition", covers two models:
Cost per sale (CPS) programmes are the more common of the two, as they ensure that you only pay commission when you have earned money from a sale made by the affiliate.
Cost-per-lead (CPL) programs pay commission to affiliates who have provided you with a potential new customer, either by collecting a new subscription to a newsletter or by sending people to fill in a form to express their interest, make an appointment or submit a quote. The task of converting this lead into a paying customer then falls to the advertiser.
CPL programs are set up differently from CPS programs by Grow, and also require a different affiliation strategy.
Setting up a CPL program:
- You must have a form to fill in on your website with a "confirmation" page confirming that the lead has been submitted.
- You must use Grow's GTM or Javascript instructions to integrate the tracking codes. The 'header / all landing pages' script is identical for CPS and CPL. The "confirmation page / thank you page" script must be modified as follows:
- The "voucher code" parameter is removed (in most cases)
- The order value parameter is hard-coded to a fixed amount, for example 1 or 2.
- The order number is a unique identifier for each form submitted, for example form number #123. Note: you can use email addresses, but this is not recommended for GDPR reasons. It is preferable to assign a unique number to each entry in your form database.
- You will use a fixed commission model, which you can decide (and change at any time) via the platform.
Affiliate mix:
Certain types of affiliate will not be able to work with CPL campaigns. These include voucher publishers, CSS (Google Shopping) and price comparison sites. You can work with cashback sites, but be aware that many cashback sites offer customers commission per lead in the form of money for simply filling in a form or registering - which could be abused by opportunistic customers!
All affiliate activities also present a higher risk to CPL campaigns, as many forms do not require identity verification and can therefore be more easily falsified.
Lead validation:
In the same way that you would validate sales from a program, you can also validate leads by looking at the order reference details, the 'transaction time' (which is essentially the time of 'submission') and checking these against your records.
Note: in our platform, leads are 'transactions' or 'conversions', as the platform is primarily aimed at CPS programs.