Overview

Learndot allows companies to generate more interest in their their training courses and products by facilitating affiliate programs.

What is an Affiliate Program?

An affiliate is an independent party that promotes products and services in exchange for a commission on leads or sales. An affiliate does this by displaying ads, text links, or product links on their Web site, in e-mail campaigns, or in search listings. Affiliates are paid a commission when a visitor takes a desired action such as requesting a quote (lead) or enrolling in a class (sale).

Each affiliate receives a unique code which is used to direct visitors to the Learndot website. For example, if a registered affiliate code is "rocket", then the associate affiliate would include a link like the following on their own website

<a href="http://demo.trainingrocket.com/training/flight_school/pilot_navigation.html?a=rocket">
Register for Pilot Navigation Training!
</a>

Learndot will track all visitors based on the affiliate code, regardless of the course promoted. Affiliates can then login to their affiliate interface and:

see live statistics
request realtime email notifications
view information of visits and conversions from their referrals
track affiliate payments and balances.

For more information on affiliate marketing see this resource.

Enabling the Affiliate Module

The affiliate module is disabled by default. To enable the Affiliate module you must be a Learndot administrator:

Under the Administration console, navigate to System > Setup > System Settings
Using the search bar, search for 'module.affiliate.enabled'

Edit the 'module.affiliate.enabled' system setting. Ensure the system setting is enabled and set its value to 'ON'

Click Save. A new menu option Affiliate is now available in the Administration console

Affiliate Registration

Contacts can register as an affiliate through Learndot's Affiliate Registration form. If the Contact already has a username and password it is best if they login before accessing the form as it will pre-fill their details. The form is available at:

/affiliate/registration.html

For example the affiliate registration form for the Learndot demo site is available at: https://demo.trainingrocket.com/affiliate/registration.html

Creating a New Affiliate - Learndot Admin

In addition to using the affiliate registration form, a new affiliate can be created through the administration console by following these steps:

Login to the Learndot Admin
Navigate to Customers > Contacts
Edit the contact you wish to make an affiliate
Scroll to section Partner

By selecting one of the created Affiliate from the dropdown menu or creating a new Affiliate using the '+' sign (see next step), affiliate will be set to 'Yes' under Affiliate - Enabled.

Click on the '+' sign on the Affiliate - Affiliate field, to bring up an Affiliate Form in a new window. Complete this form and save

Go back to the original Contact window. Click the cursor on the Affiliate - Affiliate field. Press space to bring up a list of affiliates and select the newly created affiliate

As a result:

The new affiliate information will now be available through the Affiliates link under Customer > Affiliates in the Learndot administration

The Affiliate Interface

Contacts that have been configured as an affiliate will have access to their affiliate interface through the Affiliate link on the Learndot user menu.

Contacts will need to logout and re-login after being configured as an affiliate, for the Affiliate link to become accessible.

There are two main sections to the affiliate interface, affiliate campaign information and marketing tools.

Dashboard

The affiliate dashboard provides an overview of all affiliate campaigns. It is available to Contacts who are setup as Affiliates at the URL:

/manage/affiliate/dashboard.html

For example the Affiliate dashboard for a Contact that registered as an Affiliate on the Learndot demo site is available at: https://demo.trainingrocket.com/manage/affiliate/dashboard.html

Log in as an Administrator to view this page.

Visits

The Visits pages provides information on all visits that resulted from the affiliates referral, situated under Admin > Customers > Affiliate > Visits.

Conversions

The Conversions page provides information on all conversions (product order, registration, training opportunity, etc.) that resulted from the affiliates referral. The page is situated at Admin > Customers > Affiliate > Conversions.

The status of each conversion are affected by the entity they are associated with according to the table below.

Customer Order Status	Affiliate Conversion Status
New	New
In Progress	New
Fulfilled	Approved
Canceled	Declined

Opportunity Stage	Affiliate Conversion Status
Lead	New
Prospect: Cold	Pending
Prospect: Warm	Pending
Prospect: Hot	Pending
Selling: Cold	Pending
Selling: Warm	Pending
Selling: Hot	Pending
Won	Approved
Lost: Competition	Approved
Lost: Can't Deliver	Approved
Lost: Over Budget	Approved
Lost: Don't Know	Approved
Lost: Other	Approved
Bogus	Declined

Payments

The Payments page displays information about payments which have been made to an affiliate. It is situated at Admin > Customers > Affiliate > Affiliate Payments.

Profile

The affiliate profile is used to update profile information about the affiliate including the affiliate code and billing information.

Marketing Tools

Marketing tools provide mechanisms that can assist affiliates with setting up affiliate links to the Learndot Enterprise application. Learndot Enterprise includes a number of generators (to courses, categories, location, or particular schedules) as well as banner HTML.

Promoting Your Affiliate Program

There are a number of pages within Learndot Enterprise which may help to promote and explain your affiliate program to potential partners. These include:

These pages may need to be enabled through the Learndot Enterprise administration in order for them to be viewable on your site, and you may wish to customise them.

Page	URL	Description
FAQ	`/affiliate/faq.html`	Describes frequently asked questions about your affiliate program such as how to sign up and when payments are made.
Program	`/affiliate/program.html`	Landing page for your affiliate program with links to registration.
Registration	`/affiliate/registration.html`	Affiliate registration form.
Thank You	`/affiliate/registration_thank_you.html`	Displayed after a successful affiliate registration.

Configuring Your Affiliate Program Payment Structure

The payment structure for your affiliate program is configured in the administration console with the system setting "affiliate.order.conversion.file" which references a csv file. The CSV file is configured in the following way:

// Order based configurations
order,default,<payable/percentage> 

// Order Item based configurations
order,item,default,<payable/percentage>
 
// Order Item based configurations (based on type of item purchased)
order,item,<type of item purchased>,default,<payable/percentage>
 
order,item,product,default,<payable/percentage>
order,item,public_course_event,default,<payable/percentage>
order,item,course,default,<payable/percentage>
 
// For Affiliate specific configurations, simply replace the "default" in the configurations above with the id of the affiliate
order,item,<type of item purchased>,3,<payable/percentage>

Take note of the examples below, which correctly shows how the <payable/percentage> values should be written:

order,default,<payable/percentage>


Example 1:

e.g. order, default, payable, 50 USD
This indicates a payment amount of $50 in USD

Example 2:
e.g. order, default, percentage, 50
This indicates a payment percentage of 50% of the order total.