Referral Program

The referral module helps your clients send referrals your way and earn extra credit when they do so. Every user gets their unique link which they can share to refer others. Signups through this link will be attributed to the affiliate.

This page is available to all registered users (customers and leads), although you can choose to restrict the program to approved affiliates only.

Program Settings

Here’s what you can change in the affiliate module settings.

Affiliate approval

If you choose to approve affiliates manually, they will need to contact you and request to be approved. We recommend creating a custom contact form for this task.

Sale approval

In addition to approving affiliates, you can also require manual approval for each individual sale. When enabled, new commissions will appear with an "Unapproved" status until you review and approve them.

Cookie lifetime

Set how long the affiliate tracking cookie stays in the visitor’s browser. The default is 30 days. If a visitor clicks an affiliate link and creates an account within this window, the referral will be attributed to that affiliate.

Program description

The affiliate module provides a HTML supported field where you can describe your affiliate program in detail – from the commission levels you offer to when and how you handle payouts. You can use the {{ affId }} variable to display the affiliate’s unique ID.

Redirect location

Enter the URL of your website where people who click an affiliate link will land. This does not have to be a Wayfront link – any link will work. Click the Personalize button to include the affiliate’s name in the redirect URL, e.g. wayfront.com?via=Chris

Commission rules

You can set up flexible commission rules to control how affiliates earn. Each rule lets you define:

• Who earns: all affiliates or specific users

• Which services: all services or specific ones

• Commission type: percentage or fixed amount

• Credit scope: credit all of the referred client’s purchases (perpetual) or just the first

• Duration: how long commissions are earned (e.g. forever)

You can add multiple rules. The first matching rule will be applied, so order your rules from most specific to most general.

Sale tracking

Affiliate links are created in the format of clients.example.com/r/ABCDE where ABCDE is a unique ID for each affiliate. Upon clicking this link we store a cookie in customer’s browser containing the affiliate ID, and redirect the customer to your website.

You can redirect affiliate links to any page on the web because Wayfront will read the affiliate cookie when the customer returns to Wayfront to create an account or place an order.

Once an account is created, it gets permanently tagged with the affiliate ID. Even if the client makes a purchase months later, the affiliate will be attributed correctly.

Linking to other pages on your website

Let’s say you’ve set affiliate links to redirect to your home page at wayfront.com and an affiliate wants to link to your features page at wayfront.com/features instead.

They can append ?p=/features to their affiliate link like this:
https://clients.wayfront.com/r/ABCDE?p=/features

Managing your affiliate program

The affiliate admin area is organized into four tabs:

• Commissions – view and manage all commissions with a timeline chart. Filter by status: Unapproved, Unpaid, Paid, or All.

• Clicks – track every affiliate link click with the date, IP address, referrer, and browser info.

• Users – see all affiliates with their unpaid and total commissions, and any linked coupons.

• Settings – configure approval, cookie lifetime, redirect location, commission rules, and program description.

Commission statuses

Each commission goes through a lifecycle:

• Unapproved – the sale has been tracked but needs your review (only if sale approval is enabled).

• Unpaid – the sale is approved and the affiliate is owed this commission.

• Paid – you’ve paid the affiliate for this commission.

You can also add commissions manually using the "+ Commission" button if you need to credit an affiliate for an offline or custom sale.

Affiliate coupons

In addition to unique referral links you can also associate any coupon with an affiliate. Go to the coupon you’d like to assign to your affiliate on your “Coupons” page and click the “an affiliate” hypertext:

All sales from this coupon will be attributed to the selected affiliate.

Manually tagging customers

If you get an offline sale, and you know it came from an affiliate, you can add commission manually and tag the customer’s account with the affiliate’s ID. In case of perpetual commissions, the affiliate will be credited for all purchases this customer makes. 

Payouts

While it isn’t possible to directly pay your affiliates from Wayfront (because we don’t hold your funds), there are a few different ways to pay your affiliates.

1. Add to account balance: you can add affiliate sales to the client’s Wayfront balance, which they can use for future purchases.

2. Manual payments: send your affiliates their payments via PayPal, Wise, or any other method. Then mark the sales as paid in Wayfront.

To find the amount that needs to be paid out, open an affiliate account and click the unpaid commissions amount. On the affiliates screen, click on the Pay affiliate button.