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Refersion Affiliate Marketing Glossary
Refersion Affiliate Marketing Glossary

A handy list of commonly used affiliate and performance marketing terms.

Nick Castellano avatar
Written by Nick Castellano
Updated over 4 years ago

We compiled a shortlist of words and terms you’ll see in the Refersion app, and out in the wild. This list, along with our industry, is ever-evolving. Check back periodically for new additions.

Term

Definition

Actions

From Refersion, Actions allow you to do something with the info you have — like pay an affiliate whose conversion(s) you've approved.

Ambassador

An individual who raises awareness of a brand via their own personal brand and network.

Affiliate

An individual or company that promotes your brand or product and earns a commission from those promoted purchases.

Affiliate Order

An affiliate order is a sale generated through an affiliate's efforts. For example, if an affiliate is promoting your site through their unique link, and a visitor clicks on that link and purchases a product from your site, that counts as an affiliate order.

Affiliate portal

Where affiliates log in to Refersion and do things such as check payments and grab referral links.

Affiliate registration page

The page with merchant branding, terms & conditions, privacy policy, etc., used to recruit new affiliates to a network.

Affiliate status

Whether an affiliate is currently active, pending approval, denied, disabled, or archived within Refersion (as they related to your network).

API

Acronym for "Application Programming Interface." A set of tools and instructions that allows two different programs to talk to one another.

Banner

A designed image that can be shared and used in the promotion of your products.

Branding

Within Refersion, this refers to your site title and logo.

Bulk action

Do something for multiple records at the same time, e.g. approve multiple conversions at once.

Calculation logic

The method of calculation for your commision payouts based on the choices you've made regarding shipping, taxes, VAT, discounts, etc.

Channels

Places you can access, market to, and otherwise communicate with an audience (in Refersion, with prospective affiliates and your existing network).

Click

An action tracked by Refersion that shows a customer's intent to purchase a product.

Commission

A sum of money (typically percentage of sale) reserved for an affiliate when their promotion of your product results in a purchase.

Conversion

A purchase made that is attributed to an affiliate

Conversion status

A live record of where a conversion or payment stands. Conversions can be Pending, Approved, Denied or Unqualified.

Conversion trigger

Ways to track affiliate orders without a referral link.

Cookie days

An expiration date on affiliate attribution. Let's say you've entered 30 cookie days until your offer expires. If a customer clicks on an affiliate link within the 30-day window, but does not complete the purchase until after Day 30, the conversion will be marked "Unqualified."

Coupon code

Computer-generated codes that help you and your affiliates incentivize customers and track purchases.

Creatives

Public-facing elements of an advertisement or other piece of marketing including photo, video, copy.

Current offer

The offer you've currently set for each affiliate or group of affiliates.

Domain

The root of a URL; the main page of a website or ecommerce store, e.g. netflix.com: “netflix” = the main domain; “.com” = the top-level domain.

Dynamic tag

A placeholder for data. In your emails, for example, this could be an affiliate’s name.

Engagement

How active your network is.

HTML

Acronym for "Hyper Text Markup Language": the standard markup language for websites. Will be in some of the code you copy and paste to complete an integration.

Influencer

A person with a trusted following (usually on social media) who promotes your brand or product and earns a commission from those promoted purchases.

Integration

When two systems combine — at any level — in order to enhance the capability or experience of one product (or both). Example: Refersion integrates with your ecommerce store in order to track affiliate sales.

IP exclusions

A list of specific computer and network IP addresses that will not be included in the order-tracking (processing) process.

Javascript

A programming language that enables interactivity on the web; you'll include Javascript for certain integrations.

Looker

A Refersion integration partner that enables custom reporting.

Meta tag

Text snippets that help summarize what a page is about. Important for SEO.

Micro Influencer

A person with a trusted following of 1,000-100,000 (usually in a niche area) who promotes a brand or a specific product and earns a commission from those promoted purchases.

Network

Within Refersion, this indicates the group of affiliates, influencers and ambassadors who promote your product(s) and expand your market reach.

Offer

The terms by which you agree to credit an affiliate for their referral, and the way you may segment your network.

Parameters

The information that helps create a specific URL extension that makes it possible to track events such as clicks.

Payment approval

A process of approving payments before they go out in order to ensure your program isn't affected by scams or spams.

Payment method

How you are going to pay affiliates in your network: via PayPal, Payment Rails, gift card, manual check or bank transfer, etc.

Payment status

A record of where your payments stand, viewable from your Payment page: Pending, Completed or Failed.

Performance marketing

A term for action-based digital marketing and advertising programs (payment based on leads, clicks, sales, etc.; also sometimes used as an umbrella term that includes "Affiliate Marketing").

Post-Purchase

One of the channels you can leverage to turn customers into affiliates and influencers, from Refersion.

Publisher

A company or network that promotes your brand or product, and earns a commission from those promoted purchases.

Referral Link

A link that allows you to track clicks and purchases (conversions), and ultimately credit affiliates.

Refersion Marketplace

Where affiliates can build relationships with top merchants and brands, access transparent offers, and earn higher commissions.

SEO

Acronym for "Search Engine Optimization": what words, terms, and organization to use in order to help search engines understand your value, and improve your search rankings.

SKU exclusion

Ask us to ignore (not process) orders on specific products by providing those SKUs.

Third-party tracking

Refersion enables you to pull in additional tracking from outside software providers such as Facebook and Google.

Tiered commission

This is a more advanced commission structure that allows you to incentivize your affiliates to earn a higher commission based on number of sales within a set time period.

URL

The address of a web page you might link to in order to track affiliate conversions. It is an acronym for "Uniform Resource Locator."

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