How to Set Up an Affiliate Program on impact.com (Brand Guide)

Plenty of brands sign up for impact.com without a clear picture of the work between signing and the first tracked partner sale. This guide walks through how to set up an affiliate program on impact.com from the brand side: which plan fits, the onboarding steps, tracking, contract templates, payouts, partner discovery and reporting, plus the mistakes we see most often.

We describe each step the way impact.com's own help center describes it, with links, so you can follow along inside your account. If you are still choosing a platform, start with our guide on how to choose an affiliate network.

Who impact.com suits

impact.com runs affiliate, creator and customer referral programs on one platform. Its pricing page lists four plans, and the plan decides a lot about how your setup goes:

The pricing FAQ also explains why impact.com requires a 12-month contract, and says a tier change needs a new 12-month contract addendum. We cover the fees, included payout amounts and what moves your quote in our separate guide to impact.com pricing for brands. For setup purposes, the point is simple: if your store is not on one of the Starter platforms, or you sell subscriptions, leads or apps, expect a sales-led onboarding with a technical implementation plan rather than a self-serve wizard.

Onboarding steps

impact.com's help article on creating a program and adding users sets out the order:

1. Create the program. In Settings, under Manage Programs, select Create Program, give it a name and choose the program type. You land on an onboarding checklist for that program.
2. Add users. Set up user roles and access groups so the right people (marketing, finance, a developer, your agency) can see the program. A new program is only visible to your own access group at first.
3. Complete the required setup. impact.com lists three required pieces: your marketplace profile, your template terms, and event types that are set up and tested so conversions appear in reporting.
4. Submit for review. For Performance programs you submit the finished setup for review, and impact.com's teams check it before making you live in the marketplace.

Treat the marketplace profile as a sales page for partners. impact.com notes that partners search the marketplace for brands that match what they promote, so an incomplete profile simply misses those searches. Our affiliate program launch checklist lists everything else to have ready before day one, from creative to a welcome email.

Tracking (UTT, postback, Shopify app)

Tracking is where most setups slip. impact.com supports several tracking methods, and you will usually use one of these:

Universal Tracking Tag and conversion pixel

For a standard website, impact.com strongly recommends placing the Universal Tracking Tag (UTT) in the head of every page, then the identify function in the body of every page, and the conversion function (trackConversion) on the confirmation or thank you page. The UTT is specific to your account and sets cookies in a first-party context. impact.com's tracking guide notes that pixel tracking on its own may not track Safari visitors accurately, and it offers custom tracking domains to deal with that.

API tracking (server to server)

API tracking, also called cookie-less or server-to-server tracking, reports clicks and conversions to impact.com through its API. impact.com describes it as fully compliant with Safari's tracking prevention and as becoming its standard recommended method. There is also FTP tracking, where you upload a CSV file of conversions. On the current pricing page, API-based tracking is listed under the Pro plan, so check your tier before you plan a server-side build.

Postbacks to your own systems

If your team wants impact.com to notify your systems when an action is tracked, modified or reversed, set up event notification postbacks under the Technical section of Settings. You set an endpoint URL, GET or POST, optional authentication headers and rate limits. It complements conversion tracking rather than replacing it.

The Shopify app

Shopify stores can skip code. The impact.com Affiliate Marketing app is a no-code plugin installed from the Shopify App Store. Before you install it, impact.com lists these prerequisites: one event type for online sales, a storefront hosted on Shopify (custom shopping experiences are not supported), Shopify's cookie consent banner switched on, and SKUs on products (Shopify assigns them by default). In the app you paste an API token (Account SID and Auth Token with the listed scopes) and your UTT, then save.

Two details catch people out. After the first save, the app removes any program tabs you did not configure, so set up Affiliate, Creator and Advocate together if you need them. And the basic setup tracks one-time orders and first subscription orders only; renewals need the Recharge or Bold guides.

Test before launch

impact.com's testing guide asks for at least one end-to-end test of each new event type in production, using the Test Actions tool. Clear cookies, turn off ad blockers and use a private window. We also recommend reversing one test order so you see the whole life cycle once.

Contract templates and terms

impact.com contract templates are called template terms. In impact.com's own explanation, a template term sets the event type you pay for, the default payout, payout adjustments, action locking and more. When a partner applies or accepts the terms, impact.com creates an individual contract, and its template terms guide describes that contract as legally binding.

• Public template terms. Created during onboarding and required. Partners who apply through the marketplace agree to these.
• Private terms. Copies of your public terms with better rates or extra conditions for specific partners or partner groups.
• Non-standard terms. Created for a single partner when you accept their counter-proposal.
• Custom terms. Your own legal wording or attachments, added to a template term so they become part of the contract.

When you create a template term you choose the currency, event types and payouts, a credit group and any custom terms. impact.com credits on a last-click basis by default, with other credit policies available. Set the referral window deliberately too: it lives on each contract, and a change only applies to actions on or after the new contract's start date.

impact.com's onboarding guide suggests matching commission to the goal, for example higher rates for new customers or for high-margin products, and recurring commission for subscriptions. Our guide to affiliate commission structures shows how to work out those numbers from your margins.

Payouts and funding

This is the part finance teams need to see before launch. Your impact.com account has a funding account that covers both impact.com's fees and your partner payments. impact.com offers no credit, so partners are only paid if the account holds enough money, and impact.com's fees are taken first.

Two settings in your template term rules control timing (locking and scheduling guide):

• Action locking period: how long you have to modify or reverse an action (returns, cancellations, fraud) before it locks and becomes final. A days-only setting can be at most 90 days.
• Payment scheduling period: the time between an action locking and the partner being paid.

impact.com's own example: lock actions 47 days after the end of the month and pay 20 days after the month they lock. January actions then lock on 19 March, the statement arrives on 20 March, and the account is debited on 20 April. Match this to your return window.

impact.com supports three funding strategies: Net 30 (PRF), Net 45 (SOI) and Net 45+ (SOI). New brand accounts default to an SOI-based setup, while Starter accounts default to prefunding with automated payments. Automatic payments are only available on USD accounts and need a successful ACH deposit first, which takes 3 to 7 business days, so do that before your first payout date, not on it.

Partner discovery

impact.com partner discovery runs through Discover: select Discover, then Find Partners and Partner Marketplace (or Creator Marketplace for creator programs). From there you can search and filter partners, view profiles, email them and mark them as prospects. impact.com's discovery guide also covers Extended Search, partner groups for segmenting partners, and automated application processing with Workflows (your own rules) or Impact AI (system-recommended criteria).

We recommend not waiting for the marketplace to send partners: build a target list of sites, creators and newsletters your customers already read, invite them personally, and answer applications quickly. Our affiliate recruitment playbook covers outreach in detail.

Reporting

impact.com's reporting suite includes performance, listing, finance, operations and leapfrogging reports, and most can be scheduled to your inbox or downloaded. Three habits matter from week one, all taken from impact.com's program insights guide:

• Use the Performance by Partner report to see who drives clicks, conversions and revenue.
• Use the Advanced Action Listing report to review and process reversals and modifications before the locking date.
• Schedule a weekly report to the people who need it so nobody has to pull data by hand.

Custom reports live in Data Lab, which the pricing page lists under Pro. Whatever your tier, judge partners on revenue after reversals, not clicks. Our affiliate program management guide covers the monthly review we run for programs.

Gotchas

• Starter is platform-only. If you are not on one of the listed store platforms, plan for Essentials or above.
• Make Shopify changes in Shopify. impact.com's Shopify guide says changes and reversals made in Shopify flow to impact.com, but changes made in impact.com are not sent back to Shopify.
• Do not double up on consent tools. impact.com's Shopify consent guide says not to enable Consent Mode alongside the Shopify plugin, because the two are not yet compatible.
• Referral window changes are not retroactive. Clicks before a contract change keep the old window.
• Late funding stalls payouts. New deposits go to fees and overdue payments first, and impact.com's payout troubleshooting guide puts account funding at the top of the list when partners say they were not paid.
• Protect your brand name. Ban trademark bidding in your terms and look at impact.com's Paid Search Monitoring, which watches the main search engines for partners bidding on your trademarks.

If you sell online, our playbook on affiliate marketing for ecommerce brands covers what to do once tracking is live.

Want help setting up impact.com?

We set up and run affiliate programs on impact.com and other networks for brands, from tracking and template terms to partner recruitment and monthly reporting. See our affiliate program management service, or get in touch and tell us where your setup stands.

Frequently asked questions