Frequently Asked Questions - Offers

Creating an offer is simple and can be done in just a few minutes with our Offer Wizard.  Look for this block on the Dashboard or My Offers page to get started:

The wizard takes you step-by-step to fill out the required fields like Offer Type, Offer Name, Description, and Commission Amounts.  You will then be able to upload creative for publishers to use to promote your offer, and you will be provided with a pixel to place on the confirmation page of your website to complete the integration.  Our team will then review your offer for placement into the Inuvo Platform.  Upon offer approval, your offer will be active and open for publishers to apply to.

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To create an offer, simply click on the Offer Wizard which can be found on the right-hand side of your Dashboard and My Offer pages within the interface.

The Inuvo Offer Wizard will walk you through the creation of a new offer step by step. It is important to note throughout the Offer Wizard that if you navigate away from the Wizard in the middle of setting up your offer, none of your information will be saved.

1. Get Started

First, you will need to determine what type of offer you want to set up. If your desired outcome of this offer is to gain leads, then your offer type will be Lead. If you are working to generate sales through this offer, the offer type will be Sale. If you'd like to pay publishers for every click, then the offer type should be set to Per Click.  Select your offer type and hit Continue.

2. General Setup

The next set of questions will walk you through the specifics of your offer as listed below. 

• Offer Name: Input the name of your offer. Remember, this offer name will be displayed to the publishers.
• Offer Description: Create a brief description (less than 255 characters) about your offer. Remember, this description will be displayed to the publishers and is useful to them as they decide whether this offer is a good fit for them or not.
• Contact Name: This will display as the contact name in the offer details.
• Contact Email: This will display as the contact email in the offer details.
• Landing URL: Set your offer landing URL. This is the actual URL that your customer will be directed to after clicking through the publisher creative material.
• Enable Restriction of Transactions to Specific Domains: Use this if you'd like to specify the domains to accept traffic from.
• Cookie Duration: Select the number of days that your cookie life will last. After a customer clicks on a publisher’s creative material, the number days set for the cookie will determine how long that publisher can still receive credit for a transaction. The higher the number of days of the cookie duration, the better the deal for the publisher, as they have a greater chance of earning commission. Please note that if Per Click offer type is selected, this option is not available.
• Offer Run Dates: Set the start and end date of your offer. These are the dates you’re your offer will be active, during which time publishers will receive credit for any approved transactions. If you do not know when your offer will end, or if you plan to run it indefinitely, simply select a date way far out into the future.
• Categories: Select up to five categories to associate your offer with. These categories are useful as publishers sort potential offers to promote. Publishers often have niche markets that they consider their websites and promotional efforts to be in, so be sure to associate as many as possible.
• Suppression List URL: For lead offers you must include a suppression list URL. This is the link that your opt-out list for email campaigns can be found at and is required for CAN-SPAM compliance.
• Incentivized Traffic Allowed? You will need to determine whether you will allow your publishers to incentive their traffic to click on your creative material, often through additional monetary offers. 
• Pre-populated forms allowed? You will need to establish whether you will allow publishers to send your offer through to positional customers with pre-populated data. This data could have been obtained from other offers the publisher previously sent their customers.
• Approved Marketing Types: Approved marketing types are the various ways you will allow publishers to promote your offer. You can select from standard website promotion, search marketing efforts, email campaigns or social media.
• Terms of Service: You must input some standard terms of service that each publisher must agree too. This is over and beyond the Inuvo Terms of Service and will be specific to the offer you are setting up.
• Enable Commission Limit: If enabled by selecting the check box, set the maximum amount of commission you want to pay at any given time for this offer. You can set the frequency of how often these maximums are reset with the Limit Period setting that follows, either daily, weekly, monthly, or for the entire life of the program.  For example, if you know you have enough funds to pay out a total of $10,000 in commission a month, you can set your Commission Limit for $10,000 and set the Limit Period for Monthly. Once $10,000 has been paid out in a month, the offer will be shut off.
• Enable Transaction Limit: This is the maximum amount of commission you want to pay at any given time for this offer. You can set the frequency of how often these maximums are reset with the Limit Period setting that follows, either daily, weekly, monthly, or for the entire life of the program.
• Limit Period: As mentioned above, you can set the maximum amounts above to be reset daily, weekly, monthly or for the life of the offer.

3. Commission Structure

The third step within the Offer Wizard will walk you through set up of your commission rates. Upon completion, simply select Continue to move on to next step.

• Base Commission:  Base commission is the main commission setting, and must be set up in order to launch your offer. This is the amount you wish to pay for an approved transaction. You can select this commission payment to be a fixed monetary amount, or a percentage of the sale itself, from the drop down box.
• 2^nd Tier Commission:  Enabling 2^nd Tier Commission is optional. You may wish to reward your publishers for recruiting additional publishers to your offer. By setting a 2^nd Tier Commission, your publishers will receive a named fixed or percentage amount for every transaction from a recruited publisher. If you choose to use this feature, simply select the amount your wish to pay out for 2^nd Tier Commission and use the drop down to specify if this is a fixed or percentage- based payment.

4. Publishers 

The last step in the Offer Wizard will bring you to publisher settings.

• Allow Publishers to Invite Others: Use this option if you'd like to let current publishers invite new publishers to run your offer.
• Private Offer: Use this option if you'd like the offer to be hidden and only available to specific publishers you invite to run the offer.
  
• Direct Linking: Enabling this option gives publishers the ability to use your website address as his/her display URL instead of redirecting through our Inuvo Platform tracking URL.
• Publisher Approval Method: Select how you would like to approve your publishers by selecting one of the three choices:
  1.  Manually approve all publishers. This setting allows you the most control. By selecting this, you will have the chance to review each publisher’s information prior to accepting him or her to your offer.
  2. Auto approve publishers with existing relationships only. By selecting this option, publishers you may already be working with on another offer and have a relationship formed are automatically approved to your offer right away. Only the publishers that are completely new will be marked pending, allowing you to review their information prior to allowing them access to your offer.
  3. Auto approve all publishers. This option will automatically approve all publishers into your program. Although they can immediately start promoting your offer without your manual approval, you can always deactivate them at any time should you see concerning traffic after the fact.
• Auto Approve Transactions: If you select to auto approve transactions, each transaction will be automatically approved immediately. If you select to manually approve your transactions, your transactions will sit as pending only for a certain amount of time. For leads, the transactions will be approved after 7 days, and for sales, after 14 days, if you do not manually approve them beforehand. We advise that you select auto approve transactions.
• Approved Traffic Sources: You can specifically set what countries you would like traffic to originate from. By setting certain countries, you can geo-target your sales/leads and only pay on this qualified traffic. All other traffic will be denied upon receipt.

Finish It Up!

Upon completing the publisher settings, you will be directed back to the Offer Detail page, where you can then review your offer details, set up your integration and add creative.  In order for your offer to gain an Available Network Status, the following requirements must be met: 

• Your advertiser account must be active.
• Your account cannot be in a suspended state.
• You must have at least one piece of creative set up and available.
• Your offer cannot be expired.
• You must have the offer set to active status.

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Upon completing the Offer Wizard you will be redirected to the Offer Details page. This page provides you with a step-by-step guide of the entire integration, testing and publisher management process and is located in the right side column.

• Step 1 – Tracking Pixel
  • Complete this step in order to track transactions sent to you from Inuvo Publishers.
    
    
• Step 2 – Direct Linking (Optional)
  • Complete this optional step only if you’d like to allow publisher to directly link to your landing pages.
    
    
• Step 3 – Test Your Offer
  • Work with the Inuvo Platform team to ensure the tracking pixel is firing and you are ready to launch.
    
    
• Step 4 – Invite Publishers (Optional)
  • Once your offer is live, the entire Inuvo Platform team is notified and begins working to recruit current Inuvo Publishers to your offer.  Your offer’s landing page will be displayed on our Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as included in the next issue of our Publisher Digest. In addition, our team of Affiliate Managers will handpick publishers they feel would be the best match for your offer and will contact them personally in order to get them interested in running your offer.  
    
    We also encourage you to recruit any current publishers you have a relationship with or recruit brand new publishers to run your offers.  Complete this step to generate a recruitment link and/or recruitment email.
    
    
• Step 5 – Creatives
  • This is where you’ll upload the creative you would like your publishers to use when promoting your offer. The Inuvo Platform is home to many types of publishers; generally the more creative supplied, the more attractive an offer becomes to potential publishers.
    
    
• Step 6 – Add/Edit Commission Structures
  • Complete this step if you’d like to offer various pay rates to publishers or publisher groups, setup tiers or edit your existing offer payout.
    
    
• Step 7 – Piggyback Pixels (Optional)
  • Complete this step on an as needed basis, if you’d like to allow publishers running your offers to track their stats in their own solution in addition to the Inuvo Platform.
     
• Step 8 - Host and Post Settings (Optional)
  • Complete this optional step if you'd like to allow publishers to host their own lead form and then post the leads back to you.  You will need to add your host and post form creative through the Add New Creative section.

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Once logged into your Inuvo Platform Advertiser account, click on the name of the offer you'd like to create a volume based commission fore.  This will take you to the offer details page.  On the offer details page, click on Click here to add/edit Commission Structures" found in “Step 6: Add/Edit Commission Structures.”

Next, click on “New Commission Structure.” Then name your commission structure and select “Volume”. 

Once you do so, additional options will appear.

Volume Type:  Use this to select if your volume tiers will be based on the number of transactions or a specific amount of revenue generated. 

• Count: Number of transactions.
• Revenue: Amount of earned from transactions.

Counter Reset Frequency: Choose whether you’d like the volume counter to reset monthly, quarterly, yearly or never. 

Volume Levels:  This is where you lay out your volume tiers in detail, comprised of three sections:

• Commission Amount:  This is the amount you will pay a publisher once they hit the Minimum Amount noted.
• Commission Type:  Choose between Fixed or Percentage.  Please note that if you have a lead based offer you will only be able to set a fixed amount. 
• Minimum Amount: This is the minimum volume a publisher must hit in order to be paid to specified amount. 
  

Once this is complete, hit Save.

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After you have completed the Offer Wizard for a new offer, you will be taken to the Offer Details page. "Step 1: Tracking Pixel" will be found near the top right of the Offer Details Page will provide the tracking pixel to place within your website.  

Choose if you'd like to use a JavaScript Pixel or an Image Pixel.  Please note that if you'd like to enable Piggyback Pixels in Step 7, you'll need to be using a JavaScript Pixel.  Also, there will be three checkboxes that you can select from:

• HTTPS: Select this box if you are using a secure page where the tracking pixel will be placed.
• Order ID: Select this box if you would like to tag a transaction with an order ID from your end, or any ID that your system may create independently.
• Sales Amount: You must select this box if your offer is a sales offer based on a percentage of revenue generated for commission payout.

Once completed, you can then copy the code from the text box. This code should be placed on the sales order, thank you or lead confirmation page as it will tell Inuvo that you have successfully received a transaction and track accordingly.

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You will need to place your pixel on your Thank You/Confirmation page as you normally do.  In addition to this, you will also need to grab the Direct Linking code and place it on every page of your website.  The Direct Linking code is found in "Step 2: Direct Linking" on the Offer Details page.  If you are using a secure webpage, be sure to check the checkbox next to "https".  

 

Next, if you didn't enable direct linking during the Offer Wizard process, you will need to edit your offer details and check the checkbox next to “Turn on Direct Linking”.  Once this is complete, please contact your Inuvo representative for testing.

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At any point while using the Inuvo Platform, feel free to contact our Support Team at support [at] inuvo [dot] com or 727-324-0209. They can walk you through step-by-step and answer any questions you may have along the way.

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