About Partner Plans

Partner plans are used to provide your partners access to purchase specific products with or without a discount. Partner plans are accessed through a special landing page that you must provide your partner shoppers access to via a link or URL.

Once you have created a partner plan you will email or post a link to the partner plan on your existing store. When a partner clicks the link they are directed to a page where they can sign up to get access to a partner plan or log on if they have already signed up and been granted access.

Implementing Partner Plans

Creating a partner plan and implementing it on your store is a multi-step process. The following provides a overview of how you create a partner plan and then make it available on your store.

1. Get the purchase plans feature enabled for your store. See Configuring Site Settings for more information about how to enable purchase plans (and therefore partner plans) for your store.

Why do you have to enable purchase plans to use partner plans? The partner plans feature uses some of the same code and technology as the purchase plans feature, which is why you must enable purchase plans before you can fully use partner plans. If you do not enable purchase plans, partners will get an error message when they attempt to access the partner plans landing page.

2. Get the Partner Plan Manager role. You should also make sure that any other users that want to create or manage partner plans, or manage partners for partner plans should also get this role.

3. Create and then deploy the partner plan(s) you want to make available to partners through your store. There are several things you define about the partner plan when you create it that determine how it works:
   • Whether the partner plan is public or private. For more about the difference, see "Public vs Private Partner Plans" below.
   • Whether you want to require partners to read and approve terms and conditions for the partner plan before they are able to access the partner plan and place an order. For more about terms and conditions, see "Terms and Conditions" below.
   • When you want the partner plan to be active on your store. You can set specific dates for when the partner plan should begin or end, or set no dates at all. For more about effective dates, see "Effective Dates" below.
   • What pricing and discounts you want to provide with the partner plan. When you define pricing and discounts you can choose a simple discount or use points-based pricing. For more about discounts and points-based pricing, see "Pricing" below.
   • What sales levels you want the partner plan to use. Sales levels are used to define discounts based on the volume of purchases. For more about sales levels, see "Sales Levels" below.
   • What products from your catalog that you want to offer your partners. Products are added in product groups so that you can control the discount and pricing for products in groups. For more about product groups, see "Products and Product Groups" below.
4. Provide your partners with access to the partner plan. You can do this by posting a link to the partner plan landing page on your store or sending the link via email.
   • When a partner clicks the link (either on your store or in email) they are directed to a page where they can sign up or log on to a partner plan.
   1. When partners sign up they have to provide certain information such as name, company, address, and email address.
   2. Both you and your partners are sent an email when they sign up for a partner plan.
   3. Depending on how you have set up the partner plan, partners will either be approved for the partner plan immediately or you will have to manually approve them to have access to the partner plan (see the next step for more about this).
   4. Partners can only be associated with one partner plan at a time. Partner plans use the email address a partner uses when they register to determine if they have access to another partner plan created for the store.
5. Approve any partners for those partner plans that require manual approval of partners. You will not have to do this if your partner plans are set up to automatically approve partners.
   • Your partners are sent an email when they are approved or declined for a partner plan.
6. Once you have performed the steps above, sales will begin for the partner plan. You will have to continue to manually approve partners and provide partners with access to the partner plan. After sales begin you may need to manage your partners (activate or deactivate partners, change associated partner plan, etc.). See Managing Partners for more information about managing your partners.

Public vs Private Partner Plans

Partner plans are set as either public or private. The only difference between a public and private plan is what your partners see when they click the link to access the partner plan landing page.

• Public Partner Plans – The landing page shows a list of all public partner plans for the store. Partners must select a partner plan and then register for access to that partner plan. Once approved, the partner can log on to the partner plan they have been given access to and place an order.

Note: Anyone with access to the partner plan landing page will see (and can register for) any of the public partner plans you have created for your store. However, partners can only register for one partner plan at a time.

• Private Partner Plans – The landing page shows no list of partner plans and the partner can only register for access to the specific plan for which you have provided them access (through the URL).

Partners who are associated to a public partner plan must choose from a list of all the public partner plans you have created. Partners who are associated with a private plan do not see a list. This means that to your partners that are associated with a private partner plan it would seem that you only have the one partner plan. Your partners that are associated with a public partner plan would see the other public partner plans and know you have other partner plans available.

Terms and Conditions 

When you create a partner plan you may want to require that shoppers review and accept the terms and conditions for your partner plan before they can make a purchase. Having your shoppers review and accept terms and conditions is not required but you can choose to make them so if needed.

Effective Dates

When you create a partner plan you must indicate how long you want the partner plan to be active and accessible to your partner shoppers.

You can choose to have a partner plan become active immediately after it is deployed or on a certain date you specify. You can also choose to have a partner plan end on a specific date or set no specific end date.

When a partner tries to access a plan outside of the dates you have specified, the partner will get a message informing them that the partner plan is no longer active and cannot be accessed.

Pricing

When you create a partner plan you choose the price list you want to be used by the partner plan and whether you want to use points-based pricing for purchases within the partner plan. The price list you choose for the partner plan must already exist on your store.

The price list you associate with a partner plan is used as the baseline for establishing pricing. Any discounts you set up for the partner plan will be applied to the pricing in the base price list.

Sales Levels 

Sales levels are used to provide different levels of discounts and products for your partner plan. Most partner plans use sales levels to provide partners an incentive to purchase more and move up a level.

Sales levels are defined by the number of units a partner has purchased or by the total sales amount of their purchases. Each time a partner makes a purchase they may change levels based on whether they have purchased enough units or their orders have totaled enough to change levels.

The discount or pricing you have defined for a sales level is used for purchases when there is no discount or special pricing defined for the product group of the product being purchased. Product group discounts or pricing are always used, sales level discounts or pricing are used when there is no product group discount or special pricing.

The sales level a partner is assigned to is determined every month using their sales data from the previous full month. If the partner was deactivated and had no sales during the previous month they will be assigned to the first (lowest) sales level.

For example, if your partner made three purchases totaling $300 during August and the sales levels in the partner plan has three levels with the highest level beginning at $250 in sales, the partner will automatically be in the highest sales level in September. This means the partner would only have access to purchase the product associated with that sales level, at the pricing defined for that level.

Products and Product Groups

The products you make available in a partner plan must already exist in your store's catalog. When you create a partner plan you create groups and then add products from your catalog(s) to those groups.

Grouping your products together allows you to offer discounts by the groups you have defined. Most of the time product groups are used with sales levels to create various levels of discounts and purchase options. Defining a discount by product groups is not required. If you define a discount for your product groups that discount will always be applied to purchases of products in the product group instead of any sales level discount you might have defined for the partner plan.

Points-Based Pricing

Points-based pricing is a way to provide your partner shopper incentives for repeat purchases. With points-based pricing your partners can receive greater discounts the more they purchase.

 

Related Topics