Brand HelpGetting Started

Getting Started with CreatorCommerce

May 19, 2024
A complete onboarding guide for how to onboard (from scratch) onto the CreatorCommerce platform. Consider this your end-to-end checklist.
⚠️ This guide can take up to 60min to complete - it's highly recommend to allow the CreatorCommerce team to do this for you. Submit this form to enable the CreatorCommerce team to complete onboarding for you.

1. Install the CreatorCommerce Shopify App

CreatorCommerce is only available to Shopify brands as of now.

  1. Start by clicking here (you'll need to be signed into the relevant Shopify Store)
  2. Click "Install"
  3. Proceed with selecting a plan (Click here to learn more about our plans)

2. Connect your affiliate provider

To use Creatorcommerce, you need to connect a base affiliate provider that will be used to manage commissions, discounts, and payouts.

2A. Select an affiliate provider

To use CreatorCommerce today, you'll need to use on of our supported affiliate providers. If you don't see the provider you use, or if you need to help determining the best fit for you, email us at: [email protected]

2B. Outline your incentives & programs/tiers

In your affiliate software, you'll need to outline the categorization of your affiliates, and create the groupings of commission structures & consumer discounts that should be available to affiliates.

2C. Enable the CreatorCommerce integration for your provider

Based on your provider, use on of the guides below:

3. Create your co-branded pages

3A. Identify a merchandizing strategy for your vertical

Before you get going here, it's best to brainstorm and imagine the referral experiences that make sense for your affiliate-base(s). So example, will affiliates be recommending a skin care routine? or will they be recommending outfits? or even recipes? This exercise will help inform the copy & graphics to add to your co-branded experiences.

3B. Setup your Brand Kit

Your Brand Kit stores your brand-wide styles. The values it stores will be applied across various CreatorCommerce surfaces such as creator onboarding experiences & co-branded storefronts.

  1. To access the Brand Kit, you'll need to be signed into the CreatorCommerce brand dashboard
  2. To access this, go here, or click on the CreatorCommerce app from within the Shopify Dashboard
  3. Once in the CreatorCommerce Dashboard, click on the palette icon on the left-hand navigation bar
  4. Fill out the fields & upload the needed assets on this page, then "Save"

Example of a setup Brand Kit

3C. Create your first co-branded page in the Page Builder

The page builder allows you to create custom affiliate co-branded shopping experiences. By virtue of "co-branding", some of the blocks in the page builder are customized by the brand, and some blocks are customized by the creator/affiliate when they get access to their co-branded shop.

  1. To access the Page Builder, you'll need to be signed into the CreatorCommerce brand dashboard
  2. To access this, go here, or click on the CreatorCommerce app from within the Shopify Dashboard
  3. Once in the CreatorCommerce Dashboard, click on the blocks icon on the left-hand navigation bar
  4. Once in the builder, you can hover of a block to edit its settings
  5. To add a new block, you can hover over a block and select the "+" sign, and can choose between the available blocks
  6. To remove a block, you can hover over a block and select the "-" sign
  7. To move blocks, you can hover over a block and select the up or down arrows
  8. When done building, select "Save" at the top of the screen

The skeleton states or missing assets in the builder preview represent content that will be provided by creators/affiliates when they onboard.

Example of a co-branded storefront template

4. Onboard your affiliates

4A. Setup your onboarding flow

  1. By default, CreatorCommerce automatically sets up an onboarding flow for your affiliates
  2. Affiliates will enter this flow, without having to log in, when they receive an invitation link
  3. Affiliates can also encounter this onboarding flow in your mobile app (If you have a Tapcart mobile app)
  4. Extensible settings to this onboarding flow are coming soon

Example onbarding flow

4B. Setup your primary shop education emails

To further boost adoption, we highly recommend a dedicated flow that highlights the benefits of selling from a co-branded affiliate shop. While other email flows will focus on the financial incentives of the affiliate program, this flow focusses on the specific outcomes and features of this collaboration format. Complete one of these guides based on your email service provider:

A snippet from a shop education email

4C. Edit the emails sent by your affiliate providers

When using CreatorCommerce, you'll need to adjust the language used in affiliate correspondence to ensure affiliates do not become confused abut the offer at hand, and understand how to get started with CreatorCommerce onboarding. Following these steps per provider will yield a simplified and effective way to introduce a new affiliate to your program with CreatorCommerce in the mix:

For Social Snowball

For Shopify Collabs

  1. Enable the Klaviyo + Shopify Collabs integration
  2. Enable the MailChimp + Shopify Collabs integration

An example of an edited email from a base affiliate provider

4C. Go-live

Makes sure to test with at least one affiliate before enabling for a broader set of affiliates. You can user a one-off invite link to do so.

Testing tip: Use this link template below to construct one-off invitation links for affiliates. If you include a "+" in your testing email, then you'll need to replace that "+" with "%2b" in the invite link.

https://dashboard.creatorcommerce.shop/invitation?email=<<INSERT-EMAIL>>&channel=<<INSERT-MYSHOPIFY-DOMAIN-HERE>>

5. Get on-going support

5A. On-going tech support

There's several options for receiving on-going support, this would include any issues you are experiencing whats-so-ever with the product (FAQs, bugs, confusion, etc):

  • Visit our Brand Help Center
  • Email issues to [email protected] to get assistance via email
  • Chat with us here to get help via chatbot
  • Shoot us a Slack if you've setup a Slack Channel with CreatorCommerce

5B. On-going strategic support

Once live, the CreatorCommerce team will work with you to scheduling on-going strategic sessions. The goal of these sessions are to ensure that you have a strategy in place to continue growing on CreatorCommerce. Time on these calls will be reserved to make optimizations & on-going improvements to the funnel. If you are live, and still need to book this session, grab time here.

Still stuck and trying to get live? No worries, let's get you situated. Book a support call with us here.

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