Trigger best practices

Who is this for: This article will be useful to you if you are a company on PartnerStack looking for more information on how to understand, troubleshoot, and monitor your trigger’s activity.

Triggers are “if-this-then-that” statements used to build customer offers that help automate your partner program. Triggers are comprised of Events, Rules, and Actions.

• When an Event occurs that meets the Rules, then an Action will happen.

For a full overview of creating, editing, and deleting triggers and an in-depth breakdown of triggers’ components, see the Getting started with triggers support guide.

Reading triggers

If you are a new program manager getting up to speed on your program’s architecture or looking to review or change your commission structure, you’ll need to know how to read and understand your triggers.

When reviewing a trigger, look at the three core components of the trigger: the event, the rules, the action, as well as your trigger order.

• Event: Events are the input to the trigger. PartnerStack supports trigger events relating to the most common business events that occur in partner programs, i.e. transaction is created, customer is created, deal or lead events.
  • For a full list of supported trigger events see the Getting started with triggers support guide.
• Rules: Rules are the conditions that must be met before a trigger can fire. Multiple rules can be combined using AND and OR conditions to create sophisticated logic.
• Action: Actions are the trigger’s output. The action is the thing that will occur (i.e. commission generation, group move) when the trigger
• Trigger order: The order in which your triggers are evaluated can impact the results of an event occurring, especially if you are using group move triggers. Understanding your trigger order is important when creating new triggers.

To review a trigger

1. Navigate to your Triggers tab
2. Search for and click on your desired trigger
3. Review the trigger event
   1. What event fires this trigger? (Customer creation, transaction creation, etc)
4. Review the trigger action
   1. What will this trigger do when the event occurs?
5. Review the trigger rules
   1. What groups does this trigger apply to? Are there required product or category keys for the trigger? Are there any custom date ranges for this trigger? Will this trigger fire for the lifetime of the customer or is there a customer date or transaction limitation?
6. Click into the Trigger evaluation order tab to review the trigger operation order
   1. Pay close attention to where your group move triggers are located in relation to your commission triggers. For more information on how trigger order can impact your commissions see the Getting started with triggers support guide.
7. Review any internal documentation your team may have on your trigger configuration

Understanding why a trigger did not fire

If a partner reaches out to you asking why they were not issued a commission for a specific event (i.e. a customer being created, or a specific transaction) answering a few key questions will help with troubleshooting. 

Key questions to ask:

• Did the required event occur and was it sent to PartnerStack?
• Does the event qualify for one of the offers available to the partner?
• Has a drip commission been generated, but has not yet passed the drip delay period?

Did the required event occur?

If a partner inquires about a missed commission, the first step is to verify in both your internal systems and PartnerStack whether the event required to trigger a commission has occurred.

1. Ask your partner which event (customer signup, transaction, lead, deal) they believe they should have received a commission for
2. In your internal systems, confirm the event has occurred
   1. If the event does not exist, let the partner know the event required to issue a commission has not occurred. This is a great opportunity to clarify your offer structure with the partner.
3. In your PartnerStack dashboard, confirm the event has been successfully created in PartnerStack
   1. Check your Referrals > Customers tab if the event in question is customer or transaction creation, or your Referrals > Leads or Deals tab to check on the status of a lead or deal 
4. If the event exists in your internal systems but has not been successfully created in PartnerStack reach out to the support team at support@partnerstack.com or create a support ticket through your in-app chatbot.

In some cases, a partner may be expecting a commission, however the required event has not occurred yet. For example, if your triggers look for a “transaction created” event, and a customer has signed up and not yet completed their first transaction, no commission will be generated.

Best practice: ensure your offer description is clear, so partners understand what event needs to occur for them to earn a commission, and any relevant rules.

Does the event qualify for one of the offers available to the partner?

If the event occurred, then the next thing to check is whether or not the partner has offers that apply to this event.

1. In your All Partners tab, search for and click on the partner to open the partner detail view
2. Click on the partner's “Offers” to view all offers currently available to this partner in a side window
   
3. Click on an offer to review the event, and rules that must be met for the trigger to fire
4. Compare the event that occurred, to the trigger rules to determine if the event qualifies for a commission.
   For example:
   1. If the trigger event is “transaction is created”, and the rule is that the customer must be 12 months or younger, check to confirm that the customer that made the transaction was 12 months or younger when the event occurred.
   2. If the trigger event is “transaction is created” and the rule is that the customer’s transaction amount sum “is greater than $500", check to confirm that the customer has over $500 in total transaction value.
5. If the event did not meet the trigger criteria, let the partner know why. This is a great opportunity to clarify with them what needs to occur for them to earn a commission, and to motivate them!
6. If the event did meet the trigger criteria and a commission was not generated, reach out to PartnerStack support at support@partnerstack.com or create a support ticket through your in-app chatbot.

Best practice: When comparing an event and triggers, it can be helpful to have the event detail (i.e. customer or transaction) open in one tab, and to view the trigger in another tab.

Key things to watch for when comparing an event, and a trigger:

• The date the event occurred: If your trigger has rules around partnership, customer, or transaction creation date, check if the event occurred within the trigger’s required date range.
  
• Partnership/group restrictions: Is your partner in the correct group to qualify for the offer?
  Does the offer exclude any specific partner keys?
  
• Customer or partner age rules: If your trigger has rules around the customer or partner's age, check if the customer or partner meets the trigger rules at the time of the event, i.e. when the transaction occurred.
  
• Product or category keys: If your trigger has rules requiring or excluding specific transaction product or category keys, check to see if the transaction meets the key rules.
  
• Transaction count or sum rules: If your trigger has rules around the transaction count or sum, check if the rule criteria were met, at the time the event occurred, i.e. If the customer has 12 or fewer transactions, check the number of transactions the customer had on the date of the event in question.
  

Best practice: Remember that triggers run when an event occurs. When an event occurs, such as a transaction being created, the trigger will look at what is true when PartnerStack received the transaction. If you are investigating an action from the past, ignore any events that occurred after the event in question.

Investigating Drip triggers

If the event qualified for an offer, and the partner has not received a commission, check to see if the trigger is a Drip commission trigger.

Drip triggers create “scheduled” commissions. Partners can view their scheduled commissions in their Commissions tab by selecting "Scheduled" from the Commission status drop-down. Commissions will appear in the partner’s Commissions tab as “pending approval” after the drip period has passed provided the transaction is not deleted.

• If you use drip commissions, you can view all ongoing drips in your Commissions & invoices > Ongoing drip commissions tab.
  

Best practice: To see scheduled drip commissions for a specific partner, select the partner from your All Partners tab, scroll down, and click on the “Commissions” table. The "Ready at" date is the date when the commission will pass the drip delay period and be created as a "pending" commission for the partner.

An event met the trigger rules, but no commission was generated

If you have confirmed an event occurred, and that the event qualified for an offer, but a commission has not been generated, please reach out to the support team at support@partnerstack.com or create a support ticket through your in-app chatbot.

Best practice: when contacting the support team about a specific trigger or event, please provide the support team with the event details (i.e. customer key or email, transaction key, etc) as well as the name of the trigger you expect should have fired.

Monitoring a new trigger

Triggers are highly customizable and are heavily influenced by the data available through your integrations. Because of this, we highly recommend talking to the support team before creating or changing a trigger.

Once a trigger has been created you are responsible for reviewing, activating, and overseeing its operation to ensure it is functioning as expected.

After creating a new trigger, we recommend monitoring your generated commissions, or drip commissions to ensure that they meet your expected behavior.

To monitor a trigger's behavior

1. Review commissions on your monthly partner invoices
2. Review commissions as they are generated in your Review Commissions tab
3. If applicable, review new drip commissions as they are generated in your Ongoing drip commissions tab

Things to look out for after activating a new trigger

• Duplicate commissions: this may be an indicator that your new trigger overlaps with your existing trigger structure.
  • Action: Decline any duplicate commissions and reach out to the support team at support@partnerstack.com or create a support ticket using your in-app chatbot.
• Trigger behavior: look at the recent commissions generated by your new trigger. Are commissions generating as expected? For triggers that have complex rule structures including date constraints, rules around customer age, or transaction limits check to ensure the commission generated matches your original commission structure plan.
  • Action: If a trigger is not configured in a way that meets your expectations, reach out to the support team at support@partnerstack.com or create a support ticket through your in-app chatbot for further assistance.