Who is this article for?
This article will be useful to you if you're a company wanting to understand more about drip rewards.
Overview
Drip Rewards are a type of reward that does not automatically generate as a result of a sign-up or transaction (or specified action). This allows companies using PartnerStack to delay or cycle a reward generation specific to the offers they have set up.
Drip Rewards can be set up if you have an offer that requires you to reward a partner after a certain time has passed, or they can be set up to reward a certain amount over a specified period of time.
Common use cases for drip rewards include refund policies and a high-value transaction being paid out over a 12-month period instead of all at once.
This prevents loss to the company in the event the partners' referral cancels their subscription or requests a refund. It allows you to manage partner rewards while still aligning with your own company policies.
Drip rewards can have either a Delay or a Cycle:
Delay: the amount of time before a reward is earned
Delays are based on a certain amount of time and are commonly used when there is a refund policy. For example, your company offers a one-month refund period after a product is purchased. With that policy in place, you'll likely want to wait 30 days before rewarding your partner for that transaction, in the event that their referral does request a refund. After the 30 days has passed and no refund has occurred, your partners' reward will generate.
Once a payout is sent to a Partner through PartnerStack, we can't "claw it back". This is a common use case for putting the delay in place!
Cycle: how often the reward is earned
Cycles allow a reward to be paid out over a certain period of time and are commonly used when an annualized subscription is purchased upfront.
For example, your partners' referral purchases a yearly subscription. Instead of paying the partner a reward all at once (in case the referral cancels mid-year), you can drip out the rewards in a cycle.
An example of what that might look like:
- Referral purchases a $1200.00 annual subscription
- You, the company, want to reward your partner 20% over 12 months
- 20% of $1200.00 = $240.00
- $240 over 12 months = a $20 reward paid out each month, for 12 months
If the referral cancels on month 7, the remaining 5 months will not be paid out and the partner will only earn rewards while the subscription is/was active.
Viewing drip rewards on your dashboard
Ongoing drip rewards can be viewed in your Rewards and Invoices > Ongoing drip rewards tab.
Here you can search for a partner's name to view ongoing drip rewards they have or can filter the table by drip status.
Drip reward statuses: The drip reward has been created and there are pending payments to the partner.
Terminated: The drip reward was ended prematurely before the total reward amount was paid to the partner. Drip rewards can be ended: automatically (due to an associated partnership, customer or transaction) being archived; or manually via the dashboard.
Complete: The drip reward total has been paid to the partner.