Affiliate Marketing With Later Influence

Later Influence now integrates with Later Creator for a seamless affiliate marketing experience. This means you can create affiliate campaign deliverables, send creators their unique links, and track affiliate performance all within Later.

This article covers what Later Creator and affiliate marketing are, how affiliate marketing works in Later Influence campaigns, as well as answers to frequently asked questions. For the technical steps of how to create affiliate links and send them to creators, see Affiliate Campaigns.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a strategic collaboration between a brand and creator, where the creator receives a commission for sales generated through their unique affiliate links.

An affiliate strategy is particularly effective in bottom-of-funnel marketing by driving conversions through social platforms. Brands large and small can leverage affiliate programs to provide exclusive promotions and foster trust with potential audiences.

What is Later Creator?

Later Creator is a platform known as a sub-affiliate network, which means they partner with multiple affiliate networks to offer brands (like you!) access to a wide range of affiliates through one interface. It also allows affiliates (that is, creators in your campaigns) to access multiple brands' campaigns from within one platform.

Later has partnered with Later Creator to streamline the process of creating, distributing, and tracking affiliate links as campaign deliverables. As a result, creators are required to create a free Later Creator account in order to participate in Later Influence campaigns with affiliate deliverables. Learn more about Later Creator

Supported Major Retailers

Later Creator supports the following major retailers:

General Merchandise:

• Walmart
• Target

Warehouse Clubs:

• Sam’s Club
• BJ’s Wholesale (Memberships)

Home Improvement:

• The Home Depot

Sporting Goods:

• Dick’s Sporting Goods
• Academy Sports

Books and Media:

• Barnes & Noble

Discount Stores:

• Dollar Tree

Office Supplies:

• Office Depot / OfficeMax

Pet Supplies:

• Petco
• PetSmart

Department Stores:

• Macy’s
• Kohl’s
• JCPenney
• Nordstrom
• Belk
• Neiman Marcus

How Affiliate Campaign Deliverables Work

When creating a Later Influence campaign, you can select Affiliate Link as a campaign deliverable, and optionally require that creators connect their free Later Creator accounts as part of the campaign application.

Tip: While requiring creators to connect their Later Creator account during the application process is optional, we recommend it for campaigns with affiliate deliverables. This is because a Later Creator account connection is required to generate creators’ unique affiliate links. Alternatively, if creators don’t connect Later Creator during their application, they can do so afterwards through the campaign manager.

Once creators have connected their Later Creator accounts, you’ll be able to generate and send their unique affiliate links. Creators then share and promote those links to their followers, and you can follow along with the clicks, conversions, and commission they generate—all from within Later.

Note: There are some prerequisites that must be met in order to create and send affiliate links within Later Influence. For details, see Affiliate Campaigns.

Who Handles What

When it comes to affiliate marketing, there are several players involved: you (the marketer), the creator (the affiliate), your affiliate network, Later Influence, and Later Creator (who connects them all together).

The table below summarizes where key parts of this process are completed:

* Must be an affiliate network that is supported by Later Creator

Frequently Asked Questions

How do creators get paid?

Creators get paid their affiliate commission via Later Creator, not Later (only flat-rate payments are processed through Later). Creators can add their payment information to Later Creator as soon as they’ve started earning commission.

For further details and creator instructions, see Connect Your Later Creator Account to Later (under Add Your Payment Information) in the Later Social Help Center. You can also reference the Payments section of Later Creator’s knowledge base.

Can I set my own commission rules?

Yes! Later Influence uses the commission rules that you set within your affiliate network. Some affiliate networks support custom rates per product category and more customization options—refer to your network for details. In any case, you set your rates, and Later will automatically pull them in through Later Creator.

Can I create tracked links without paying commission?

Yes, you can create Tracking Links to generate unique links for creators without paying commission. 

Tracking links are similar to affiliate links in that they track clicks and—if conversion tracking is set up—conversions, but they don’t pay commission (and don’t require the creator to have a Later Creator account).

Can creators get commission on subscriptions or memberships?

Yes, Later Creator supports recurring commission on purchases like subscriptions and memberships, so long as they’re set up with one of Later Creator’s supported networks.

Do affiliate links expire?

Later Creator links don’t expire, and it isn’t possible to set an expiration date for them. If you stop working with an affiliate network, those links will lead to an error page from that network.