Why become an Thorntons affiliate?
· Competitive commission rates
· Scope for higher commissions*
· Competitive Pricing
· Regular promotions and sales
· Full time account management and support
· Deep links available
· Creative Suite available
· Affiliates will be sent regular creative updates bespoke to campaigns
*subject to commercial proposals and performance
Application Guidelines
In order to apply to the Thorntons affiliate programme, you must ensure that:
Your site is live and is not under construction
Should your site contain any of the following, you will not be eligible to join the Thorntons programme:
· Hate/offensive/violent content
· Pornographic content
· Religious content
· Abusive or irresponsible promotion of Alcohol, Tobacco or Drugs
· Gambling, firearms, games of chance, and lotteries
- Commission Structure
Thorntons commission structure is subject to change. When changes to the commission rates occur, affiliates will be notified 7 days prior and asked to accept the renewed commission rate through an insertion order from our affiliate network.
Please note:
New and Existing Customers
Thorntons currently offer the same rates for New and Existing customers. 7 days’ notice will be given in the event of these terms changing.
Attribution
Thorntons will only pay out commission for orders subject to de-duplication rules across all their online media channels. Thorntons media channels & attribution rules are subject to change.
Cashback affiliates will only be paid on a last-click basis.
Cookie Window
Thorntons operates to a 30 day post-click cookie window on all bookings.
- PPC
Keyword Bidding (terms)
i. Publishers are NOT permitted to bid on Thorntons brand terms, including misspells and other variants to gain preferential listings on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
ii. Publishers are NOT permitted to use ‘brand term + generic terms’ to gain preferential listings on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
iii. Publishers are allowed to use a combination of generic keywords such as ‘selling my house’. Publishers must send a full list of the generic terms that they wish to bid on and wait for approval from Thorntons before commencing such activity.
iii. It is the responsibility of the publisher to seek the advice of the Thorntons affiliate team (at our agency) if they are in doubt.
iv. Publishers are NOT permitted to bid on competitor’s brand terms to drive traffic to www.thorntons.com/uk/en/
v. If a publisher is appearing for a term that we consider to be a core brand term, or a misspelling, we reserve the right to ask this to be added as a negative term and for the publisher to stop appearing.
Thorntons would like to remind publishers about the dangers of Google’s extended/expanded broad match functionality and would strongly recommend including the term ‘Thorntons’ as a negative keyword on all campaigns in order to negate the risk of appearing on Thorntons brand terms.
Cashback is not permitted on any of Thorntons’s subscription products.
3.Display URLs
i. Publishers are NOT permitted to use the word Thorntons in their display URLs in any text ad, for example: ‘www.thorntons.com/uk/en/’, ‘Thorntons.co.uk’.
ii. Publishers are NOT permitted to use misspellings, or upper/lower case variants.
iii. No unauthorised partners should use the word Thorntons in the main section of their display URL For example www.latestoffers.com/Thorntons or www.latestoffers.com/Thorntons without approval.
4. Landing Pages
i. All clicks must first land on the publisher’s site, and the user must click from the publisher’s site to www.thorntons.com/uk/en/
ii. Clicks must never land directly on www.thorntons.com/uk/en/
iii. Overlays and masked URLs are not permitted.
iv. Direct linking is not permitted on Thorntons.
5.1 Coupons/Promotion codes
Voucher codes are permitted on the Thorntons affiliate programme. Thorntons promotions can be featured on Voucher code sites, however it has to be directed straight to Thorntons’ landing page displaying the current offer promoted on their site.
Only offers and codes authorised by the Thorntons affiliate team should be promoted. Any unauthorised codes or offers will result in commission not being paid and the publisher will be suspended if this occurrence arises more than once.
5.2 Unauthorised coupon/promotion codes
i. An unauthorised coupon/promotion code is a code that hasn’t been communicated via your Thorntons affiliate team.
ii. Publishers must not feature any unauthorised coupon/promotion codes, nor must publishers cite a URL to that coupon/promotion code anywhere on their website.
iii. Thorntons will decline commissions on all bookings when an unauthorised promotion code has been used, and be subject to the penalties detailed in 6.
6. Penalties for acting outside of these clauses
If a publisher is found condoning fraudulent activity, the first instance will result in all pending commissions being declined for the day of the offence, and the previous six days before the offence.
In the second instance of a publisher found to feature any fraudulent activity, this will result in all pending commissions being declined for the day of the offence, and the previous month before the offence. Thorntons will suspend this publisher and decide the appropriate action. Only in exceptional circumstances will a publisher be reinstated.
Affiliates' use of ‘Thorntons’ trademarks must be limited to the creative and text supplied by Thorntons through the interface and the agency network. Any other use is not permitted unless permission has been granted by our agency/ Thorntons.
Affiliates found to be in breach of the PPC terms in section 2 who do not comply within 24 hours of being asked to do will have any subsequent commissions declined.
7. Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing (solus campaigns) must be submitted to the Thorntons Affiliate team for approval.
8. Payment Procedure
Affiliates will be paid once transactions have been validated, in line with standard Awin payment terms.
9. Disputed transactions
If a purchase needs to be queried, this will be sent to Thorntons for validation before commission can be approved.
10. Cancelled Bookings
Thorntons operate a validations process whereby sales will be validated on a monthly basis.
As a result of this process, some sales may be declined if the purchase was cancelled.
Please contact the affiliate team at our agency if you have any queries about this process.
11. Additional Comments
Under no circumstances can you share any source of information of Thorntons to their competitors, if you fail to comply you will be penalised: see 6.
Affiliates should be aware that Thorntons is entitled to vary, amend or cancel the programme within a 7 day notice period.
If you have any queries regarding the Thorntons Affiliate program, please contact our agency.
In addition to the terms referenced above and to the extent that the services involve the processing of personal data of European Union data subjects as defined under applicable data protection law, this insertion order is also governed by the Data Processing Addendum entered into by Advertiser or any Affiliate and Media Partner on or after 25 May 2018. “Affiliate” means any company which is controlled by, controlling or under common control of Advertiser. If no such agreement exists, then the terms and conditions of the Publicis International Data Processing and Protection Appendix shall apply, located at https://eu-dppa.publicismedia.com/; username is dppa; password is @gree; and country is United Kingdom.
