Program Restrictions
Unless explicitly authorised otherwise by Cult Beauty, the following Programme restrictions apply:
- Affiliates are not permitted to purchase, own or bid on any domain names with the word ‘CULT BEAUTY’ or misspellings of ‘CULT BEAUTY’ in the URL. For example, www.Dernstore.com.
- Affiliates must not include CULT BEAUTY Brand Terms, or misspelled variations of the same, in the sub-domain of their website’s URL. For example, http://CULT BEAUTY.affiliate.com.
- Affiliates may use correctly spelled CULT BEAUTY Brand Terms after the domain of their website’s URL. For example, http://www.affiliate.com/CULT BEAUTY.
- Affiliates are not allowed to register the brand CULT BEAUTY or any variation of it on any social media platform. This includes and does not limit to brand + generic word or sentence as well generic word or sentence + brand. Any attempt to register such social media accounts will be a direct breach of the Awin terms and conditions, in particular section 7. Intellectual Property Rights of the Awin code of conduct.
- Affiliates must not post on any official CULT BEAUTY social media platform in order to attempt to drive visitors to their webpage. CULT BEAUTY social media platforms include Facebook and Twitter
- Direct linking to CULT BEAUTY websites from paid social media is prohibited.
- Any affiliates, subnetworks and/or affiliates of subnetworks who do not abide by these rules risk having their commissions set to zero and possible suspension.
PPC Policy
Commissions will not be paid where there is evidence of any paid search activity on brand terms without prior authorization. This includes permutations, misspellings and broad matches containing brand terms (generic is fine).
PPC bidding restrictions also apply on Google Shopping/CSS (Comparison Shopping Service). We request the brand keywords stated below to be excluded from all CSS activity.
Restrictions include, but are not limited to the following:
- Cult Beauty
- Cultbeauty
- Cult Beauty
- Cultbeauty.com
- www.cultbeauty.com
- Cult Beauty vouchers
- Cultbeauty.com Vouchers
- Cult Beauty codes
- Cult Beauty Voucher Codes
- Cult Beauty discount codes
- Cult Beauty.com codes
Please do not use the word ‘official’ in your advertisements.
We are happy for affiliates to bid on generic terms, however direct linking is prohibited. Any affiliates who do not abide by these rules do risk having their commissions set to zero and possible suspension.
Discount codes
Cult Beauty encourages affiliates to contact us for exclusive voucher/discount codes and additional incentives.
Affiliates may only promote codes that are provided through the Cult Beauty affiliate program (either through our account or directly from Cult Beauty Affiliate Manager).
Cult Beauty reserves the right to withhold payment of commission if unauthorized voucher/coupon codes are used in an affiliate sale. We appreciate that consumers may use voucher/coupon codes that they have found via a site other than that which is awarded the sale and this will be investigated before decisions on commission payment are made. Any affiliate found to be displaying unauthorised codes may also have their commission set to zero until the code(s) are removed.
Where voucher/coupon codes are issued with an expiration date this should be clearly displayed, and codes should be removed or explicitly marked as expired after this due date unless you are advised otherwise. Any affiliates displaying expired codes without marking them as being expired may be suspended from the program. Please also ensure that you observe IAB voucher code best practice guidelines.
De-duplication Policy
All affiliate sales are de-duplicated against other online advertising channels using a local cookie on the merchant platform. De-duplication channels include:
- PPC Brand
- PPC Generic
- Email Advertising
- Direct Partnerships
- Price Comparison
- Display & retargeting advertising
- Other Affiliate Networks
- In house referrer scheme (further details on this can be found below)
The In House Referrer Scheme:
Existing customers who have already purchased from The Hut Group will be sent an email explaining the referral scheme and how they can earn credit from driving new customers to the site.
For example:
Existing customer logs into their account on Cult Beauty and goes to referral section.
Existing customer creates link to Cult Beauty to share on social media.
New customer clicks on that link and makes first purchase on CULT BEAUTY either by entering referral code at checkout or after an automatic discount has been applied after clicking on a referral link.
Existing customer receives credit to spend on Cult Beauty as a reward.
All referral sales will be de-duped against affiliate sales and there will be a slight change to the usual last-click method of tracking in certain circumstances:
If a new customer uses a referral code or link then clicks an affiliate link (within 30 minutes of the first click), this sale will be attributed to the referral scheme
If an affiliate link is used 30 minutes or more after the referral link is clicked and no referrer code is redeemed then the affiliate will still be awarded the last click and receive commission for this sale
Note: Whenever a referrer code is used, the sale will not track via affiliates.
Social Content Creators
Cult Beauty does not work with influencers via the Awin affiliate channel as this is managed in-house. Please reach out to influencer@cultbeauty.co.uk to discuss an influencer partnership.
All affiliate content on social media must be ASA compliant, read the ASA Guide here. If you wish to use affiliate links within your Instagram Stories and other social channels, use #ad as a valid identifier to be ASA compliant.
Awin has a one-page website - Paid for Advertising - which explains how free content can have a commercial relationship attached to it. This can be linked to by any affiliate in order to make your readers aware of how affiliate links work. If you have any questions on this please speak to your account contact. More information here: https://www.awin.com/gb/news-and-events/industry-news/affiliate-links-on-instagram-stories.
Validation Policy
Cult Beauty validates in-line with their returns policy which is 28 days with a look back window 31 days.
Promotions:
As consumer experience is paramount to our Cult Beauty values, in order to maintain a good relationship, we advise that only voucher codes, promotional offers and gifts with purchases provided by a Cult Beauty affiliate representative are allowed to be pushed on affiliate partnered sites. Cult Beauty performs regular audits and any publishers disregarding these terms and warnings provided will have their commissions denied and the orders may not be honoured. For clarification on which voucher codes, promotional offers and gifts with purchase are allowed to be published, please reach out with any queries.
B2B Sales:
We reserve the right to cancel any orders which fit the definition of a B2B sale and commission on these orders will be denied.
A B2B sale is a sale to a customer who has does not have the intention to use the products for their own personal use. Indicators of a B2B sale are:
1. Recency – how recently has a customer made an order, and/or
2. Frequency – how often a customer makes a purchase from the same click IP address (normally measured in days between orders; often more than one order in any 48 hour period, for example), and/or
3. Monetary Value – orders can often be exactly the same or similar values; orders can be large total value; and/or
4. Customers – customers are identified directly as being resellers (often via social media channels)
5. Order contents – Multiples of Units – often multiple units of the same sku (often at CB’s max of 5-6 units per sku), and/or
6. Order contents – Exclusive or Limited Edition Products – often purchased, and/or
7. Orders Not Shipped to residential addresses – shipped to businesses, Suites, PO Boxes, re-shipping agents, freight forwarders, or similar, and/or
8. Post-Sale Re-sale – orders, products, customers, website content/imagery are found to be resold or republished on resale websites such as E-bay, social media channels, etc.
