Affiliate marketing can be a great way to promote an e-commerce website and
to boost sales. Under such an arrangement, a business pays affiliates a
commission on sales of their goods or services generated from
click-throughs from the affiliate’s website.
This so-called “online performance marketing” as a whole is highly popular
and, as a category of marketing, includes such well-known names as Quidco, Nectar, CompareTheMarket, and Groupon. Affiliate
marketing specifically is a popular choice for businesses of all sizes and
can be largely automated, making it quick and easy to track sales and
calculate commission.
Updated Affiliate Templates
Simply-Docs has long offered a range of template documents for affiliate
relationships and these documents have now been given a comprehensive
refresh to reflect current best practice. Each document has been completely
re-written, with provisions simplified and streamlined where possible. A
new commission structure has also been introduced, focusing now on sales
which can be tracked only within a single browser session, rather than
relying on more privacy-intrusive forms of tracking.
Privacy and data protection are now also included in these templates.
Although not all affiliate marketing arrangements will involve the use of
personal data (or at least the transfer of it from one party to another),
it is nevertheless helpful to emphasise each party’s data protection
obligations on a contractual basis.
New data protection provisions have therefore been added to the agreements
and the terms and conditions. We have also endeavoured to make these
provisions “Brexit-proof” or at least “Brexit compatible”. The GDPR will
continue to apply in the UK following our departure from the EU on 31
January for the duration of the transition period. After that, the current
expectation is that the GDPR will be replaced with an almost identical “UK
GDPR”. The wording of the new data protection provisions therefore refers
to as yet unnamed successor legislation which will impose the same
obligations upon businesses after the Brexit transition.
The contents of this Newsletter are for reference purposes only and do not constitute
legal advice. Independent legal advice should be sought in relation to any specific
legal matter.