Affiliate Manager is where your practice runs a patient and partner referral program, tracking who refers new business and paying out commissions automatically. This glossary explains the terms you will see while setting up campaigns, reviewing affiliate performance, and processing payouts.
Affiliate An affiliate is anyone who helps promote your practice and earns a commission for the patients or leads they bring in. This could be a happy patient, a local influencer, a referring provider, or a friend of the practice who shares a unique link that tracks their referrals. You may also hear affiliates called "promoters" or "partners."
Sub-Affiliate A sub-affiliate is a promoter who was referred into your program by an existing affiliate. The original affiliate earns a cut of the sub-affiliate's activity too, which is what makes multi-level referral structures possible (see Two-Tier and Multi-Tier Programs below).
Affiliate Portal Every affiliate gets their own dashboard inside the portal to track performance, view commissions earned, and grab their referral links. This is where they manage their own participation in your program without needing access to your Aesthetix CRM account.
Magic Link A Magic Link is a one-click login you send an affiliate so they can access their portal without setting or remembering a password. It's the fastest way to get a new affiliate into their dashboard after you invite them.
Campaign A campaign is a group of products or services (treatments, packages, memberships) that your affiliates can promote. Campaigns organize what's being offered and what commission structure applies to it. You can run multiple campaigns at once, for example one for a referral-a-friend program and another for an aesthetician partnership.
Affiliate Campaign Source The source is the starting point where affiliate traffic is sent, such as a landing page, funnel, calendar booking page, or form. The source helps the system track a sale or lead back to the correct affiliate and campaign.
Referral Link (Affiliate Link) A referral link is a unique URL assigned to each affiliate that tracks the clicks, leads, and sales that come from their promotion. When a prospective patient clicks the link and later books or purchases, the affiliate is credited for it.
Affiliate ID Each affiliate is assigned an Affiliate ID, a unique code the system uses behind the scenes to track how much that specific affiliate has earned and generated.
Commission A commission is the reward paid to an affiliate for each sale or lead they generate. Aesthetix CRM supports several commission types:
Flat Fee: A fixed dollar amount paid per sale or lead, regardless of the purchase amount.
Percentage: A cut of the total sale price.
Recurring (Variable): The affiliate keeps earning every time a subscription or membership they referred renews, rather than a one-time payout.
Tiered: Commission rates that change based on level, for example a top-tier affiliate earning a percentage of what their sub-affiliates generate.
Default Commission The default commission is the standard reward rate (for example, 20%) applied to every product or service inside a campaign, unless a product-specific rate overrides it.
Product-Based Commission You can set a higher (or lower) commission for specific items in a campaign. For example, if the default is 20%, you might offer 30% on a best-selling package to give affiliates extra incentive to promote it.
Setup Fee Rules If your practice charges a one-time setup or enrollment fee alongside a service, you decide whether that fee counts toward the affiliate's commission calculation or is excluded.
Commission Length Commission length, sometimes shown as cookie length, controls how long a referral stays "live" after someone clicks an affiliate's link. If it's set to 30 days, the affiliate earns credit for any qualifying booking or purchase within that window, even if the prospective patient doesn't convert on the first visit.
Payout A payout is the total amount you owe an affiliate based on their tracked activity for a given period. Payouts are calculated from commissions earned across all the affiliate's referred leads and sales.
Manual Sale A manual sale is a sale or lead you attribute to an affiliate by hand rather than through automatic link tracking, for example when a patient mentions a referral by name at check-in. Manual sales let you credit an affiliate even when the automatic tracking link wasn't used.
If your affiliate program involves collecting payment from patients (deposits, package purchases, membership fees), consider routing that checkout through AX Pay, Aesthetix CRM's own payment provider, which offers better rates than Stripe. See the AX Pay help article for setup details.
Attribution Attribution is how the system automatically gives credit to the correct affiliate when someone uses their link and becomes a lead or patient. Accurate attribution is what makes commissions and payouts work without manual bookkeeping.
Click Tracking (Clicks) Click tracking shows you how many people clicked a given referral link, even if they haven't booked or purchased yet. This helps you gauge how effective an affiliate or campaign is at driving interest, separate from actual conversions.
Cookies Cookies are small files stored on a visitor's device that remember which affiliate's link they clicked. This is the mechanism behind commission length: if the visitor returns later and books or buys, the cookie is what lets the system still credit the right affiliate.
Affiliate workflow automation (sending welcome emails, notifying you of a new affiliate signup, triggering a payout reminder) is built and managed in Workflows, not inside Affiliate Manager itself. Look there if you want to automate what happens around your affiliate activity.
Two-Tier Program In a two-tier program, affiliates earn commissions not only on their own referrals but also on the referrals made by people they recruit as new affiliates.
Multi-Tier Program A multi-tier program extends this further. Aesthetix CRM supports up to 7 levels, giving you room to build a full team of affiliates and sub-affiliates, each earning a percentage of activity below them.
Lead A lead is someone who shows interest by filling out a form, booking a consult, or taking another qualifying action. Leads can also be added manually.
Customer A lead becomes a customer once they make a purchase, whether that's booking a paid consult or buying a treatment package. Most commissions are triggered at this conversion point.
What's the difference between an affiliate and a sub-affiliate? An affiliate promotes your practice directly and earns commissions on their own referrals. A sub-affiliate is someone that affiliate recruited into the program; the original affiliate earns an additional cut from the sub-affiliate's activity.
How long does a referral link stay credited to an affiliate? That's controlled by the commission length (also called cookie length) you set for the campaign. A common setting is 30 days, but you can adjust it to fit how long your sales cycle typically runs.
Can I offer different commission rates for different treatments? Yes. Set a default commission for the whole campaign, then use product-based commissions to offer a higher or lower rate on specific services or packages.
What happens if a patient mentions a referral but didn't click a link? You can log it as a manual sale and attribute it to the correct affiliate yourself, so they still get credit even without automatic click tracking.
Do affiliates need an Aesthetix CRM login? No. Affiliates use their own Affiliate Portal, accessed through a Magic Link you send them, so they never need direct access to your account.
How many levels can an affiliate program have? Aesthetix CRM supports up to 7 tiers, so you can build a multi-tier structure where affiliates earn from sub-affiliates several levels deep.
Is commission paid on leads or only on paying customers? It depends on how you configure the campaign. Some campaigns reward affiliates for qualified leads, but most commissions are tied to the point a lead becomes a paying customer.
Where do I automate emails or notifications tied to affiliate activity? That automation lives in Workflows. Affiliate Manager tracks and calculates the activity; Workflows is where you build the follow-up actions around it.
What's a recurring commission? It's a commission type where the affiliate keeps earning every time a referred subscription or membership renews, rather than receiving a single one-time payout.
Does a setup fee count toward an affiliate's commission? Only if you choose to include it. Setup Fee Rules let you decide whether one-time fees factor into the commission calculation for that campaign.
