A cross-marketing campaign is simply one where one seller (call them Vendor A) markets the products of another (Vendor B) to their own customer base. It may be a slot on a monthly newsletter, a special email blast or even a featured ad on the Thank You page a buyer sees after they make a purchase. Vendor A will normally receive a commission from Vendor B for sourcing the sale.

Executing a program like this on Plimus could hardly be easier. For the sake of brevity, we’ll deal here with only one kind of campaign – more will appear soon!

Let’s assume Vendor A has agreed to cross-market Vendor B’s software in their Thank You page, and Vendor B has promised to pay Vendor A 30% of all revenues generated through the program.

First, Vendor A sets up an affiliate account in Plimus, and Vendor B sets up a vendor account in Plimus, where they list and set the Terms & Conditions for their offering. Vendor A requests, and Vendor B accepts, the right to sell as an ‘affiliate’ Vendor B’s offerings.

Vendor A now has a link they can use to resell Vendor B’s products – but the BuyNow pages are branded to Vendor B. Vendor A simply sets up a custom BuyNow template in their account and makes a note of its ID (we’ll need this shortly).

Vendor A returns to their own vendor account, and opens up a Contract from which Vendor B’s software should be advertised. In the BuyNow Setting page, they scroll down to the Thank You section on the BuyNow settings page. They add a link to a nice ad that will be shown at the bottom of the page offering Vendor B’s product. The URL that is added is the standard affiliate URL we found in the last paragraph plus the text ‘&templateId=’ followed by the ID of the special template Vendor A created.

Voila! Now, when a customer buys from Vendor A, their Thank You page includes a great ad to buy Vendor B’s offerings. When they click on the ad, they’re taken to a BuyNow page for Vendor B’s product, but displayed through a template that maintains Vendor A’s branding. If they choose to buy (why wouldn’t they!), Plimus records the sale as well as the source, and divides the money as defined by Vendors A and B automatically.

With literally a few hours’ setup, Vendor B is experiencing extra new sales, Vendor A is monetizing its Thank You pages for new revenue, and the customer is being directed to other great products that are totally in tune with what they like.

Everyone wins!