Affiliate Studio Overview

Note: this product is currently in testing by invitation only and will be made available to all Raptive creators in late 2024. Product details in this article are subject to change as product development is in progress.

Create beautiful, custom product widgets to add to your emails with Affiliate Studio. Set a theme to match your branding and add your favorite product links and images to start building your product widget library. Then easily export to add to your emails in just a few clicks!

How it works

Affiliate Studio lets you easily create and save design themes with colors that perfectly match the styling of your site. You’ll start here, creating your theme (or multiple themes) to ensure that every widget you create matches your brand.

Once you create your theme, you’ll round up your favorite products and build widgets to feature them.

To create a theme

1. Click the Themes icon in the left navigation bar
2. Click “Create new theme”
3. A default “New Theme” will appear
4. Click on the name of the new theme and update to match your site’s branding

Pro tip: Use a color picker browser extension to perfectly select and copy the HEX code of any color used on your site. We love ColorZilla for Chrome.

Need some inspiration? Here’s how we’d set up a custom theme for Raptive:

To build a widget

1. Click the Home icon in the left navigation bar
2. Click “Create new widget”

From there, let Affiliate Studio be your guide! Follow the 6 steps on the left side and watch your widget build and update in real-time on the right side. Don’t forget to save your widget as you work by clicking “Save” in the bottom right corner of your screen.

Best practices for building affiliate widgets

1. Pick products that you’ve used and personally love. Your readers want to shop your recommendations!
2. Once you’ve selected your products, we recommend including a title, description, beautiful photo, and compelling call to action (CTA) button text. CTA text we’ve seen work well includes the product price (ex. “$29.99 at Wililams Sonoma”) or timely discount (ex. “Now 20% off at Target”).
3. When you have them, use product photos that you’ve taken yourself to further personalize the widget for your audience and show how you use the product. If you don’t have any, use the product image URL from the merchant.
4. Use the subheadline to add context about how you’ve used the products you’re featuring or why you love them.
5. Once you’ve finalized your desired number of columns in the layout section, adjust the height and width of the widget above the widget preview on the right side of your screen to make sure all products are visible.

Adding your widgets to email

Once your widget is ready, click Save & Export to generate the HTML for your email. As the instructions note, each ESP handles adding HTML differently. You’ll need to find the block or piece of your template editor that lets you paste in custom HTML into your email template.

In Mailchimp, you’ll add a Code block, copy the HTML, and paste it in that block.

Reminder: your widget will render exactly as it appeared in the Affiliate Studio widget preview so make sure nothing is cut off or has any extra white space before exporting.

FAQ

I’m not part of the beta testing but am interested in getting Affiliate Studio, how can I do that?

We’re excited to hear you’re interested! At this time, our test group is invitation only. We’ll send an email when Affiliate Studio is available for all creators. 

My widget has too much white space or is cut off, how can I fix it?

Adjust the pixel height and width of the widget to add or remove space and make sure the way the widget is shown in the preview is to your liking. The way the widget appears there is how it will appear when exported.

Do I have to fill in every field in the product details and content & styles sections? 

No! If you’ve included all the details you want to share with your readers and are happy with the way the widget looks, feel free to leave some of the fields blank.

Why doesn’t anything happen to my widget when I update the Product Price, Price Description, Ratings, Discounts, Coupon, and Flag sections?

These features are currently under development and will be available soon.