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A subscription business gets paid in instalments, which means the first payment is the least informative thing you will ever know about a customer. Two people sign up on the same day for the same plan?. One cancels in week three; the other is still paying four years later. If your partner earns the same on both, you are paying for signups and calling it a subscription programme.
Customer Value lets the payout follow the renewals. There are two sensible ways to do that, and this article builds both — but they are not interchangeable, so start by picking one.
Two deals, and they are not the same deal
One bump at month three
A single extra payment when the subscriber proves they are staying.
- Fires
- Once, ever, per subscriber.
- Needs you to send
- Nothing. Everflow already counts renewals.
- Rewards
- Surviving the first few billing cycles — the thing that actually predicts a good customer.
- Fails when
- A partner brings customers who renew three times and then leave.
A little every month
A share of each renewal, for as long as the subscription runs.
- Fires
- Every cycle the subscriber renews.
- Needs you to send
- The renewal amount, as a Number data point.
- Rewards
- Retention for the whole life of the account, not just the first quarter.
- Fails when
- You need to know next year's cost this year, or you renegotiate rates often.
If you are not sure, start with the bump. It is one rule, it is cheap to reconcile, your exposure is a number you can write down, and it rewards the thing that actually predicts a good subscriber — surviving the first few billing cycles. The monthly share is the better long-term alignment, and it is also an open-ended commitment you will be paying in three years on customers nobody remembers acquiring. Move to it when you have watched the bump for a quarter and know what your churn? curve looks like.
What you actually have to send
Less than you think, and for one of the two deals it is nothing at all.
If every renewal fires a conversion — which it should, because that is how the partner gets attributed — then Everflow is already counting them. The number of renewals is a metric?, not something you send. The bump at month three needs no custom data point? whatsoever.
The monthly share does need one number: what the renewal was worth. If your deal is written against monthly recurring revenue? rather than the individual charge, send that instead — the rule does not care what the number means, only that it arrives.
One Number data point, a parameter name, and that parameter appended to the conversion URL your billing system already fires when a subscription renews. If you are wiring this for the first time, the setup article walks through it end to end.
Build it inactive first
Before either deal, a feature that gets overlooked and is worth more than it sounds.
An Inactive rule does not pay. It does keep collecting. So you can write the rule you are considering, leave it off for a month, and then look at how many subscribers would have crossed the line before you ever commit a number to a partner. This is the cheapest way to find out that your "month three" bump would have fired on 4% of subscribers rather than the 20% somebody assumed.
Deal A: one bump at month three
The whole rule is one condition.
Total of Base Conversion Events equal to 3. No data point, no threshold to maintain, nothing your billing system has to learn to send. If you would rather pay from the third renewal onward rather than exactly on it, use Greater Than 2 instead — with a bonus the money still only moves once, because a bonus is capped at once per cycle.
The Outcome section further down that screen is still at its default. That is the next decision, and it is where the two deals part company.
The cycle setting is what decides which deal you built
The goal cycle? is the same field for both deals, and it is the field that separates them.
Continuous
Progress never resets. A bonus is capped at once per cycle, and there is only ever one cycle — so the bonus pays once in the subscriber's life.
Deal A: the bumpRecurring · Month
Progress resets on the first of every month, so the once-per-cycle cap refreshes and the same subscriber can earn the outcome again next month.
Deal B: every monthDeal B: a share of every renewal
Same rule builder, three different settings. The cycle is Recurring on Month, the condition is something true in every cycle — at least one renewal — and the outcome is a percentage rather than an amount.
Set the payout model to Custom Data Point and the outcome becomes a percentage of a number you sent, rather than a figure you typed. This is still a bonus?: it is added on top of whatever the partner earns on the renewal itself.
Revenue is set separately and behaves identically.
Most subscription deals move both: the partner earns a share of the renewal, and you record the revenue that renewal brought in, so the margin between the two stays visible in ordinary reporting.
The one setting people get wrong
Choosing Custom Data Point adds a field that decides what the percentage is a percentage of.
Everything that arrived this cycle
The subscriber renews at $90 and adds two seats mid-month for $60. The cycle total is $150, and 10% of it is paid on the renewal.
The renewal that arrived
The percentage is taken from the value on that conversion, so a renewal pays on the renewal and a seat purchase pays on the seat purchase.
For a monthly share you want Per Conversion?. Cycle Total on a monthly cycle looks harmless and is the same number in a month with one renewal — which is every month, until the month somebody buys extra seats mid-cycle, and the partner is paid a percentage of both.
Check it worked
One customer ID, a range covering the whole subscription, and read down the renewals.
You are checking three things: that a conversion arrived for each renewal, that the value came with it, and that the bonus shows up on the renewal you expect. If the renewals are there and the values are not, the rule is fine and the integration is not.
What you get
Partners paid on retention
The money follows the subscribers who stay, which is the only kind worth acquiring.
No spreadsheet at month end
The rule decides at conversion time. Nobody reconciles renewal counts by hand.
A deal you can measure first
Inactive rules collect without paying, so you can size the cost before you offer it.
One mechanism, both shapes
A bump and a monthly share are the same rule builder with a different cycle. Changing your mind is a settings change.
Common questions
QDo renewals have to be separate conversions?
Yes, and they almost certainly already are — that is how the partner gets attributed for them. If your billing system only fires a conversion on the first payment, nothing downstream can tell a one-month customer from a three-year one, and no Customer Value rule will fix that.
QCan I run both deals at once?
You can: two rules, both active, both scoped to the same offers. A bump at month three plus a small monthly share is a perfectly reasonable deal. Just price it as one thing, because the partner experiences it as one thing.
QWhat about annual plans?
An annual plan renews once a year, so "month three" never arrives and a monthly share pays once a year. If you sell both monthly and annual, either scope the rules to the right offers or condition on the renewal amount rather than the count — an annual renewal is distinguishable by its value.
QA subscriber upgrades mid-cycle. What does the rule see?
Another conversion, with whatever value you send on it. If the upgrade should not earn the partner a share, do not send it into the same data point, or scope the rule to the renewal conversion event specifically. This is the main reason Per Conversion is usually the right basis.
QWhat happens when someone downgrades or gets a refund?
Nothing, unless you send it. Everflow adds up what arrives, so a refund only reduces a total when your platform sends a negative value against the same customer. If you need a balance that can go below zero and carry forward, the NGR article covers that case in detail.
QCan the bump pay on month twelve instead of month three?
Change the number in the condition. The same rule with Total of Base Conversion Events equal to 12 pays on the twelfth renewal. The further out you push it, the more of your partners' cashflow you are asking them to finance — which is a commercial question, not a technical one.
QWill a new rule pay on subscriptions that already renewed?
No. A rule looks at conversions from the moment it is saved, so existing subscribers start from zero as far as the rule is concerned. If that is a problem, the Inactive trick does not solve it either — Inactive collects from when you create it, not retroactively.
QHow do I stop paying a partner forever on the monthly share?
Give the rule an end date in the Timeframe step, or switch it to Inactive when the term is up. A rule with no end date runs indefinitely from the moment it is created, which is exactly what "a little every month" means — so decide the term when you write the deal, not when finance asks about it.
→ Introduction To Customer Value — what a rule decides, and the five shapes people build.
→ How To Send User IDs & Data Points For Customer Value — getting the renewal amount flowing in the first place.
→ Build Your First Customer Value Rule — the simplest possible rule, if this is your first one.
→ Paying On Token & Credit Spend With Customer Value — the same machinery when the money arrives in packs rather than on a schedule.
