Affiliate Program Terms & Conditions Agreement – V1 2024
Please read these Coastal Pet Terms (the “Terms”) carefully before you join the Coastal Pet Affiliate Program or begin engaging in marketing activities on our behalf. By applying to be a Coastal Pet affiliate (“Affiliate”, “Media Partner”, “Partner”), you (a) agree to abide by these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you are accepted into our Affiliate Program; (b) acknowledge and agree that these Terms and our Privacy Policy constitute a legally binding agreement between you and us upon your acceptance into the Program; (c ) represent and warrant that you are lawfully able to enter into these Terms either on your own behalf or on behalf of your company, as applicable; and (d) acknowledge and agree that you are and will remain in compliance with and will be responsible for ensuring any of your employees, agents and contractors comply with these Terms. These Terms and our Privacy Policy are in addition to any other terms agreed to in connection with participating in our Program, including those set forth in the Agreement and shall prevail in the event of any direct conflict with such other terms. By participating in the Affiliate Program you are agreeing to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with these Terms or our Privacy Policy, you should not apply to and/or participate in our Affiliate Program.
If you breach any of the Coastal Pet terms, you may be removed from the Affiliate Program immediately and/or permanently, without prior notice and at Coastal Pet’s sole discretion. Coastal Pet also reserves the right to withhold or cancel any and all commissions for orders not in compliance with these Terms.
Coastal Pet reserves the right, at any time and for any reason, to (i) modify or discontinue the Affiliate Program; and (ii) modify these Terms. Coastal Pet will notify you of any material modifications to these Terms, provided that by continuing to participate in the Program after and updated Terms become effective, you are representing to us that you agree to the updates.
DEFINITIONS
As used in these Terms:
“Coastal Pet”, “we”, “us” and “our” refers to Coastal Pet Products, Inc. and our affiliate companies.
“You” or “Your” refers to the affiliate
“Our Website” refers to CoastalPet.com, the pages therein, any other Coastal Pet website that may be hosted on a different web domain and any future Coastal Pet Apps.
“Your Material” refers to your website, web pages, social media profiles, email channels, app or other online services provided by you and approved by Coastal Pet that you control and that will link to Our Website.
“Program” or “Affiliate Program” refers to the Coastal Pet Affiliate Program
ENROLLMENT
After receiving your application, we will review your website and notify you of your acceptance or rejection into our Program. Please allow at least 10 business days for your application to be reviewed. We reserve the right to reject any application; however, we encourage you to contact us if you feel we have made an incorrect decision. Including all of the websites that you use, including your social media profiles, in your profile will help us make a good decision. You may not operate more than one account in our program without prior approval.
WEBSITE RESTRICTIONS
Your participating website(s) or platform may not:
Infringe on our or any anyone else’s intellectual property, publicity, privacy or other rights;
Violate any law, rule or regulation;
Contain any content that is threatening, harassing, defamatory, obscene, harmful to minors, or contains nudity, pornography or sexually explicit materials;
Contain any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or personal information;
Contain software or use technology that attempts to intercept, divert or redirect Internet traffic to or from any other website, or that potentially enables the diversion of affiliate commissions from another website, including toolbars, browser plug-ins, extensions and add-ons;
Include the words ”Coastal Pet” or any other Coastal Pet trademark in your domain name;
Share links to any illegal audio/video download sites; or
Share links in eBooks or PDFs without prior approval.
COMMISSION ON SALE:
Coastal Pet and Affiliate agree to the commission based on agreed upon commission rates and program terms in Coastal Pet’s affiliate network website, which you may find after logging into the Rakuten Network.
LINKING TO OUR WEBSITE:
Upon acceptance into the Program, links will be made available to you through the affiliate network interface on Rakuten. Your acceptance in our program means you agree to and abide by the following:
You will only use linking code obtained from the affiliate interface without manipulation. You MAY shorten the exact code provided in the affiliate interface through URL shortener services.
All domains that use your affiliate link must be listed in your affiliate profile.
Your website will not in any way copy, resemble or mirror the look and feel of our website. You will also not use any means to create the impression that your website is our website including, without limitation, framing our website in any manner.
You may not engage in cookie stuffing or include pop-ups, false or misleading links on your website. In addition, wherever possible, you will not attempt to mask the referring URL information (i.e., the page from where the click is originating).
Using redirects to bounce a click off of a domain from which the click did not originate in order to give the appearance that it came from that domain is prohibited.
If you are found redirecting links to hide or manipulate their original source, your current and past commissions will be voided or your commission level will be set to 0%. We reserve the right to remove you from our program for any reason. This does not include using “out” redirects from the same domain where the affiliate link is placed.
ONLINE ADVERTISING GUIDELINES:
If you are enrolled in our Program and participate in online advertising, such as Google AdWords or Facebook, you must adhere to our Online Advertising Guidelines by not doing any of the following without Coastal Pet’s prior written consent:
Bidding on the Coastal Pet brand in search engine or social media advertising, such as Google AdWords, Facebook, Instagram, or Yahoo/Bing, including, but not restricted to, our domain name, our company name, and our trademarks or registered URLs, including any variations, abbreviations, or misspellings) of Coastal Pet.
You may not use our trademarked or brand terms in sequence with any other keyword (e.g. Coastal Pet Coupons), including any misspellings.
You may not use our trademarked terms in your ad title, ad copy, display name, ad extensions, or as the display URL nor may you CLOAK or MASK these URL’s in online advertising campaigns.
You may not direct link to our website from any online ad or use redirects that yield the same result (a.k.a. URL hijacking). Affiliates must be directed to an actual page on your website.
You may not use the same tone, text, or images as our current or past ads. All paid ads need to have a different look and feel than Coastal Pet’s current or past ads and you may not use the word “official” in connection with the Coastal Pet owned property’s name in domain names, search ads, or on landing pages.
If you automate your online advertising campaigns, it is your responsibility to exclude our trademarked, brand, and misspelled terms from your program and we strongly suggest you add our trademarked, brand, and misspelled terms as negative keywords. We have a strict no-tolerance policy on online advertising trademark bidding. If you are unsure whether a term is trademarked, brand, or misspelled, it is your responsibility to reach out to us to find out. If you are an affiliate partner, please email affiliates@CoastalPet.com You will forfeit all commissions for a minimum of 30 days and your commission will be set to 0% without warning if you engage In online advertising trademark bidding that uses our trademarked, brand, or misspelled terms without prior written consent. We reserve the right to remove you from our program at any time for any reason.
COUPON GUIDELINES:
If you are enrolled in our Program and your Website promotes coupon codes, you must adhere to our Coupon Guidelines as follows:
You may ONLY advertise coupon codes that are provided to you through the affiliate program or network.
Posting any information about how to work around the requirements of a coupon/promotion (i.e., the requirement that a person be a first time shopper) will result in removal from the Program.
Coupons must be displayed in their entirety with the full offer, valid expiration date and code.
You may NOT use any technology that covers up the coupon code and generates the affiliate click by revealing the code(s).
You may NOT advertise coupon codes that you did not obtain from our affiliate marketing channel, including coupon codes from our marketing emails, paid search or any other non-affiliate advertising campaigns, unless the codes are also provided in our affiliate marketing channel.
You may NOT give the appearance that any ongoing Coastal Pet promotional offer requires clicking from your website in order to redeem. For example, placing an order results in free shipping at checkout for all customers, you may not turn this into an offer that infers that the customer must click from your site to get this deal.
Cookie Stuffing/Forced Clicks: You must not mislead customers into clicking on an offer or coupon that does not exist or practice similarly deceptive tactics that are generally known as “cookie stuffing or forced clicks.” These include, but are not limited to:
Using knowingly expired offers or presenting offers that do not exist or are not affiliate offers.
Making claims that a user must click on a link first to activate or receive an offer.
Presenting a button that claims to show all offers that sets the affiliate cookie in the background.
Technology that generates a click or sets the cookie from the action of copying a coupon code or through a pop-under.
Additionally, if your website ranks on the first page of Google for terms related to our website or company name combined with the words coupon, coupons, coupon code, promo code, etc. and/or your conversion rate exceeds 0.20%, you may be offered a lower commission than our standard rate to offset the reduced profitability of orders.
COUPON ATTRIBUTION & AUTHENTICATION:
Valid promotions and codes are defined as those that are made available to the affiliate channel in general, through newsletters or the coupon inclusion list on Rakuten, to that affiliate directly/privately. Coupon codes that are not real, expired, or not made available to the affiliate are not considered valid codes and the affiliate will not be given commission on these orders. These orders will be canceled, zeroing out commissions for improper use.
SUB-AFFILIATE NETWORKS:
Promoting Coastal Pet through a sub-affiliate network is permitted; however, you must be transparent regarding where traffic from your sub-affiliates originated. Sub-affiliate networks must ensure that all sub-affiliates promoting the Coastal Pet program adhere to these Terms. This includes restrictions on advertising through toolbars, browser extensions, and through any paid placements such as pay-per-click campaigns. Sub-affiliate networks must also receive approval prior to allowing any type of coupon sub-affiliate to promote the Coastal Pet program.
Failure to comply with our sub-affiliate network terms may result in a loss and/or reduction of commissions from sales made through any sub-affiliate that does not comply with our program terms.
DOMAIN NAMES:
Use of any of our trademarked terms, including our subsidiaries as part of the domain or sub-domain for your website is strictly prohibited (e.g.CoastalPet.website.com).
EMAIL ADVERTISING & PUBLICITY:
You will not issue any press release or create any marketing material that states or implies that you are a “partner” with Coastal Pet or have any relationship other than as a member of our affiliate or influencer programs. If you intend to promote our Program via e-mail campaigns, you must:
Send e-mail on your own behalf and not imply that the e-mail is sent on behalf of Coastal Pet;
Send copies of all emails to affiliates@CoastalPet.com.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
Promotion on Facebook, TikTok, X, Twitch, YouTube and other social media platforms is permitted following these general guidelines:
You ARE allowed to promote affiliate channel approved offers to your own lists; more specifically, you’re welcome to use your affiliate links on your own Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter and Pinterest pages, among other platforms.
You ARE PROHIBITED from posting your affiliate links on Coastal Pet’s Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and other company social media pages in an attempt to turn those links into affiliate sales.
You ARE PROHIBITED from running any social media ads such as Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram or Pinterest with Coastal Pet’s company name or other trademarks without written approval.
You ARE PROHIBITED from creating social media accounts, pages, or posts that in any way copy, resemble, represent, or mirror the look and feel of our social media accounts, pages, or posts. You will also not use any means to create the impression that your accounts, pages, or posts are Coastal Pet’s accounts, pages or posts.
You ARE REQUIRED to include clear FTC Disclosure that we are partnering together, and you may be earning commissions/revenue from any sales.
OPERATIONS OUTSIDE UNITED STATES:
Coastal Pet will only ship to consumers within the 50 contiguous US states. Consumer orders from outside of the 50 contiguous US states are strictly prohibited.
FTC ENDORSEMENT GUIDELINES DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS:
If you are compensated by Coastal Pet in any way for a post (including with cash, credit, discounts, product, contest entries, commissions and so on), you must clearly and conspicuously disclose such compensation. This applies across all media channels. For example, on Instagram, X, Facebook, Twitch, or YouTube, if you are promoting Coastal Pet, or showing product that was given to you by Coastal Pet, you must include #CoastalPet, or #ad prominently in your caption, before any “break” in the text that is shown to viewers of your content, or otherwise conspicuously indicate that you were or may be compensated by Coastal Pet. For more information about FTC guidelines, please review https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/1001a-influencer-guide-508_1.pdf.
REVERSAL & COMMUNICATION POLICY:
Coastal Pet reserves the right to reverse orders (compensation) due to order cancellations, duplicate tracking, disputed charges, returns and program violations as outlined in these terms and conditions.
Additionally, if we ask you for clarification or more information on any orders or clicks that we suspect may be in violation of our terms and conditions, we expect that you will respond in a timely and honest manner. Below are violations of our communications policy.
You are not forthcoming, intentionally vague or are found to be lying.
You are not responsive within a reasonable time period and after multiple attempts to contact with information listed in your network profile.
You cannot substantiate or validate the source of your traffic to our program with clear and demonstrable proof.
If any of the above apply, then we reserve the absolute right to reverse orders, set your commission to 0% or suspend you from the program for the period or orders in question. We know that many violations are a result of automated processes; however, it is incumbent upon each affiliate to ensure that it has the appropriate checks and balances in place to proactively address these issues and adhere to our program rules.
If you breach any of these Terms, Coastal Pet may remove you from the Affiliate Program immediately and permanently. Coastal Pet also reserves the right to withhold or cancel any and all compensation for transactions not in compliance with these Terms.
Questions about the Coastal Pet Program?
Contact our Affiliate Team at affiliates@coastalpet.com