Here are some of the terms you'll encounter in our documentation and what they mean.

Customer: Someone who is paying to use a product or service.

Email subscribers / Email contact: Someone who has opted in to receive email communication from a content creator or brand.

ESP: Email Service Provider. A company that offers email marketing services.

Media brand: A platform for a community with shared interests, focused on the interests of this community through content aggregation and offered services.

Newsletter: An email broadcast sent out to people who have opted to receive it.

Newsletter publisher: A person or company that sends out regular email broadcasts to subscribers who have opted to receive it.

Paid subscriber: Someone who pays to receive content from a media brand.

User: Someone who uses a product or service, free or paid.

Partner Network: SparkLoop's network of newsletters that recommend each other and earn commissions for confirmed referrals.

Partner: A newsletter that has joined the SparkLoop Partner Network and recommends other newsletters to earn revenue.

Signup Flow: A widget shown to new subscribers after they opt in, displaying paid and free newsletter recommendations.

Recommendations Hub: A hosted page that bundles multiple newsletter recommendations into a single shareable link.

Partner Links: Affiliate-style links a partner can use in emails, blog posts, or social media to recommend a specific newsletter.

Offers: Brand and product recommendations shown in Signup Flow, earning commissions per confirmed conversion (click, lead, or action).

Confirmed referral: A subscriber who has been verified as genuine and counts towards a partner's earnings.

Smart Recommendations Optimizer (SRO): SparkLoop's algorithm that automatically selects the highest-earning recommendations for each subscriber in real time.

Partner Program: A paid growth program where a newsletter publisher sets a monthly budget and pays only for confirmed, engaged subscribers referred by other newsletters.

Optimized Partner Program (OPP): The self-serve Partner Program plan, starting from $100/month.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): The amount a publisher pays per confirmed subscriber acquired through their Partner Program.

Engagement Screening: A system that delays counting a referral as confirmed until the new subscriber has remained subscribed for a set number of days.

Spend cap: A monthly budget limit set by the publisher to control Partner Program costs.

Advocates / Referrer: Someone who promotes a newsletter to their contacts via a referral link.

Campaign: A referral program set up in SparkLoop attached to a specific list in the ESP.

Double-sided referral program: A referral program in which both the advocate and the new subscriber are incentivized.

Milestone rewards: Prizes given to subscribers for hitting a certain number of referrals.

Recurring reward: A reward offered repeatedly for achieving various milestones in a referral program.

Referral giveaways: A promotion in which advocates are entered into a random prize draw for bringing in referrals during a certain period.

Referral hub: The area where subscribers can see how many people they've referred, what prizes they can win, and get sharing links.

Referral link: A unique link given to each subscriber that allows them to share the newsletter with their contacts.

Referral points: Points assigned to each new referral a subscriber brings in.

Referral section: The area of a newsletter where subscribers are given their unique sharing links.

Referrals: Someone who has signed up for a newsletter based on a recommendation from a friend, using that friend's unique link.

Total referral count: The number of referrals a subscriber has brought in.

Referral traffic: Web users who visit a website using a unique referral link.