Buyer Contracts in CAKE Basic

This lesson will walk through Buyer Contracts for the Lead Gen license of CAKE Basic. We will discuss an overall understanding of what a Buyer Contract is within cupCAKE, how to set one up as well as the different tabs on the Buyer Contract card.

A Buyer Contract within CAKE Basic gives the ability for Buyers to buy from a specific Vertical. Each relationship between a Buyer and a Vertical is called a Buyer Contract and is unique. In order for a Buyer to buy a lead, they need to have a Buyer Contract for the vertical associated with that lead.

To create a Buyer Contract, hover over your Lead Gen Main Tab, move down to Contracts and over to “Add Buyer Contract.” Once you click on this, the wizard for adding a Buyer Contract will appear. Select the Buyer you are creating the contract for and click Next.

Then, give this contract a name, we suggest using the Buyer's Name dash the Vertical, i.e. "Test Lead Gen - Daily Deals"

**By default, CAKE Basic will set the Max Post Errors at 10.  This means that after CAKE Basic receives 10 errors (timeouts, communication errors, or general failures), it will turn the Buyer Contract off.  You can set this number lower or, If you want CAKE Basic to continue trying to post to the Buyer Contract  regardless of how many errors there are, set it at 11.  Any number past 10 will result in the contract never being turned off.

On the Info sub-tab under the Home tab of the Buyer Contract card, you can edit the basic information for this contract. Then, on the "Post Information" sub-tab, you can set a number of posting instructions for this particular contract.

-The Default Thank You Link allows you to set the thank you link you need to send on to your Affiliates each time this Buyer purchases a lead.

-The Max Post Errors determine how many Posting Errors are required within the previous 10 attempts before this Buyer Contract is automatically set to "inactive." 

-Rank allows for another level of priority for this Buyer Contract when being considered to purchase a lead. A Rank of Zero is the best and highest.             

    
-Email Template allows you to set the specific lead delivery email template you want to be used to send the lead to this Buyer Contract.

The Delivery Schedule tab will allow you to build out your Buyer's schedule for this specific Buyer Contract. The Schedule includes the days of the week this Buyer Contract can buy leads, the times during the day they are available, how many leads this Buyer Contract can purchase on a daily basis and how much the Buyer is purchasing each lead for on a given day. Dynamic pricing is possible and is set up in the Delivery Method Tab.

When adding a Delivery Schedule you will need to know the following information about your Buyer buying leads. 

- Type: This drop down includes 3 options: Exclusive, Multisell or Hybrid. 

Exclusive means that leads selling to this Buyer Contract can not sell to any other Buyer Contract. The Buyer has Exclusive rights to the lead.
Multisell means that the leads selling to this Buyer Contract also have to sell to another Buyer Contract as well. If another Buyer Contract is not available to purchase the lead, the lead will not sell at all.
Hybrid will accept a Multisell lead but if another Buyer Contract is not available to also purchase the Multisell lead, the Buyer can still purchase the lead as if it were Exclusive.

- Sweeper: A Sweeper is a Buyer Contract, per day that it is checked, that can purchase a multi-sold lead at a lower price. Sweeper Buyer Contracts do not become eligible to purchase a lead until the Minimum Sweeper Partners has been reached. This is a concept specific to CAKE Basic, normally "Sweepers" get the lower price, due to the competition on the lead. Rather than it being sold at least twice, they are sold more often which is why the lead is cheaper. You can configure sweeper partners per Vertical to your liking(Vertical > Home tab > Routing Information tab > Sweeper Partners).

- Priority: Clicking Priority, per day that it is clicked, will inform cupCAKE to ignore Price Priority. CAKE Basic will prioritize which Buyer Contract to sell a lead to based on which contract is willing to spend the most money. That is unless Priority is activated. Additionally, a Buyer Contract can have a Ranking Priority.

- No Return: Clicking No Return, per day that it is clicked, will disable the Buyer's ability to return leads sold to this Buyer Contract.

Filters are Buyer-specific requirements for leads. You have the ability to filter IN leads to sell to Buyers, and to filter OUT leads to not sell to Buyers. An example would be Contains State. If you have a Buyer that will only purchase leads if the State is California, Arizona, or Oregon, you can create that filter and apply it to that specific Buyer contract. Filters are based off specific fields from your Vertical. Any specific value which comes in for a particular field can have a filter.

Note: Inclusion filters VS. Exclusionary filters are handled via the Filter Types Operator. Example: List contains(Inclusion filter) VS List Does Not Contain(Exclusionary filter).

The Posting Document your Buyer has provided you with will be implemented in the Delivery Method Tab in the Buyer Contract. cupCAKE supports several posting methods including Email Delivery, POST, GET, SOAP, XML, and JSON. CAKE Basic also supports custom headers, if necessary.

This is also where you will be mapping the information from your Posting Doc to your Buyer as well as your responses.

*When adding your responses, use the rule of thumb to add your Success response first!

Note: Responses Text is case sensitive. Meaning the response would have to return "true", if the response included "True" that would not be interpreted as a success.