Put the Offer and Its Terms on One Page
A discount code or a campaign bonus sounds simple in a message. The conditions behind it decide whether a creator's audience ends up pleased or annoyed.
Why this belongs in an etiquette guide
When a creator shares your offer, they lend you their credibility. If a follower uses the code and then finds an exclusion nobody mentioned, the creator takes the complaint in their comments, not you. Giving them the complete terms at the outset is basic good manners, and it is also what makes a creator willing to work with you a second time.
What an offer really is
Sales promotion is one of the elements of the promotional mix: the use of short-term incentives to stimulate demand for a product or service. Short-term is the important part. Every promotion has edges, including who qualifies, when it ends and what it cannot be combined with, and those edges are where disappointment comes from.
The traditional home for those edges is the fine print, a term for less noticeable print placed alongside a more prominent offer, containing conditions the seller would sooner not emphasise. Do not use it. Put the conditions where the creator and their audience can see them.
The one-page rule
Before you send an offer to a creator, write a single page that you would be content for their followers to read. It should answer:
- What exactly is offered? In one sentence.
- Who can use it? New customers only, particular countries, a minimum age.
- When does it start and end? Include the time zone.
- What is the catch? Minimum spend, excluded products, one use per person, no combining with other offers.
- How is it claimed? A code, a link or an automatic discount.
- Who should be contacted if it does not work? A support address that will actually reply.
Borrow the structure from a busy category
Industries that run many promotions at once tend to gather them in one place, and that layout is worth studying even when the industry is one you would never work in. Take a Traditional Chinese overview page on which one online gaming brand gathers all of its current promotions into a single list, with each offer under its own heading (娛樂城優惠). Set aside the subject and look at the arrangement: one address, every running offer named separately, so that a reader can see what exists without piecing it together from scattered posts. A brand sending creators five different codes across five message threads should build the same kind of page first, and then link to it.
Give the creator words they can use
Do not make a creator summarise your terms from memory. Supply two or three short lines that they are free to rephrase, each of which remains accurate when shortened. If a claim only holds true with a footnote, rewrite the claim.
Test it yourself
- Use the code or link on a phone, signed out, the way a follower would.
- Try it with a product you expect to be excluded and confirm that the message shown is clear.
- Check what happens the day after it expires. A page that says "this offer has ended" is far better than an error.
If the terms change
Tell the creator before their audience finds out. A short note such as "we have had to end this early, here is the new date, sorry" lets them update their caption or pin a comment. Silence leaves them fielding complaints about something they cannot fix.
Restricted categories
Some products, among them alcohol, gambling, financial products and health claims, are subject to extra advertising rules, age limits and platform policies that differ by country. If your brand is in one of these categories, say so in the first message, and expect many creators to decline. That is their right, and a brief that conceals the category until later wastes everyone's time.
Noor Abernathy · revised 2026-11-12