One of the biggest reasons brands choose to join affiliate networks is to partner with social media influencers who can promote their products to their followers. Influencer marketing encompasses a broad range of strategies, but the affiliate model remains one of the most efficient.

Influencers with a huge following typically don’t join affiliate networks. You can’t expect Kylie Jenner herself applying to your program, but you’ll absolutely see a number of quality social media affiliates on various platforms.

And that’s great! Because instead of paying a huge amount of upfront cash for a placement that’s difficult to track performance on, you can use the Cost per Acquisition (CPA) model provided by the affiliate channel to attach your ad spend directly to campaign effectiveness.

But tracking links can be a bit… off-putting to say the least. When a blogger or website grabs a ReferZone link, it’s usually going to be hyperlinked to some text. You might see some content creators say something like “Click the link in my bio,” but that takes extra work for the customer, who may find it easier to simply Google your brand name.

Instead, you can leverage ReferZone’s Tracking Coupons functionality to create a personalized code that always tracks the sale to the influencer you created it for! Let’s take a look at how this works.

Step 1: Create the coupon in your e-commerce platform

To kick things off, you want to make sure the code actually exists and applies the appropriate discount at checkout. Nothing makes for a worse customer experience than seeing a coupon promoted that doesn’t actually work!

We find that an effective approach is to simply make the coupon code the influencer’s first name followed by the discount as a percentage. In our demonstration account, we have an affiliate named Elena Wood.

If we want to give her followers a discount for 25% off, we can set the code as ELENA10. You can add any sort of behavior you want to the code, such as only giving a discount on the customers’ first purchases. This will not affect its functionality on ReferZone.

Step 2: Create the code in your ReferZone account

Now we need to configure the code so that it will actually track. In your ReferZone account, go to Links -> Coupon Codes. Click the New Coupon button and add the details.

There’s an option labeled Is this a tracking coupon? Set that to Yes, then choose the affiliate from the dropdown:

Click Save Coupon. That’s it! You can let your influencer know that this coupon is now available for use.

Let’s see what happens when we place an order on our site using the tracking coupon.

Awesome! A $50 sale has tracked and we can see that the code ELENA25 was used. If we click Commissioned Affiliates on the transaction card, we can see that no actual click was ever registered, just the code usage.

How coupon code tracking interacts with the Attribution Model

Because there’s no tracking link involved, we can’t really know exactly when the coupon code was obtained by the customer. They might have clicked another affiliate’s link before viewing Elena Wood’s posts and vice-versa. Therefore, no matter your Attribution Model settings, the affiliate who the code belonged to will always move to the top of the attribution priority.

That means if we use Last Click attribution, Elena Wood will always be considered as the final click if her code is used. If we changed it to First Click, the Elena will be treated as the first click when her code is used.

Even if you get fancy with your model and assign a Label Rule that adjusts the affiliate’s priority level, they’ll still be treated as the top-ranked Commissioned Affiliate. Tracking Coupons are treated as the highest-priority in any attribution model.

If you have any questions about setting up linkless tracking with coupon codes, email us at info@referzone.io

Sign up for free today and start using ReferZone’s advanced tracking features with NO monthly fees.