How to use promotion codes for referral tracking

Spreading the word about your online business on the modern internet means you need to go where the action is. Link-based tracking is still a great foundation for building an affiliate or customer referral program, but with more and more people getting their information about what and where to buy from video, podcasts, and social media, the need to track referrals from online influencers using shareable coupon codes is only going to grow.

In this article, we'll explain how you can use Stripe promotion codes to allow your affiliates to drive more customers to your business.

When you connect your Stripe account to Rewardful, the system receives and responds to notifications about key events occurring in your business, like when customer records are created or updated or when a coupon discount is applied.

Rewardful lets you assign promotion codes to your affiliates in the same way that affiliate link tokens are assigned. When customers check out using an affiliate's promotion code, Rewardful is able to track it and attribute the customer to the appropriate affiliate. Your customer gets a discount on their purchase, and your affiliate is credited with the customer and receives commission according to your campaign's rules.

Rewardful's promotion code tracking feature was designed to get you from zero to functioning affiliate program as quickly as possible, and because customers are matched to affiliates on the basis of promotion code redemption, it's all possible to do without ever installing the Rewardful tracking script on your website - or for that matter, without having a website at all!

During our onboarding and setup process and once you've connected your Stripe account and configured your account settings and initial campaign, you'll be presented with a number of options for adding Rewardful to your website.

For merchants solely interested in using coupon codes to track affiliate referrals, Rewardful offers a Stripe Promo Codes integration option. This feature caters specifically to those who can't or won't use affiliate links, and selecting it will allow you to bypass the instructions for installing the tracking script and simply get on with setting up your program and recruiting affiliates.

Keep in mind, link-based tracking will not function without the tracking script. By choosing the Stripe Promo Codes integration, you are opting for a straightforward and efficient method of referral tracking that leverages only promo codes. If you plan to allow your affiliates to use a mix of links and coupon codes, you should choose another integration option and install the tracking script. Don't worry, you'll still be able to set up promotion codes even if you're also using links.

Rewardful's campaigns already let you group affiliates together according to the type, duration, and amount or percentage of their commissions. Now, you'll also be able to define the settings for the discounts they'll be offering their referred customers too. From your Edit campaign form, find the Affiliate Discounts and Promo codes option from the Advanced settings section.

Clicking the Enable affiliate discounts button will open the affiliate discount setup page.

Specify the name of the discount coupon. This will be the name of the coupon that will appear in Stripe. You will also specify the discount rate, discount duration (forever, repeating how many times the discount is applied, or only once), and discount type (percentage of the sale or fixed amount discount). Click the Next button once you have specified the discount terms.

This section of the discount setup allows you to specify if you would like to apply the discount as a standalone coupon-based referral method, part of the link-based referral method, or both.

If you wish discounts to be applied only if the customer uses the affiliate promo code, toggle on the Via promo codes option and check Generate unique promo codes for every affiliate when they join the campaign. if you want only new customers to get the discount and be attributed to affiliates, check the Limit promo codes to new customers only option.

If you want to incorporate the discount code as part of the link-based referral method, toggle on the Via referral links option. Please note, additional setup is needed described in our double-sided incentive guide.

To activate the coupon-based referral method and double-sided incentive option for link-based referral method, review the coupon settings and if the settings are correct, click Enable affiliate discounts. This will be applied automatically to your campaign. Otherwise, go back and review the discount settings or discard and start all over.

Note: Once you enable promo codes and save your settings, they cannot be disabled. To turn off a promo code, you will need to remove the coupon code from the campaign. The action will deactivate current promo codes and prevent the generation of new ones. Please note that removing the campaign coupon code will also disable any double-sided incentives if they are enabled.

As affiliates are added to your campaign, Rewardful will generate unique promotion codes based on the coupon you just created. Affiliates can choose to use the codes issued to them by the system or generate their own custom codes. Either way, though, they'll be able to start sharing them with their audiences right away with no work for you.

A few things to keep in mind as you're setting up your campaigns to use promo codes for attribution.

Percentage-based affiliate commissions in Rewardful are always computed based on the net sale amount which excludes taxes, refunds, and yes, discounts, so you should take this into consideration when configuring your campaigns.

For example, let's say you have a product that sells for $100 per month, but you're offering a 20% discount to customers who redeem a promo code. Your affiliate's commission on a sale will be calculated based on the $80 that was charged to the customer and not the $100 list price.

Merchants using Rewardful have historically used our double-sided incentives feature to provide affiliates with a way of offering referred customers a discount while they themselves receive a commission. While this has worked just fine for many of our customers, coupon-based attribution allows you to do the same with no changes to most standard Stripe checkout workflows.

We expect that most of our merchants will likely opt for the new feature instead of double-sided incentives for new campaigns and that many will migrate their existing double-sided campaigns to promo codes, but Rewardful will continue to support both options going forward. Campaigns, though, should be configured to use one or the other but not both of these since Stripe only allows a single coupon to be applied per customer.

In most cases, customer attribution in Rewardful works on a first-come, first-served basis meaning that the first affiliate to whom a Stripe customer is assigned will receive commissions for any subsequent purchases. This seems like common sense, but in practical terms, it can lead to occasional unexpected results.

Suppose, for example, that a customer visits your website via a link from affiliate A and is attributed to that affiliate upon creation. The customer later returns and uses a promo code from affiliate B for a subsequent purchase. In this case, the customer would receive the discount, since Stripe is responsible for calculating the billing details, but the commission for the sale would be received by affiliate A because the customer is associated with their account.

A similar rule applies to customers using multiple promotion codes over a series of purchases: the first affiliate will retain attribution for the customer.

Merchants can avoid repeated use of discount codes by disabling their use for existing Stripe customers.

Using coupon codes has a number of important advantages over our more traditional affiliate links.