Affiliates will typically integrate tracking links on their websites in order to drive traffic to your website, however, an Affiliate may prefer to simply promote a coupon code, as opposed to integrating a tracking link on their website. This is most common an Affiliate with a social media presence (influencer) where they may have character limitations, or their ability to post links is restricted. In this case, you do have the ability to set up an exclusive coupon code for an Affiliate. When you set up an exclusive coupon code for an Affiliate, the Affiliate can simply promote the coupon code itself, without the need to post a tracking link, and any time that coupon code is used during checkout the Affiliate that’s tied to this coupon code will be credited with the referral.
Please note that you will need to have Coupon Code Tracking set up for your account in order to properly set up exclusive coupon codes for your Affiliates. If you’re not sure if Coupon Code Tracking has been set up for your account please contact us at shareasale@shareasale.com and we’ll be happy to provide further support.
You can set up an exclusive coupon code for an Affiliate (after it’s been set up an activated on the back-end of your website) by following these steps:
Go to the Coupon Database in your Merchant account
Click ‘Add Coupon’ to pull up the Coupon/Deal Editor
In the Information box you’ll enter all of the applicable information about your Coupon/Deal (Title, Coupon Code, Start Date, End Date, etc). Please be sure to select 'Private' from the drop down menu when you're setting up the Coupon/Deal in your account. By doing so, you'll then be able to select the specific Affiliate that this Coupon/Deal is private to.
**When you make a Coupon/Deal private to an Affiliate, you'll then have the option to make it exclusive to that Affiliate. You'll want to do this by selecting 'Yes' from the drop down menu next to 'Force Exclusivity'. By making a Coupon/Deal exclusive to an individual Affiliate, what this means is that any time this coupon code is used on your site, it will automatically track that sale to this Affiliate that is private to you, regardless of if there were any Affiliate clicks at all, or if there were clicks from anyone else.**
4. Once you’ve entered all of the appropriate information associated with the Coupon/Deal click ‘Add Coupon’ to add it to your Creative Inventory
Once this Coupon/Deal has been added to your Creative Inventory your Affiliate will have the ability to promote it at any time.