Publisher Guide for using coupon codes to promote brands.
Coupons, sometimes referred to as voucher, promotional or discount codes can be a powerful tool to generate sales and make your proposition unique to your readers.
What is a coupon code?
A coupon code will be a short character string containing letters, numbers or a combination of both and may be something like XMAS2020. This character combination will be input into a specific box at the checkout to allow a discount to be obtained.
You can view all the coupons available for you to promote in your dashboard from advertisers you have been approved to promote. Remember you can apply to join an advertiser at any time to view their available coupon codes by clicking on Join Program. This will take you to the profile page for the advertiser where you can apply.
How do I add one to my website?
Coupon code tracking links are specially structured to allow us to track what coupons are being used by which affiliates and helps us to monitor the use of expired ones.
When you're ready to implement a coupon, go the ‘Creative’ section in your account and select the ‘Coupon’ tab at the top. This will take you to a directory of coupons and their terms as well as start and end dates for all the advertisers whose programs you are approved to promote.
To get the tracking link for this coupon or to customise HTML to copy and paste to embed the coupon and tracking to your site, select the coupon or filter by advertiser to find what you want, then click the icon on the far right-hand side located just after the end date of the coupon. It should read ‘Get HTML’ when you mouse over it.
Clicking on the ‘Get HTML’ icon should activate an overlay displaying the default advertiser tracking URL for the coupon in the code box, as well as some additional options should you wish to go on to create custom HTML.
Custom target URL allows you to put a specific clickthrough behind the coupon (relevant to the advertiser of the coupon), the anchor text allows you to insert specific Alt-text and the unique IDs allow you to associate a sub ID against the coupon to better monitor individual coupon placements and performance.
You’ll see the HTML update in parallel as you fill out these sections.
Finally, simply select where it will be displayed from the drop-down, whether you would like the Commission Factory tracking to be hidden and whether you would like the clickthrough page to open in another window. Then your bespoke HTML is ready to be copied and pasted to your site.
How should I promote them?
Coupon usage and best practice is a highly debated topic in the affiliate industry, and as a result, it is important they are promoted responsibly. As a basic standard Commission Factory expect:
- Terms of the code must be clear
- The nature of the code: sale, discount, deal etc. must be clear
- Activation and deactivation dates must be clear
- Affiliates should not encourage users to click on an affiliate link under the premise of a code where there is no code or the information around the code is misleading or not present
For more detail around industry coupon usage and best practise, please read our Coupon Code of Conduct to understand how you must / must not utilise coupon codes.