Promo Codes: Tracking Influencer Campaigns Without the Click

This vendible was originally published on PerformanceIn.com.

Influencer marketing has been increasing in popularity for years, as increasingly brands discover influencers to be some of their most constructive marketing partners. But influencers can moreover be one of the most difficult partners to measure, since they work wideness multiple channels and platforms. Luckily for performance marketers, there’s a simple solution: clickless tracking via promo codes.

In this article, we’ll explain how clickless tracking works, where promo codes fit in, and why you should start using promo codes to measure your influencer campaigns. 

What Is Clickless Tracking?

Clickless tracking is a way to symbol conversions without requiring the consumer to click on a tracking link. 

One of the most worldwide examples of clickless tracking is the promo code. Promo codes, which are moreover known as vanity codes, unbelieve codes, and referral codes, are perfect for measuring campaigns where tracking links are ineffective or untellable to use. 

For example, let’s say you want to promote your subscription meal wordage service on a podcast well-nigh cooking. Listeners who are interested in your service can’t click on an unite tracking link. Instead, the podcast host reads your ad, directs users to your website or app, and tells them to enter a special promo lawmaking at checkout. Whenever a listener uses that promo lawmaking to sign up for your service, the podcast partner gets credit for the conversion. 

With clickless tracking, the promo lawmaking acts like an unite tracking link, letting the forerunner know exactly which influencer crush which conversion. And considering promo codes are not restricted to a specific link on a website or app, they offer advertisers valuable wangle to scale. 

Promo Lawmaking Basics

While popular with marketers for measuring influencer campaigns, promo codes can be used virtually anywhere that razzmatazz exists (given you have the technology to implement them). This includes online platforms, offline media, and anything in between. That makes promo codes infinitely adaptable, and allows them to unshut up spare marketing channels for any forerunner or unite program. 

Examples of channels where promo codes can be used to track conversions: 

• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube
• Twitch
• podcasts
• brick-and-mortar stores
• billboards
• magazines
• radio
• TV

Influencers in particular are fans of promo codes considering they are platform agnostic, making them perfect for cross-channel promotion. An influencer can use the same promo lawmaking in an Instagram feed, an email blast, and a YouTube video, and hands track conversions wideness each of those channels, despite the difference in how their fans slosh each medium and message.

To make clickless tracking work wideness these channels, advertisers need to have a unrepealable level of tenancy over their shopping cart functionality and tracking capabilities. Specifically, you need to be worldly-wise to add a promo lawmaking field to your website or app checkout page. You moreover need to be worldly-wise to pass checkout data in a conversion link (i.e., identify what lawmaking is used at checkout and send that information when to a tracking platform like TUNE). You can learn increasingly well-nigh how the TUNE platform handles promo codes in this help article.

All this sounds great, right? However, it is important to remember that promo codes are a niche solution, not a way of life. If you are an forerunner with an unite program, and you have the worthiness to use link-based tracking, use it — as long as you’re using postback tracking, not pixel tracking. Pixel tracking is growing increasingly risky as browsers continue to restrict the use of third-party cookies for marketing purposes. 

To future-proof your tracking, we suggest raising server-to-server tracking methods like postback tracking as soon as possible. (Check out our help vendible on server postback tracking to learn more.)

Final Thoughts

Promo codes are a unconfined way for advertisers to diversify their partnerships vastitude traditional web-based unite marketing. And considering clickless tracking does not require cookies to work, promo codes will remain in use for the foreseeable future, plane as other tracking methods wilt obsolete or fall out of favor. If you’d like to learn increasingly well-nigh how promo codes and TUNE can help you to partner the way you want to, email us at sales@tune.com.