by 
Anyone running an Affiliate Marketing or Ambassador Program knows the importance of affiliate referral codes.
Whether you are managing an Ambassador Program with 100 members, or a Social Club with 100,000, affiliate referral codes can be a highly effective way to increase the value of your efforts.
Affiliate referral codes and links allow programs to attribute and realize real monetary value, while also providing ambassadors with an added incentive to create content. Perhaps most importantly, codes also give your consumers an additional reason to visit your eCommerce property and make purchases.
Why are affiliate referral codes important to a brand’s social strategy?
Discounts are eCommerce’s most important marketing tool
Discounts are the most important marketing tool for eCommerce brands; consumers love and EXPECT them. In fact, 88% of consumers say a discount or promotion makes them much more likely to become a first-time customer.
Expecting your ambassadors or affiliates to find new customers without the most important eCommerce marketing tactic is like shooting them in the foot and expecting them to run.
Moreover, these promo codes are actually a great way to track attribution with exceptional detail. Segmenting by campaign or influencer group and looking at redemptions helps to understand the promotions that work best.
What to expect after adding affiliate referral codes to ambassador or affiliate programs
A/B tests among several LoudCrowd ambassador and affiliate programs found that affiliate referral codes drove the following:
- 10x increase in conversion rates in affiliate marketing conversion rates
- 2x more sales compared to programs without affiliate referral codes
- 40% increase in UGC from program members
On average, brands can expect significantly more UGC from their ambassador and affiliate programs after implementing codes because they provide the creator with a strong CTA.
LoudCrowd makes it easy for brands to scale their affiliate referral code efforts
Whatever your motivation to leverage affiliate codes to your program, LoudCrowd has you covered with a few simple clicks.
Adding codes to your program
Navigate to your program, and then select “Settings” in the upper right hand corner.
From the settings Tab, add Affiliate Codes and then configure your code settings.
Type of Discount: You can choose whether you’d like to apply the discount to the entire order, or for just specific products (or collections).
Discount Percentage: This is the discount percentage for consumers. Our recommendation is that you set this to AT LEAST the amount of your most accessible discount (like subscribing to a newsletter), and preferably higher than that. Setting the discount lower than another easily achievable discount will results in a lack of actual attribution for sales and discouraged ambassadors.
Save your updates, and all ambassadors will automatically be assigned a code using the given format.
Communicating the Codes to Ambassadors
Ambassadors can learn about their codes in two places:
1) Ambassador Hub: If your brand has Ambassador Hub set up, ambassadors will be able to view their Affiliate Code when they visit their Hub page.
2) Email: Affiliate codes are past as a variable to Klaviyo, so an ambassador’s affiliate code can be added to any template. We recommend adding codes to Welcome Emails, general communication emails, or emails around Attributed Sales.
Commissions
Similar to storefronts sales, ambassadors that generate sales with their codes will be automatically paid their commissions via Tremendous at the end of the month.
The Bottom Line
Affiliate referral codes are an easy way to grow UGC and revenue coming from Affiliate Marketing and Ambassador Programs. With LoudCrowd, it’s easy for you to distribute and track from both codes and links.
If you’re an existing LoudCrowd partner, consult your dedicated client strategist to learn more. New to LoudCrowd? Chat with a member of our team for free.
