Referral Links are the most popular way to track affiliate orders and credit the affiliates. Once you approve an affiliate, a unique link will be created for the affiliate consisting of your store's domain followed by tracking parameters (e.g. https://www.yourdomain.com?rfsn=123456.abc123). Refersion relies on first party tracking which means you should see SEO benefits as affiliates promote your links.
Creating Page-Specific Referral Links (Deep Linking)
You or your affiliates can easily create page specific links. To do this, go to Dashboard > Generate Referral Link and input the destination page. Note that this address needs to begin with the same domain address you created when signing up to Refersion, also displayed on this pop-up. After entering the destination page, select an affiliate and click Generate.
Affiliates can do this by clicking on Create link to a specific page from the Affiliate Dashboard.
SubIDs
Refersion tracking links also support SubIDs. SubIDs are additional custom tags that allow for additional tracking of affiliate links, and they can be any string of text. For example, an affiliate might be interested in tracking if a conversion came through a Facebook post, a Twitter post, or the header/footer/specific page on their blog. SubIDs are great for more detailed tracking.
For more info on SubIDs, check out this article.
Changing Referral Links
Referral links can be changed in two ways, affiliates can use our Bit.ly integration directly from their dashboard (or a different third party URL shortener) and you can create custom Vanity URL redirects for the affiliates, with a new URL redirecting to the affiliate link. Vanity URLs exist outside Refersion, so you'd have to let your affiliates know what they are (their actual link would still show up on their affiliate portal).
Please note: Unfortunately, you cannot create vanity links inside Refersion. Please use one of the three options below.
Option 1: Bit.ly
Using our bit.ly integration, affiliates can automatically convert their referral links into bit.ly links right from the affiliate dashboard:
Option 2: Domain Redirect
You can setup a redirect from your shop to an affiliate's referral link. For example, you can create:
And have that automatically redirect to:
Option 3: For Shopify Users:
Learn how to create vanity affiliate links in Shopify. We also have another app, called Traffic Control, that allows you to create redirects in bulk.
What's Next?