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Agency Referral Attribution
Practical guidance on agency referral attribution for Shopify app founders.
Tracking and Attribution · ~5 min read
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Agencies are often the best partners a Shopify app has and the hardest to attribute. They recommend your app inside client projects, on calls, and in proposals, where there is no link to click and no code to type. Standard attribution misses most of what they do.
How agencies actually refer
An agency rarely shares a public affiliate link. They tell a client to install your app, or they install it themselves on the client's store during a build. The merchant of record is the client, the person who drove it is the agency, and nothing in the install flow connects the two. That gap, referrer and installer being different people, is the core challenge.
Why links and clicks fall short
A link assumes the referrer and the installer are the same browser. For agencies they are not. The agency might install on behalf of the client, or the client installs weeks after a conversation with no link involved. So the click and cookie signals that work for a content creator often produce nothing for an agency.
What works for agencies
- •A partner code the agency can quote in a proposal or apply to the client's app subscription, which does not depend on a click.
- •Manual attribution: the agency or you names the store, and you credit it to the agency by hand. For a high-trust relationship this is honest and simple.
- •Asking the agency to install through a tracked link when they do the install themselves, which turns an agency install into an exact match.
Trust over tracking
With agencies, the relationship carries more weight than the tracking. You usually know your agency partners by name. A short monthly reconciliation, where the agency lists the stores they onboarded and you confirm and credit them, is more reliable than any automatic signal and keeps the relationship warm.
Practical checklist
- ✓You offer agencies a code or manual attribution, not just a click link
- ✓Agencies who install on behalf of clients have a way to be credited
- ✓You reconcile agency-driven installs directly, by name, on a regular cadence
Common mistakes
- ✕Handing an agency a click link and assuming it captures their referrals
- ✕Missing installs where the agency installed on the client's behalf
- ✕Never reconciling, so agencies quietly stop recommending you
How this works in PartnerDock
PartnerDock's manual attribution lets you credit a specific store to an agency partner by hand, which covers the installs agencies drive through proposals and client work where no link is clicked. Agencies who do the install themselves can go through a tracked link for an exact match, and each partner's commission terms are snapshotted on the referral so a later rate change never rewrites what they already earned.
Try PartnerDock FreeFAQ
How do I credit an agency that installs on the client's behalf?+
Have them install through their tracked link so it is an exact match, or credit the store to them manually. A regular reconciliation by store name is the most reliable approach for agencies.
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