Coupon Attribution

Some partners will never share a link. They mention your app in a workshop, a Slack community, or a client call. A coupon or discount code is a way to credit those partners: the merchant types a code, and you know who sent them.

How code attribution works

You give a partner a unique code, and when a merchant applies it, the code identifies the partner. Unlike a link, a code does not depend on cookies or clicks surviving. The merchant carries it in their head and types it in, which makes it robust for offline, word-of-mouth, and community referrals that a link never captures.

Where the discount actually applies

For a Shopify app, a discount applies to your app's billing, not the merchant's store checkout. Shopify's app billing supports discounts on subscription charges. The partner code and the discount can be the same thing, so the merchant gets a deal and you get attribution, or they can be separate, so the code only attributes with no discount attached. Choose based on whether you want to hand the merchant an incentive.

The double-edged nature of codes

Codes are public by nature. Once a code exists it can spread beyond the partner who earned it, land on a coupon site, and attribute installs the partner never drove. This is the opposite failure of links. Links under-credit because the code gets stripped; codes over-credit because the code leaks.

Keeping codes honest

• •Make codes specific and hard to guess, not GUESSME or SAVE20.
• •Watch for a sudden spike on one code, which usually means it leaked to a coupon site.
• •Reserve codes for high-trust partners like agencies and named consultants, and use links for everyone else.

Codes and links together

The strongest setup is not codes or links, it is both. Give a partner a link for the merchants who click and a code for the merchants who do not. Attribute whichever one shows up, and dedupe carefully so a single install is never credited twice.