Voucher codes: A powerful tracking tool
Voucher code tracking is one of the most elegant and effective tools in the affiliate marketer's arsenal. When used correctly, it simplifies campaign tracking, prevents fraud, and enables offline conversion measurement.
What is a voucher code?
A voucher code is a short sequence of letters and numbers that customers enter during checkout to receive discounts, promotions, or coupons on their purchase. These codes are sometimes called promo codes or discount codes, and they work for both online stores and physical shops.
Marketers often create unique codes for specific campaigns, allowing them to verify where a customer found the code and track how effective it was. For example, one affiliate might receive a custom code to share on their website or social media channel, while another uses a separate code for offline services. This makes it easy to review results and understand the difference between campaigns, while preventing fraud or misuse.
What is a tracking voucher?
A tracking voucher is the tool that allows advertisers to create unique and custom voucher codes for their affiliates that are also tracked. This means that the advertiser can create a code for a particular partner that only this partner can use, and the advertiser can then get a full report on this voucher.
Promo codes and discount codes explained
While voucher codes, promo codes, and discount codes all serve the same purpose—to give customers savings on purchases—there are subtle differences in how they're used.
Promo codes are often part of larger marketing promotions, where advertisers want to encourage new customers to try a product or service.
Discount codes are usually tied to a specific store or campaign and give a fixed reduction in price at checkout.
In practice, all three work similarly: a short number or sequence of letters that a customer enters when making an order online. For advertisers, the key is not only to reward the customer with discounts but also to track the effectiveness of each code. By assigning the right type of code to the right campaign, marketers can better understand which offers generate the most valuable results.
Why tracking vouchers are used
Tracking vouchers make the use of voucher codes more elegant, especially on social media channels like Instagram. With tracking vouchers, you can give a unique voucher to a specific ad inventory and then track its effectiveness.
In contrast to regular vouchers, tracking vouchers also allow for offline tracking. Every time the voucher is used, it's tracked and traced back to the correct ad inventory.
The "voucher stealing" problem (solved)
Back in the days, there was a problem called "voucher stealing" where one affiliate would steal a voucher code from another affiliate. This made the whole process much harder to manage and impossible to accurately attribute conversions.
Tracking vouchers solved this problem. Since each code is unique to a specific affiliate or campaign, this type of fraud is essentially eliminated. You always know exactly which affiliate drove each conversion.
What data can you gather?
With tracking vouchers, the advertiser can track the effectiveness of voucher codes much better than traditional methods. You can gather data specific to each unique tracking voucher you've created:
- Conversion volume: How many times was the code redeemed
- Average order value: What was the monetary value of orders using the code
- Customer demographics: Who is using the code (location, device, etc.)
- Redemption timing: When codes are used (time of day, day of week, seasonality)
- Return customer rate: Do first-time customers using this code return
- Channel performance: Which channels drive the most code usage
- Offline conversions: Physical store redemptions tied to online campaigns
This data makes it much easier to create new strategies, amend old ones, or simply scale existing ones.
The limitations of tracking vouchers
However, this is the part that most affiliate networks skip—what are the limitations of these tools? When it comes to tracking vouchers, remember that this is only part of your affiliate marketing, which is only part of the totality of your digital marketing presence.
Depending on how big the affiliate part of your digital marketing strategy is, it will also directly affect how useful these tools are and how exact the tracking is on a grand scale.
The key point: Affiliate is only a part of your digital marketing toolbox, and you will have to coordinate affiliate with your other channels to get the complete picture.
Avoid data contamination
Always make sure that you are able to attribute traffic correctly so that the channels used and the effectiveness of them are as accurately reported as possible. Be wary of "contaminating" the data by mixing attribution models or using the same code across multiple channels.
You should be certain of all the touchpoints in the whole ecosystem of digital marketing, and we wholeheartedly recommend a holistic approach to your digital marketing strategy.
Best practices for voucher tracking
1. Create unique codes for each affiliate/campaign
Don't reuse codes. Each unique campaign, affiliate, or channel should have its own dedicated code. This ensures clean data attribution.
2. Use consistent naming conventions
Make codes easy to understand. Instead of random characters, consider naming patterns that indicate the source: INST_BRAND_Q1 for Instagram, Brand Q1 campaign. This helps everyone understand the code at a glance.
3. Set clear discount levels
Different codes can offer different discounts. Use this strategically: test 5% vs. 10% discounts, or offer free shipping codes for specific segments. Track which discount levels convert best.
4. Monitor expiration dates
Set realistic expiration dates for codes. Limited-time codes create urgency, but ensure the timeframe is appropriate for your campaign timeline.
5. Prevent code sharing
Make codes exclusive to the publisher. Educate affiliates about the importance of not sharing their codes publicly or with competitors.
Tracking vouchers in action
Social media campaigns
Tracking vouchers are especially powerful on social media. Influencers and content creators can share their unique code on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Each code tells you exactly how effective that influencer's promotion was.
Email campaigns
Segment your email list and give different segments different codes. Track which email segments convert best, helping you refine future campaigns.
Offline retail
Create codes exclusively for offline retail staff to hand out at the register. Track offline redemptions and measure the effectiveness of in-store promotions.
SMS marketing
Text message campaigns with unique codes achieve high redemption rates. Track SMS-specific codes separately to measure the channel's ROI.
Conclusion
Voucher tracking is a very useful tool in your affiliate marketing arsenal. With tracking vouchers, you can:
- Prevent "voucher stealing" by making codes unique
- Gather precise data on specific campaigns
- Track offline conversions
- Create a smarter, more data-driven strategy for voucher usage
- Segment audiences and test different discount levels
- Attribute conversions accurately across channels
As with any tool, tracking vouchers have specific uses and limitations, and should be used accordingly. All tools are only as good as their users in the end. But with a solid strategy and proper implementation, voucher tracking can significantly improve your affiliate marketing results and help you understand exactly which campaigns and affiliates are driving real revenue.
