Referral restrictions provide a merchant the capability to specify that the cookie of one affiliate (or group of affiliates) cannot override the cookie of an individual affiliate, group of affiliates, or all other affiliates. This provides the option to implement cookie stand down rules that meet the merchant’s program goals. Below are the simple steps to set up referral restrictions in your program.
Place Affiliates in Tag Groups
Identify the affiliates you wish to place the referral restriction on and place them in a tag group. For instance, if your goal is to ensure that coupon affiliates do not override all the other affiliates in your program, you will need to create a tag group that includes all the coupon affiliates that should have the restriction applied to.
Create Referral Restriction Tag Group Rule
Creating the referral restriction tag group rule can be accomplished in a few easy steps.
- From your AvantLink interface, navigate to Affiliates>Affiliate Tagging/Group Administration
- Select Tag Group Rules
- Select New Rule
- In the Rule Type dropdown select “Referral Restriction”
- Select the Tag Group you want to apply the referral restriction rule toward.
In our example listed in the previous section, the tag group rule below would ensure that coupon affiliates cannot override a cookie from any other affiliate. In other words, if a link from a social media influencer was clicked through first, and then the consumer clicked through a coupon affiliate link second, the link from the social media influencer would remain as the last click on record and retain the commission if a sale is converted.
Notes:
- A merchant may also configure a referral restriction rule to only be applied to two tag groups of affiliates. For example, affiliates in tag group A cannot overwrite affiliates in Tag Group B.
- All Tag Group Rules are subject to review by Avantlink. The rule will not go into effect until the rule is approved.
As always, if you have any questions about referral restrictions and how to set them up, please contact am@avantlink.com.