Affiliation | Tracking and attribution rules

Introduction

Purpose of the affiliation program

In the case of traffic and sales generation programs, all the traffic brought by the members is tracked, and can be used:

To reward traffic to the brand's website or to the Popsell App
To reward the sales generated, online on the Popsell App, online on the e-Commerce web site, or in shop

Three different implementation scenarios

Three different scenarios are to be considered :

Social commerce scenario

All the traffic is brought to the Popsell App, to the Member's e-shops, and the customer journey remains confined within the Application, from discovering the publication and the products, to filling the shopping cart and placing the order.
This is what we call here the Social Commerce scenario.

Mixed scenario

Traffic is brought to the Popsell App, to enable discovering of publications and products. But then the customers are redirected to the Brand’s e-commerce product pages, to fill the shopping cart and place the order.

Embedded scenario

From the customer's point of view, the entire journey is done on the Brand's e-Commerce site, which integrates Popsell's functionalities through embedded widgets.
The Popsell application is used exclusively by Members.

New inbound traffic vs existing traffic

With the Embedded scenario, part of the traffic made on the Member’s profiles and publications is due to the display of their publications on the e-Commerce pages (via the Publication and Community widgets).
Members are therefore not the cause of the customer's visit to the site. It is therefore necessary to make a distinction between the inbound traffic brought by members, and the traffic already existing on the site, and brought by usual means (SEO, SEA, Marketing campaigns …).

Challenges can be programmed according to different rules, and reward only the traffic brought by Members.
It is also possible to reward the transformation of an existing visitor into a buyer, a visitor who may have been influenced by the publication of a member. But this reward should be different (gain lower than the contribution of traffic)

Filtering the inbound traffic

In the Popsell database, the existing traffic is identified by “WIDGET” source in the database.
Please refer to Affiliation | Tracking Data model

It is possible to differentiate the inbound traffic brought by members, from the traffic due to existing visitors clicking on the Widgets embedded on the e-commerce website:

It can be filtered when programming a challenge. See Affiliation | Challenges
A global Brand parameter enables to hide in the Popsell App all the “Widget” traffic and the “Widget” attributed sales.
The traffic and the sales are still available in the Brand dashboards and KPIs.

Sales attribution | Last click

Rule

The general rule which applies to the attribution of sales is:

CODE

if exists [a visit other than “Widget”] then
        Sale is attributed to the LAST [visit other than "Widget"] 
else
        Sale is attributed to the LAST ["Widget" visit]

In other words, if a visit is made from a member’s link (e.g. ambassador’s Facebook post, an email sent by a member, a QR code displayed by a member, a URL link shared anywhere), the Sale is always attributed to the member, even if the visitor clicks on member’s posts or profiles displayed on widgets.

If several visits from member’s posts were made, the last one prevails.

If a visitor was not brought on the website by a member, but clicks on several publications via the Popsell widgets, the Sale can be attributed to the last member whose content was viewed, and marked as a “Widget” Source. This “Widget visit” issued order is tracked in the Popsell databases, but it does not necessarily mean that the member will be rewarded.

The original source (e.g. Facebook) is always kept in the visitor’s browser local storage. If the visitor clicks on Widgets links, it generates “Widgets” events, but never overrides the original source.

This original source can only be overwritten by another original source (e.g. the visitor clicks on another Facebook post, or a WhatsApp link …)

Examples

Therefore, here is how the attribution of sales is carried out according to the different situations that may arise:

A visitor clicks on a link shared by a Member [A] on a social media (Facebook for example), by email, by showing a QR Code, etc. He may be redirected to the Popsell App or directly to the e-commerce website depending on the scenario in place for the Brand.
The visitor places an Order within a period of 7 to 30 days on the same device.
>> The sale is attributed to [A]
>> Source is “Facebook” (or email, QR code, etc.)
A visitor clicks on a link shared by Member [A] and is finally redirected to the e-commerce website. While visiting the e-commerce website, the visitor clicks on an other Member’s profile [B] or clicks on a publication of Member [C] displayed through a Popsell Widget.
>> The sale is attributed to [A]
>> Source is “Facebook” (or email, QR code, etc.)
A visitor clicks on a link shared by a Member [A].
The day after, the visitor clicks on a link shared by a Member [B] and places an order.
>> The sale is attributed to [B]
>> Source is “Facebook” (or email, QR code, etc.)
A visitor clicks on his mobile phone on a link shared by a Member [A].
The day after, the visitor places an order on another device, his laptop for example.
>> No sale is attributed, unless offline synchronization of orders is setup with Popsell.
A visitor finds the Brand e-commerce site via a Google search, and places an order without visiting any Member’s publication.
>> No sale is attributed.
A visitor finds the Brand e-commerce site via a Google search, and on a Product page, first clicks on a publication of Member [A] then clicks on publication of Member [B], and finally places an order.
>> Sale is attributed to [B]
>> Source is “Widget” (This order can be easily excluded of KPIs and challenges, thanks to a global Brand parameter and Challenge parameters)
A visitor finds the Brand e-commerce site via a Google search, and, on a product page, clicks on a publication of Member [A].
Later, he clicks on a post shared by Member [B] on Facebook, and places an order.
>> The sale is attributed to [B]
>> Source is “Facebook”

A global Brand parameter enables to exclude “widget” statistics on the Member App (KPIs and sales summary).

Sales attribution | Status of the member

The attribution is made regardless of the current status of the member.

The member must have an activated account at the time he/she shares a link, but may unsubscribe afterwards. The attribution is made if the event triggered (e.g. click on a publication shared on a social media) occurs within the delay prior to placing the order (30 days by default).

Example

A Member creates a publication on october 1st, and shares it on Facebook on the same day. The Member unsubscribes on october 15th.

A visitor clicks on the publication on Facebook on December 1st, an places an order on December 20th.

The delay between the event (click on Facebook) and the order is within the 30 days delay. Therefore the order is attributed to the Member.

Note : as the Member is unsubscribed, no gamification will be triggered, the Member will not be notified and will not be rewareded.