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 Brand ambassadors 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 Ambassador’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 Ambassadors.

New inbound traffic vs existing traffic

With the Embedded scenario, part of the traffic made on the Ambassador’s profiles and publications is due to the display of their publications on the e-Commerce pages (via the Publication and Community widgets).
The ambassadors 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 the ambassadors, and the traffic already existing on the site, and brought by usual means (SEO, SEA, Marketing campaigns …).

The challenges can be programmed according to different rules, and reward only the traffic brought by the ambassadors.
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 an ambassador. 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 the Ambassador, 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:

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

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

If a visitor was not brought on the website by an ambassador, but clicks on several publications via the Popsell widgets, the Sale can be attributed to the last ambassador 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 Ambassador 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:

1. A visitor clicks on a link shared by an Ambassador [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.)

2. A visitor clicks on a link shared by Ambassador [A] and is finally redirected to the e-commerce website. While visiting the e-commerce website, the visitor clicks on an other Ambassador’s profile [B] or clicks on a publication of Ambassador [C] displayed through a Popsell Widget.
   >> The sale is attributed to [A]
   >> Source is “Facebook” (or email, QR code, etc.)

3. A visitor clicks on a link shared by an Ambassador [A].
   The day after, the visitor clicks on a link shared by an Ambassador [B] and places an order.
   >> The sale is attributed to [B]
   >> Source is “Facebook” (or email, QR code, etc.)

4. A visitor clicks on his mobile phone on a link shared by an Ambassador [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.

5. A visitor finds the Brand e-commerce site via a Google search, and places an order without visiting any Ambassador’s publication.
   >> No sale is attributed.

6. A visitor finds the Brand e-commerce site via a Google search, and on a Product page, first clicks on a publication of Ambassador [A] then clicks on publication of Ambassador [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)

7. A visitor finds the Brand e-commerce site via a Google search, and, on a product page, clicks on a publication of Ambassador [A].
   Later, he clicks on a post shared by Ambassador [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 Ambassador App (KPIs and sales summary).