Coupon-code attribution

Coupon-code attribution lets your affiliates share a redeemable string, essentially a referral code, at checkout instead of a click-tracked URL. Useful when:

Your affiliate posts in their podcast, video, or newsletter and viewers will type a code rather than click.
The customer hits your site directly (search, brand awareness) but redeems a code at Stripe Checkout.
You want a paper trail in Stripe that ties revenue back to a specific affiliate.

Rekomi creates the Stripe coupon for you, mints a unique promotion code per affiliate, and credits the right affiliate whenever a customer redeems one at checkout. Refunds clawback automatically.

Coupon attribution works on the Stripe and Shopify integrations only (codes are real Stripe promotion codes or Shopify discount codes, so customers actually get the discount). It is not available on other billing providers (Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Chargebee, and the rest) or on server-to-server-only setups; on those, the campaign coupons area in your dashboard explains this instead of offering the feature, and affiliates keep earning through their links. Affiliate self-mint (affiliates creating their own vanity codes) works on both the Stripe and Shopify rails.

The campaign Coupons tab with a campaign coupon showing codes minted, self-serve mode, and click-override state

How it works

Brand creates a campaign coupon. Pick a discount (% off or fixed $ off), a duration, optional max redemptions and expiry. Rekomi creates the matching Stripe coupon under the hood and stores its id.
Brand mints a per-affiliate code. From an affiliate's detail page, click "Generate" in the Coupons tab. Rekomi creates a Stripe promotion_code that points at the campaign coupon and is tagged with the affiliate's id in metadata.
Affiliate shares the code. The code shows on /a/campaigns/{id} for them to copy. Optionally, brands let affiliates mint their own vanity codes from /a: each campaign coupon has a self-service setting with three modes (no one, all approved affiliates, or a specific allow-list of affiliates you pick).
Customer redeems at checkout. Stripe fires invoice.paid or customer.subscription.created with the promotion code embedded. Rekomi sees it, credits the owning affiliate, records a conversion with attribution_method = "coupon".
You see it like any other sale. The conversion lands in your dashboard automatically, tagged in the Source column as "Coupon" with the redeemed code (for example "Coupon · SARAH20"), right alongside link and server-to-server conversions. No setup needed: coupon conversions are never silent. The same attribution_method (and the code) is in the REST API, the CSV export (attribution_method + coupon_code columns), and the conversion.created webhook if you sync conversions to your own systems.
Refunds clawback. A full refund decrements the affiliate's redemption count and marks the conversion refunded; partial refunds claw back commission proportionally and keep the redemption counted.

When coupon beats click attribution

Each campaign coupon has an Overrides click attribution toggle (default on). When on, a coupon redemption credits the coupon's affiliate even if the customer also clicked another affiliate's tracking link. Use this when:

You want code-based affiliates (influencers, podcast hosts) to win over generic site traffic.
You want a deterministic, observable attribution path with no cookie ambiguity.
Your affiliates drive purchase intent through audio/video where clicks are rare.

Turn it off when:

Click tracking is your primary channel and codes are secondary.
You run multiple-affiliate-touch flows where the first click should win and the coupon is a "thank you for redeeming" mechanic.

Multiple codes per affiliate

You can mint as many codes as you like for one affiliate. They all roll up to the same affiliate's stats; each code has its own redemption counter. Useful for:

Campaign-specific codes (SARAH-BLACKFRIDAY vs SARAH-SPRING).
A/B testing copy ("Try SARAH20" vs "Try SARAHSPRING").
Letting the affiliate brand variants without losing attribution.

Limit a coupon to specific products

By default a campaign coupon discounts the whole order. You can scope it to specific products instead, so the discount (and the attribution) only applies to those line items.

On the Stripe rail, use "Limit to specific products" in the coupon create dialog: a picker lists your active Stripe products (name, image, and id) with search, so you choose rather than type. The picker shows your 100 most recent active products; for deeper catalogs, or if you prefer, "Paste product IDs instead" accepts comma-separated prod_... ids, and the API takes the same productRefs field (see Coupon code tracking). On a Shopify store, use "Limit to products" when creating a coupon offer in the Rekomi app inside your Shopify admin: pick the products with Shopify's own product picker, and every code minted under that offer inherits the scope.

Plan tier

Coupons are available to every brand from the dashboard. Managing coupons through the public API requires a paid plan (Starter or above). Trial users (14-day free trial on any tier) can use everything.

What gets created in Stripe

For every campaign coupon Rekomi creates:

A Stripe coupon with the discount you picked, optional redeem_by (expiry), and metadata.rekomi_campaign_coupon_id matching the Rekomi row id.

For every per-affiliate coupon Rekomi creates:

A Stripe promotion_code attached to the campaign coupon, with the code string you supplied (or one we generated), optional max_redemptions inherited from the parent, and metadata.rekomi_affiliate_coupon_id matching the Rekomi row id.

If you delete a Rekomi row, Rekomi deactivates / deletes the Stripe object on a best-effort basis. The Rekomi row is the source of truth for attribution.

API access

Coupon endpoints are documented in the developer reference. Both /api/campaigns/{programId}/coupons and /api/affiliates/{affiliateId}/coupons are exposed under /api/v1/* for public-API callers with rk_live_* keys.

Affiliate self-service

Each campaign coupon has a self-service mode that controls who may mint their own codes:

All approved affiliates (the default for new coupons created in the dashboard or the Shopify app): anyone approved on the campaign can mint vanity codes from /a/campaigns/{id}. Self-serve is the point: you define the offer, affiliates handle their own codes.
No one: only you mint codes, from the affiliate detail page. (This stays the default for API callers that omit the field, so existing integrations keep their behavior.)
Specific affiliates: an allow-list you pick, in the dashboard or the Shopify app; removing an affiliate from the list revokes the codes they minted.

Codes still need to satisfy ^[A-Z0-9_-]{3,32}$ and be unique within the brand. Self-service is useful for influencer programs where each creator controls their personal brand string, or hands-off flows where you'd rather not gate every mint behind brand-side approval. You can change the mode at any time; codes already minted keep working unless you revoke them.

Per-coupon commission rates

A campaign coupon can carry its own commission rate. When you set "Codes from this coupon earn" on a coupon, every sale made with one of its codes pays that rate instead of the campaign rate (and instead of any per-affiliate, group, tier, or per-product rate). Zero is a real setting: "codes earn nothing" is how you run a pure-discount code, for example a Black Friday code that should not pay commission.

The coupon create dialog with the optional codes-from-this-coupon-earn field

Two honest details:

The rate applies to sales made with the code. If the same affiliate shares their tracking link instead, link sales pay the normal campaign ladder.
On subscriptions, Stripe attaches the code to each invoice it discounts. A "once" coupon pays the coupon rate on the first invoice; renewals (which no longer carry the discount) revert to the campaign ladder. "Forever" and still-running "repeating" coupons keep paying the coupon rate on every discounted invoice.

Affiliate choice: let each affiliate pick their split

Some programs give ambassadors a fixed benefit and let each person decide how to use it: gift the whole discount to their audience, or share it and keep a commission. The Affiliate choice toggle in the coupon create dialog does exactly that. You define 2 to 4 choices, each a pair of buyer discount and affiliate commission, for example:

Choice A: buyers get 10% off, the affiliate earns nothing (the gift option).
Choice B: buyers get 5% off, the affiliate earns 5% per sale.

When an affiliate creates their code, they pick one choice; the pick decides both the discount their buyers get and what their code pays them, and each code shows its own economics ("5% off · earns you 5% per sale"). The dialog previews the exact options affiliates will see, generated from your numbers, so nobody has to write or proofread the copy.

The coupon create dialog with Affiliate choice on, two sentence rows, and the live preview of what affiliates see

When an affiliate creates their code, the same options render in their mint flow:

The affiliate mint flow showing the how-should-your-code-work choice cards

Rules worth knowing:

Choice coupons default to 5 codes per affiliate (adjustable in the coupon's settings, including down to 1). Each code locks in the choice it was created with, and every sale pays by the code that was used; past sales keep the rate they were earned under.
Choices are immutable after create, like the discount itself. Archive the coupon and create a new one to change them.
On subscriptions, the same renewal rule as above applies: the chosen split pays on the invoices the code discounts. A "once" coupon pays it on the first invoice; renewals revert to the affiliate's usual rate.
Both the per-coupon rate and choices work on the Stripe and Shopify rails. The in-Stripe app drawer doesn't offer choice coupons yet; mint those from the dashboard or let affiliates self-mint.