Set the Stage for Your Affiliate Program with Strategic Cookie Duration & Attribution Models
How do affiliate link cookies work?
What should my affiliate cookie length be?
Should I give credit to the affiliate whose link was first clicked or last clicked?
As affiliate managers, these are the questions that regularly flood our inboxes and DMs. We get it—navigating the intricacies of your affiliate program can be a touch overwhelming.
Setting your cookie duration and attribution model in stone will help clarify things for you and your affiliates, and we’re here to help you do just that.
Even though we’d rather be talking about pie, cookies are fine too. 😍🍪
So, stick around and we'll shed a light on:
Exactly what affiliate cookies are and how they work
How to find the ideal cookie duration that aligns with your affiliate program's goals
Deciding whether to attribute affiliate sales to either the first or last clicked link.
Balancing duration & attribution together in a way that works for your affiliates, your buyers, & you
Let’s make understanding affiliate cookie duration and attribution models as easy as pie! 🍪🔍
Affiliate cookies 101
Before we dive into all the strategy around this topic, let’s make sure we’ve got the essentials down first.
What is an affiliate link?
Affiliate links are the backbone of your affiliate program, serving as the primary means of tracking leads and customer referrals. These trackable links direct users to specific landing pages, whether it's your homepage, product page, store page, freebie page, or sales page.
Depending on the software you use, these links can vary in appearance. For instance:
In ThriveCart, an affiliate link will look a bit like this: https://zoelinda--zoelinda.thrivecart.com/affiliate-program-toolkit/
While in Rewardful, an affiliate link can look like this: https://referralpie.com?via=zoe
What is an affiliate tracking cookie?
Whenever someone clicks on an affiliate’s link, the affiliate tracking software will place a cookie into the user’s browser. (Usually this will be an HTTP cookie!)
Also known as a 'browser cookie' or an 'internet cookie', a cookie is a small piece of data kept in your browser's storage—imagine it like a cookie crumb!
In terms of affiliate links, cookies are the thing that recognises when an affiliate sale has been made.
This cookie will stay in the customer's browser for as long as you decide (kinda like a hibernation mode) and re-activate when it detects that a sale has been processed.
Your affiliate tracking software will track who—if anyone—should receive credit for the sale and how much commission they should receive.
It’s important to note that not every affiliate program requires HTTP cookie tracking. Some affiliate tracking softwares utilise tracking URLs, SubIDs, or attribution in other ways.
How long does an affiliate cookie last?
That’s completely up to you! The duration of an affiliate cookie is entirely customisable, offering flexibility in tailoring your affiliate program's tracking capabilities. We'll delve deeper into this shortly. 👍
Do cookies work across different devices or different browsers?
Unfortunately, a cookie tracking system means that things such as switching browsers (going from Google Chrome to Firefox) or switching devices (iPhone to PC, for example) to purchase could mean the sale is not tracked in your affiliate tracking software.
Psst: A workaround for this is a simple 'Who referred you?' field on your checkout page! This way you can manually attribute commissions to affiliates even if the internet Cookie Monster nommed on their affiliate link cookie. 🍪
What if a customer clears their affiliate link cookies from their browser?
This is a common occurrence that can impact commission tracking. If a customer clears their cookies before making a purchase, the associated commissions may not be properly tracked.
Encouraging affiliates to share their links consistently can help ensure their affiliate cookies are adequately reinstated in the customer's browser. 🥧
Understanding affiliate link cookie duration
Okay, now we’re all up to speed on the importance of cookies, it’s time to decide how long you want your cookie to ‘hibernate’ in a customer’s browser.
In case you missed it (looking at you, scanners!): whenever someone clicks one of your affiliates' links, they will receive a virtual cookie in their browser. This cookie will stay in the customer's browser for as long as you decide here and re-activate when it detects the customer has purchased your product - at which point, it will track back to the original affiliate and reward the commission.
This timeframe determines how long this cookie will stay in the user's browser data, until it either a) expires or b) is manually cleared from their browser.
Every time a customer clicks an affiliate link (the same or a different link!), the clock resets and the timeframe starts again!
How long should the affiliate cookie duration be?
The higher your cookie length is, the more you are showing your affiliate that you value their support. You want to give them credit where credit is due!
Let's break down the cookie durations options here:
Short-term cookie length.
For example: 7 days or 14 days.
These are best if you are running an intensive live launch or have a funnel with a short deadline/timeframe.
This gives the affiliate a short space of time to promote and push the product before the cookie expires, which makes it perfect for live launches where the cart opens and closes one or two times a year or funnels that have a low barrier to purchase.
Standard cookie lengths.
For example: 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days.
In our experience with affiliate marketing (on both sides of the table), we’d say that 30 to 90 days is the standard cookie length for affiliate programs.
A cookie duration less than 30 days (unless you are running an intensive live launch) could raise some eyebrows from your affiliates and tell them that they aren’t valued.
Long-term cookie length.
For example: 6 months, 1 year, or Lifetime.
If you want to go above and beyond for your affiliates (especially if there is competition in your industry), you might want to consider a longer cookie length.
Lifetime cookie duration is great if your affiliate program is in a highly competitive industry and you want to incentivise an affiliate joining your program versus anyone else’s.
Considerations when deciding an affiliate cookie duration
The price point of your product.
Consider whether your cookie length is well-suited to your product price point. The higher your price point, the longer the investment decision is.
If you have a $27 low-ticket offer, the customer could decide whether or not they want to purchase within 24 hours. Whilst a $997 product could take days to decide and a $5,000 program could take weeks for a buyer's decision to be final.
Your buyer’s decision making processes and timeframes
Take the time to think about your ideal people (it helps to think of someone specific) and how long it takes them to make the decision to get out their credit card and purchase what it is you are offering.
For example, a 70 year old person might take less time deciding if they to try a new hairdresser than a 23 year old. And a 23 year old deciding if they want a haircut might take less time than a business owner deciding if they want to invest in hiring a long-term social media manager.
Some people need to confer with others before making buying decisions over a certain amount of money, and some people don’t.
Some people have a high price point threshold and some people have a low price point threshold.
Everyone’s businesses are different, as are our ideal customers & clients, so there isn’t one straight answer for this. Only you know your ideal people and the way they make decisions!
Sales funnel entry point
It’s useful to consider what pages you expect affiliate traffic to land on. Are you asking affiliates to send people:
To your homepage?
Straight to your product pages?
To a live event?
To an evergreen sales funnel (like a webinar or a lead magnet)?
If you’re sending people through a sales funnel, you need your cookie duration to account for the time spent nurturing potential buyers.
For example, if they sign up to an evergreen webinar, they might get access to the webinar right away but then they might get a series of emails pitching your offer to them for 14 days after the webinar ‘ended’.
After that, you add the subscriber to another sequence where you pitch them a downsell offer and then they end up in your main subscriber pool.
Yes, you definitely need to make sure your cookie duration covers the journey of webinar -> subscriber pool but even if they don’t buy, you’ve just got a new subscriber who could end up purchasing down the line.
We’d recommend making sure your cookie duration accounts for the main ‘thing’ (i.e. the webinar sales funnel here) and adds some buffer time for those people who are longer decision makers.
Levels of awareness.
When your affiliates send customers your way, are those customers aware that they even have a problem yet?
Consider Schwartz's Levels Of Awareness and make sure your cookie length accounts for the time your potential buyers need to go from Unaware to Most Aware.
For example, if an affiliate shares an email to their subscribers on Day 1 making the customer aware of the problem your offer solves. They talk about the solution and how your product is the best thing out there to help actually solve it. Then they click through and they are Product Aware. Great, but all of this happens in less than a minute so this person still needs time to decide if their problem is even worth solving. And, if it is, if they are going to use this solution and then if they are going to buy your product to help.
There are lots of steps here so we want your cookie duration to cover the buyer’s journey here.
Live launches with open/close carts.
If you are running a live launch where you want your affiliates to heavily promote your product in a short space of time, you may want to consider a shorter cookie length.
This would mean that your affiliates will get credit on sales made during this launch, but not your next live launch. Perhaps you want affiliates to be compensated for any leads they bring in for your next two launches but not after that. You can tweak your cookie length accordingly!
Just make sure to consider any downsells during your launch or any products available on your site all-year round - do you want to reward affiliates with commissions for those too?
Evergreen products.
As a customer can come back and buy anytime, products that are available 24/7 365 could have a slightly longer cookie length to account for buyer decision length.
Without a limited-time offer or any reason to buy right-this-second-now, customers can also bookmark or ‘park’ offers to come back to later and end up forgetting about them until they are in the exact right place & time. You want to make sure affiliates are rewarded when the right time comes around!
If it helps at all, for evergreen products, we'd recommend an absolute minimum of 30 days.
Cross-product promotions.
If you launch multiple products a year and affiliates are across your product suite (and not set groups of affiliates per product), you'll have to decide if you want an affiliate to receive commission for leads they sent your way during one launch who purchased during a second launch.
Make sure your cookie length accounts for the timeframe of two launches if you want to reward affiliates this way.
Exploring affiliate program attribution models
Now that you've determined the ideal duration for your affiliate cookie, let's delve into the scenario where a user has multiple affiliate cookies in their browser from different affiliates.
How do you decide which affiliate gets the commission if they purchase?
And, no, we don’t suggest solving this through Rock, Paper, Scissors. (Even though that’s our go-to for tie-breakers.)
There are two typical choices here:
First-click attribution: You attribute the sale to the affiliate whose link was clicked first
Last-click attribution: You attribute the sale to the affiliate whose link was most recently clicked
We generally recommend opting for last-click attribution, but we'll delve into the pros and cons of each below.
When first-click attribution is best for your affiliate program:
First-click attribution is all about giving credit to the first link a customer clicks when they stumble upon your brand. That means the affiliate whose link was the very first stop on the customer's journey gets the credit for any resulting sale.
Opting for a first-click approach is great when you want to give props to those affiliates who kickstart the brand buzz, introduce new folks to your goodies, and bring in new & promising leads.
It's also great if you are running a visibility-focused affiliate program that's all about getting the word out there—no matter when the customer finally hits that 'buy' button.
By giving credit to that initial interaction, you can inspire affiliates to focus on sharing their links far and wide, igniting that initial interest and setting the stage for you to work your magic and seal the deal.
When last-click attribution is best for your affiliate program:
Last-click attribution is all about giving credit for a sale to the very last link a customer clicks before making a purchase. It's great if you want to reward affiliates who closed the deal and brought action-taking buyers right to your virtual doorstep.
We recommend last-click for most affiliate programs as this approach really highlights the affiliate's role in sealing the deal and driving those all-important conversions.
By using last-click attribution, you can motivate affiliates to offer bonuses to incentivise their audience to click on their affiliate link (as opposed to anyone else’s) before purchasing.
Considerations when picking first-click or last-click attribution
Affiliate bonuses.
If your affiliates have custom bonuses they deliver when a customer uses their affiliate link and you have first-click selected, there's a chance that your commissions won't match up with the customer's intentions.
If a customer seeks an affiliate's bonus under a first-click attribution model, the commission goes to the affiliate whose link the customer first clicked, disregarding the affiliate whose link was last-clicked and whose bonus the customer is claiming. This could lead to a sticky situation among your affiliates (and, in turn, their customers)!
Cookie duration.
If you have a first-click cookie attribution but you have a lengthy cookie duration (i.e. 1+ years, or lifetime), you could run into issues where a customer is sure they used a certain affiliate's link (maybe to receive a promised bonus or to support a peer) but you are tracking the commission alllll the way back to a year ago.
Affiliate coupon codes.
Some affiliate tracking platforms allow the creation of coupon codes specifically for affiliates to provide to their audience. These make for a great backstop if a customer neglects to click an affiliate’s link but still uses their discount code.
If you offer this, and your affiliate software allows, make sure you have the coupon code as the first port of call when it comes to attribution.
Finding the right balance
We could tell you to have a 90 day cookie with last-click attribution but, like we said, every business is different.
You don’t want to waste any more time trying thinking about cookies (unless they’re the kind you can dunk in milk), so how do you find that sweet spot for your affiliate program and finally make these big decisions?
Know your audience. Get to know your audience like they’re your BFFs. Understanding how they usually buy stuff can help you figure out the best length for your affiliate cookies. Matching the cookie duration to their typical buying journey can make a world of difference for your program.
Make it work for your products. Think about your price points and how long your customers might take to decide to buy your specific products or services. Shorter cookie lengths might do the trick for those low-ticket goodies, while longer durations could be better for those high-ticket products that take a bit more time to mull over.
Align them with your goals. Your chosen attribution model needs to match up with what you want out of your affiliate program. Whether it's getting your brand name out there, snagging new customers, or boosting sales, the right model can help you get where you want to be.
Whatever cookie duration or attribution model you choose, it’s important to remember to:
Always be monitoring performance and seeing what’s working & what’s not
Ensure that whatever you’ve decided is possible in your chosen affiliate program tracking software
Include the cookie length & attribution model in your affiliate terms & conditions
Make sure this info is really clear in your affiliate welcome packet & onboarding so there’s no confusion among your affiliates
Need help setting up your affiliate program?
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