How to set up a WooCommerce affiliate coupon

As a WooCommerce store or membership site owner, you are probably familiar with coupons. They are, generally speaking, strings of characters customers can enter on checkout in order to received a discount on their purchase.

You may have offered one here and there or you might have created entire campaigns around them. But, have you ever used them in your affiliate program?

No? Perfect!

Because today we’re going to learn what WooCommerce affiliate coupons are and how they can help you.

What are WooCommerce affiliate coupons?

Simply put, they are regular coupons that are tied to your affiliates. Once a user purchases from your WooCommerce store using one of these coupons the customer benefits from the discounted price, the affiliate is rewarded a commission, while you increase your sales.

In essence, this affiliate coupon marketing strategy can be considered a win-win-win situation. Everyone involved in the transaction wins something.

This strategy has some drawbacks however. Because you’re offering your product at a discounted price and also rewarding your affiliate for the referral, your profit, per order, will be lower compared to you offering a regular coupon.

Even so, this strategy has significant benefits.

For once, your affiliate partners have an audience you may not have access to otherwise. By offering your affiliates a coupon code to share with their followers you create awareness about your products and also an incentive for them to purchase from you right away.

Furthermore, you may already know that the cost of acquiring a customer is higher than retaining one. By offering the coupon incentive through your affiliates you lower the customer acquisition cost due to the nature of the relationship between the affiliates and their followers.

Great affiliates have the capacity to appeal in some way or form to their audience. Which in return makes their audience more inclined to purchase from you, as they have the recommendation of someone they look up to.

If you’re able to provide a great product or service these customers might return more confidently to purchase from you.

With this in mind let’s go see how you can create an affiliate coupon. We’ll be using SliceWP for this. If you’re not familiar with SliceWP, it’s a powerful WordPress affiliate marketing plugin that integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce.

How to create an affiliate coupon in WooCommerce

Before anything else, if you don’t already have it installed, make sure to download and install the Affiliate Coupons add-on for SliceWP. This add-on powers all the coupon functionality between WooCommerce and SliceWP.

With the add-on set up, navigate to WooCommerce > Coupons > Add New.

Let’s say your affiliate’s name is Andrea and you agreed with her that you’d offer her followers a 15% discount if they use this affiliate coupon. The first thing we’ll do is name the coupon and, for clarity, let’s go with “ANDREA_15”, instead of a randomly generated code.

Then, let’s select “Percentage discount” for the “Discount type” option and set the number “15” for “Coupon amount”. This way visitors benefit from the 15% discount from the product’s value, as per the agreement with the affiliate.

The only thing left is to link the affiliate with the coupon. To do this, in the “Affiliate name” field start typing the affiliate’s name or email address. A list of affiliates, corresponding with the text you typed, should appear in a drop-down, right under the field. Click on the one you wish to tie to the coupon and publish your new coupon code.

Optionally, if you’re running a limited time campaign (which we highly recommend you do), then you should also set the “Coupon expiry date” option. Our promo strategy guide covers this aspect in depth, alongside other useful tips, so I highly recommend you read it.

And that’s it…

You’re all set up to run an affiliate coupon campaign on your WooCommerce site.