Every brand running influencer campaigns faces the same question: do I give each creator a discount code or a tracking link? The answer depends on what you're trying to measure, but most brands default to codes because they're familiar. That's not always the right call.
How discount codes work for attribution
You give each influencer a unique code — SARAH15, JAKE10, whatever. Customers enter the code at checkout. You count how many times each code is used. Simple.
Promo codes have been the default for influencer marketing since before anyone called it influencer marketing. They're easy to create, easy for creators to share verbally, and customers understand how to use them. There's no technical setup required beyond whatever discount system your platform already has.
The problems show up quickly though. Codes leak. Within hours of a creator sharing their code, it ends up on coupon aggregator sites — Honey, RetailMeNot, whatever scraper bots are crawling Instagram that day. When someone Googles "[your brand] discount code" before checkout, they find the code and use it regardless of how they originally discovered you. The sale gets attributed to the influencer whose code leaked fastest, not the one who actually drove the customer.
Codes also don't track the discovery journey. If someone sees an influencer's post, visits your site three times over a week, then buys without entering a code, you've lost that data entirely. The influencer drove the sale but gets zero credit.
And then there's the margin hit. Every code is a discount. If you're giving 15% off to track attribution, you're spending 15% of your revenue on measurement. That's expensive data collection.
How tracking links work
You create a unique URL for each influencer — something like yourbrand.com/go/sarah or a short link from your attribution tool. When someone clicks the link, a server records the click and associates it with that creator. When the person eventually buys, the purchase is matched back to the original click.
No discount required. No code to enter. The tracking happens silently, on the redirect, before the customer even reaches your product page.
The technical advantage is that tracking links work even when:
- The customer doesn't buy immediately (attribution windows of 7-30 days)
- The customer never enters a code
- The code has been shared by coupon sites
- The creator mentions your brand verbally and the customer types the link later
The weakness is that links don't work well in audio or video contexts where people can't click. A podcast listener can't click a link while driving. A TikTok viewer might not bother tapping the bio link. In those cases, a memorable promo code ("use code SARAH") has higher conversion than a URL they need to remember and type later.
Where codes win
Codes are better when:
The content is audio. Podcasts, Spotify ads, radio. The listener can't click anything. A short memorable code is the only attribution mechanism that works here.
The creator does live content. Twitch streams, Instagram Lives, live events. Viewers are watching, not browsing. Shouting out a code is natural. Shouting out a URL is awkward.
You want to incentivise first purchases. If your goal is acquisition, a discount removes friction. The code does double duty — it drives the purchase and attributes it.
Your average order value is high enough. If you're selling £200 jackets, a 10% discount (£20) is tolerable as a customer acquisition cost. If you're selling £8 items, giving away £0.80 per sale to track attribution is harder to stomach.
Where tracking links win
Links are better when:
The content is clickable. Instagram Stories, YouTube descriptions, email newsletters, blog posts, tweets. Anywhere the audience can tap or click, a link captures the attribution without costing you margin.
You don't want to discount. Some brands don't discount, ever. Tracking links let you attribute sales without touching your pricing. The creator shares a link, you see who bought, nobody gets money off.
You need to track the full funnel. Codes only tell you about the final purchase. Links tell you about the click, the page view, the time between click and purchase, and whether someone clicked but didn't buy. That funnel data is often more valuable than the purchase data alone.
You're tracking multiple touchpoints. If a customer clicks Creator A's link on Monday and Creator B's link on Thursday before buying, you can see both touchpoints. With codes, you only see whichever code they entered at checkout (usually the last one they found).
Coupon leakage is killing your data. If half your code redemptions come from Honey or similar browser extensions, your attribution data is garbage. Links don't have this problem because there's nothing for aggregators to scrape and redistribute.
The real answer: use both
The smartest brands don't choose — they layer both mechanisms.
Give each influencer a unique tracking link AND a unique discount code. The link goes in their bio, their swipe-ups, their descriptions. The code goes in their voiceover, their on-screen text, their captions.
When a customer clicks the link, you get the attribution. When a customer uses the code, you get the attribution. When a customer does both, you have double confirmation. When they only do one, you still capture the data.
The key is making sure both the link and the code point to the same influencer. One creator, one link, one code, one attribution record.
The cost comparison
Discount codes cost you margin. Every redeemed code is revenue you gave away. A 15% discount on 100 sales at £50 each costs you £750.
Tracking links cost per attributed sale. With LinkOwl, it's 5p per attributed purchase. Those same 100 sales cost £5 in attribution fees.
The maths is clear. Tracking links are dramatically cheaper as an attribution mechanism. Discount codes can still make sense for customer acquisition, but using them purely for measurement is expensive.
If you're currently using codes only for attribution (not because you want to offer discounts), switching to tracking links saves you money on every single sale.
Setting up both
Here's a practical setup that takes about 20 minutes:
- Create a tracking link for each influencer (in LinkOwl or your attribution tool)
- Create a matching discount code in your Shopify/Stripe/payment platform
- Give the creator both: "Here's your link for bio/stories, and here's your code for mentioning in videos"
- Track both in the same dashboard so you can see total attributed activity per creator
The link captures digital touchpoints. The code captures verbal mentions. Together, they cover the full spectrum of how influencers drive sales.
Stop choosing between them. Use both, measure everything, and make your next round of influencer spending based on actual data instead of follower counts and engagement rates.