Coupon codes are an amazing way to track affiliate sales and incentivize new customers to make a purchase. But what happens if an affiliate's coupon code leaks to a coupon site like Honey?
Since most brands would prefer to keep affiliate's codes off of coupon sites, Social Snowball is able to detect when a code leaks and notify you right in your dashboard, where you can take action (change the affiliate's code, ban them from the program, etc.) immediately.
Feature Demo
This feature is currently only available for merchants on Shopify Plus. We are working on building this functionality for all Shopify plans!
Setting up leaked code detection
To set up leaked code detection, start by heading to the Fraud Center of your dashboard, and click on the Settings tab.
When you enable the "Detect when coupon codes leak" option, a pop up will appear with set up instructions. Copy the code provided in this pop up.
Next, go to your Shopify admin and navigate to the "Themes" section, under Online Store. Click the Actions dropdown for your current theme, and choose "Edit code".
Head to the checkout.liquid
file, and paste the code copied from your Social Snowball account directly above the closing </head>
tag.
Make sure to click save!
Testing leaked code detection
Testing with Honey
If one of your affiliate's codes is already on Honey, An easy way to test if your integration is working correctly is to download the Honey Chrome extension, and test injecting an affiliate's code to checkout of your store.
To do this, go to checkout on your store and use the Honey extension to inject an affiliate's code. If any of the codes injected by Honey match an affiliate's code in Social Snowball, you'll see this show up as a new leak in the Fraud enter tab in Social Snowball.
Testing without Honey
You can manually test the leaked code detection integration without the use of any browser extensions. To do this, first go to your Social Snowball account and copy one of your affiliate's discount codes.
Next, head to your Shopify storefront, and navigate to checkout. Open the console tab (Inspect element, then click console), and paste the following script into the console:
document.querySelector("#checkout_reduction_code").value = 'YOURCODE'
Replace the YOURCODE text with the affiliate's code that you are using for this test. For example:
document.querySelector("#checkout_reduction_code").value = 'Noah78871'
Click enter, and you'll see the code inject itself into the discount code field in your checkout. Doing this replicates the way Honey and other similar extensions will inject a code into your checkout.
Now, head to the Fraud Center tab of your Social Snowball dashboard. You'll see the affiliate's code as an item in the New Leaks section.
Taking action on code leaks
When a code leak is detected and shows up in the New Leaks section of the Fraud Center, you'll be given 3 different action item options:
Ignore: This will ignore the code leak, and this code won't reappear in the New Leaks section unless it's injected again.
Change code: This will let you change the affiliate's code so that the leaked code on coupon sites no longer works, but the affiliate can still share their new code. The affiliate will receive an email letting them know their code has been changed, unless you have disabled this email in the Creatives tab.
Ban affiliate: This will remove the affiliate and their code from your program entirely. The affiliate will not receive any notification that they have been banned.
After taking action on a leaked code, you'll be able to view a log of leak history in the "old leaks" section of the fraud center.
Tagging payouts with leaked codes (update 12/22/2022)
Payouts that contain referrals from a leaked code injection are now tagged in the payouts overview page as well as affiliate's payouts breakdown pages.
To view which specific referrals are from the leak and which are valid, click "View" in the Breakdown column for the line item that is tagged with "Contains leaks".
Here, you will be able to see which referrals are from the leak.
You can reject the referrals that came from a code leak by selecting the transaction, then clicking Actions -> Reject.
You can also filter payouts by payouts with leaks and payouts without leaks in the Filter by dropdown.