Affiliate Marketing: Managing Promotion Links – SHOPLINE Help Center

Promotion links let you give a single affiliate multiple trackable links, each with its own landing page and discount behavior. With this feature, you can set up to 8 promotion links per affiliate, control where each link sends customers, and decide whether a discount code is automatically applied when a customer clicks that link.

This guide explains how to create and manage promotion links as a merchant, how affiliates view and use their links, and how to include promotion links in your affiliate data export.

Understanding Promotion Links for Affiliates

Each affiliate already has one shareable link, which is not affected by this feature and continues to work as before. Promotion links are additional links you create for that same affiliate so they can promote different products or audiences with different landing pages and discount behavior.

For example, if one affiliate promotes both a women’s clothing line and a charity collaboration, you can create two promotion links for that affiliate: one that sends shoppers to the women’s collection without an automatic discount, and another that sends shoppers to the charity collection with a discount code automatically applied at checkout.

Note: Promotion links only control the landing page and discount behavior a customer sees. They don’t affect commission rates — commission is always calculated using the affiliate’s current group. See "Affiliate Marketing: Commission Fee Calculation."

Managing an Affiliate’s Promotion Links

You manage promotion links from each affiliate’s details page.

Go to Management > Affiliates, then open the affiliate’s details page.
Find the Promotion links section. It lists the affiliate’s existing promotion links, along with the link name, promotion URL, target URL, whether the discount code is automatically applied, and whether the affiliate can edit the link’s custom ending.
Click Product link generator to generate a promotion link for a specific product, or click Create to open the link configuration panel. See "Creating and Editing a Promotion Link" below.
Use Edit or Delete next to a link to change or remove it, or drag a link to reorder it. The order you set here is the order the affiliate sees on their end.

Notes:

Each affiliate can have up to 8 active promotion links. If an affiliate already has more custom links than that from before this feature launched, up to 20 historical links can still display in the list — edit or delete the ones you no longer need.
Editing or deleting a promotion link only affects new orders. Orders already attributed to that link keep their original attribution and commission, and are not affected.

Creating and Editing a Promotion Link

When you click Create or edit an existing link, fill in the following fields:

Field	Required	Description
Link name	Yes	Visible only to you and the affiliate. Used to identify the link — for example, "Summer Collection" or "Charity Partner."
Destination page	No	The relative path of the page customers land on after clicking the link. Leave blank to send customers to your store’s homepage in its primary market. Up to 2,500 characters.
Custom promotion link ending	Yes	The unique ending appended to your store domain for this link. Only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens are allowed, between 4 and 100 characters, and it must be unique across every affiliate in your store.
Allow affiliate to edit link ending	Yes	Choose whether the affiliate can change this link’s custom ending from their own affiliate center.
Auto-apply (this link)		This option only appears when Auto-apply is set to Custom in your commission fee settings. Choose one of the following: Follow specific affiliate's settings: The link inherits whatever auto-apply setting currently applies to the affiliate (their individual setting, then their group’s, then the base setting). Auto-apply discount code: The discount code is applied automatically at checkout for anyone who clicks this link, regardless of any other setting. Do not auto-apply discount code: The discount code is never applied automatically for this link. Customers see it in a pop-up and enter it manually at checkout. Note: If Auto-apply is set to Global on or Global off, this option is hidden for every promotion link, and every link follows the global setting instead.

Viewing and Copying Promotion Links (Affiliate View)

Affiliates view their promotion links from their own affiliate center, in a module separate from their original shareable link.

In the Affiliate Center, go to the Share page.
Under the Share your storefront with code section, locate the Other promotion links you can share module.
View the link name and promotion URL, listed in the order you set as the merchant.
Click Copy to copy a promotion URL. If you’ve allowed the affiliate to edit a link’s custom ending, an Custom option also appears; otherwise editing is not available to the affiliate.

Notes:

Merchant and affiliate views stay in sync in real time — if you change a link’s settings, the affiliate sees the update immediately, and vice versa for changes an affiliate makes to a link ending you’ve allowed them to edit.
The Auto-apply column is hidden from the affiliate view. Affiliates can see and copy their links, but they can’t see or change how discounts apply.

Adding UTM Parameters to Promotion Links

Promotion links are included in the Default link and do not need to be selected separately. Once UTM parameters are enabled, the system automatically appends the UTM parameters when customers visit a promotion link. For details on setting up UTM parameters, see "Affiliate Marketing: Configuring Referral Links."

Exporting Promotion Link Data

You can include each affiliate’s promotion links in your affiliate data export.

Go to Management > Affiliates, then click Export.
Select Custom export fields, then select Promotion links. This field is not selected by default, so exports won’t include promotion links unless you turn it on.
Export the file. Each affiliate’s promotion links appear as separate columns — Promotion Link 1 through Promotion Link 8 — each containing that link’s full URL with its custom ending.

Notes:

If you’ve configured UTM parameters for promotion links, the exported URLs do not include the UTM parameters.
If an affiliate has more than 8 historical links, the export always includes their 8 most recently created links.

Frequently Asked Questions About Promotion Links

Q1: What happens to orders from a promotion link I edit or delete?

Orders already attributed to that link keep their original attribution and commission. Only new orders are affected — a deleted or edited link can’t generate new attributions using its old URL.

Q2: Can affiliates create their own promotion links?

No. Only you, the merchant, can create or delete promotion links. If you allow it, affiliates can edit a link’s custom ending, but they can’t create new links or change any other field.

Q3: Do promotion links affect an affiliate’s commission rate?

No. Commission is always calculated using the affiliate’s current group, regardless of which promotion link brought in the order. See "Affiliate Marketing: Commission Fee Calculation."

Q4: Why don’t I see the discount auto-apply option when creating a link?

This option only appears when discount code Auto-apply mode is set to Custom in "Discount Code Tracking." If your store uses Global on or Global off, every link follows that global setting instead.