Affiliate program setup with tracking codes and landing pages
How to set up affiliate tracking codes, custom landing pages, and UTM management
Build a structured affiliate program setup in SGEN: create per-affiliate landing pages, implement UTM parameter tracking, and review referral performance through Analytics → Reports.
This playbook is the standard pattern for managing affiliate partnerships on an SGEN site. It uses three existing admin features — Pages, Custom Codes, and Analytics — combined with a disciplined UTM naming convention that makes every affiliate's performance readable without external tools.
Total time: approximately 45 minutes to set up the first affiliate, and 20 minutes per additional affiliate using the same page template.
What is this for?
An affiliate programme gives partner businesses or individual promoters a personalised way to send traffic to your site and receive credit for any resulting purchases or sign-ups.
The SGEN approach to affiliate tracking has three layers:
- A dedicated landing page per affiliate — the page the affiliate's audience lands on when they click the affiliate's link. A dedicated page lets you customise the welcome message for that affiliate's audience and gives you a clean URL to track separately in Analytics.
- UTM parameters appended to the affiliate link — query string parameters that Analytics reads to attribute the visit to the correct affiliate. UTMs are standard and require no SGEN-specific configuration.
- Analytics → Reports review — the built-in analytics dashboard reads UTM parameters and breaks traffic down by source. No custom integration required.
Good use cases
Acme Coffee Roasters partnering with a home brewing podcast. The podcast mentions Acme in an episode and shares an affiliate link pointing to yourdomain.com/podcast-listeners. The landing page greets podcast listeners specifically, mentions the episode, and offers the same product range as the main shop. The link shared in the podcast show notes includes UTM parameters identifying the podcast as the source. The Acme team reviews Analytics → Reports after the episode drops to see how many visitors arrived from the podcast link and how many placed an order.
Acme Bakery partnering with a food blogger. A food blogger writes a review post and links to Acme Bakery using their affiliate link. The affiliate link points to yourdomain.com/blog-readers with UTM parameters identifying the blogger. The landing page references the review post and shows the products mentioned. The team tracks the blogger's performance weekly to assess whether the partnership is driving enough orders to continue.
Acme Wine Studio partnering with three wine education accounts. Three accounts each have their own landing page and UTM source parameter. The Analytics → Reports source breakdown shows which of the three is driving the most traffic. The team uses this data at the monthly partnership review to decide which accounts to feature in the next co-promotion.
Acme Coffee Roasters wholesale affiliate programme. Wholesale partners who successfully refer another business to Acme's wholesale programme receive a referral credit. Each partner is given a unique UTM source value. The team tracks which partners have referred new wholesale accounts by filtering the Analytics source report to referral UTM values.
Acme Studio equipment referral links. Equipment retailers who recommend Acme Studio products to customers use affiliate links. Each retailer's link points to the main product page with a UTM source identifying the retailer. The team cross-references Analytics UTM data against order volumes to calculate each retailer's referral impact at the end of the quarter.
What NOT to use this for
SGEN's native toolset handles landing pages and UTM-based attribution. It does not automate commission calculations, generate affiliate-specific coupon codes automatically, or produce real-time affiliate dashboards for partners. If you need those capabilities, a dedicated affiliate management tool sits alongside SGEN.
Each affiliate must have their own page and their own UTM source value. Sharing a page or UTM source makes it impossible to separate performance by partner in the Analytics reports.
Paid ad platforms have their own click attribution systems that conflict with manual UTM parameters. UTM parameters on affiliate links are for partner-driven organic traffic: email, social posts, podcasts, blogs.
UTM parameters are session-scoped. If a visitor uses a different device or browser to complete their purchase, the UTM data may not carry through. For financial commission calculations, combine UTM data with order-level review.
If two affiliates share the same landing page URL, their traffic is indistinguishable in Analytics even if their UTM source values differ. One page per affiliate, one slug per affiliate.
How this connects to other features
— each affiliate landing page is a standard SGEN Page. The page slug becomes part of the tracking story: traffic to yourdomain.com/podcast-listeners is identifiable in Analytics Reports even before looking at UTM parameters.
— the primary reporting surface for affiliate performance. The source breakdown report reads UTM source values. Filter to a specific UTM source to see traffic and page views for one affiliate.
— optional. If you are running a JavaScript-based affiliate tracking pixel provided by a third-party affiliate network, add it as a Custom Code in the appropriate placement. This is separate from SGEN's built-in Analytics.
— optional. For affiliates who prefer a code-based referral rather than a link-based one, create a coupon code that matches the affiliate's identity (for example PODCAST10). Track coupon usage via the Coupons list Uses column.
— verify that UTM tracking is not blocked by the consent gate for visitors who decline cookies. SGEN's Session Attributer (which reads UTM parameters) may be consent-gated. Review the settings before launching a high-traffic affiliate campaign.
Before you start
UTM naming convention (Acme Coffee Roasters example):
- You are signed in to SGEN as an Administrator.
- You have a list of affiliate partners and the following for each: their name or handle (for the page slug and UTM source value), a brief description of their audience (so you can write a relevant landing page welcome), and whether they need a coupon code in addition to a link.
- Decide your UTM naming convention before creating any links. Consistency across all affiliates makes the Analytics report readable. A recommended convention is:
utm_source=<affiliate-slug>,utm_medium=<channel>,utm_campaign=<campaign-slug>. - Decide the visual treatment for affiliate landing pages before building the first one. All affiliate pages should share a consistent structure so maintaining them as a set is manageable. Recommended structure: personalised welcome headline, brief brand intro, and the main CTA.
Where to go
The recipe touches three admin areas:
- Pages → Add New — create one affiliate landing page per partner (15 minutes each)
- Analytics → Reports — review traffic and source data after launch (10 minutes per review)
- Ecommerce → Coupons — optional: create a partner coupon code (5 minutes)
Steps — Build the affiliate tracking and landing page workflow
1. Create a dedicated landing page for each affiliate
Open Pages → Add New. Set the page title to the affiliate's audience context, for example "For Listeners of the Brew with James Podcast". Set the Slug to a clean, short identifier: podcast-listeners.
Write the page body in three sections:
Personalised welcome — one to two sentences acknowledging where the visitor is coming from. "Welcome, Brew with James listeners. If you are here after James's episode on filter ratios, you are in the right place."
Brand and product intro — two to three sentences tailored to this affiliate's audience. Do not use the generic homepage copy. Reference the affiliate's content and why your product is relevant to their readers or listeners.
Call to action — link to the relevant product category or sign-up form. The CTA should match what the affiliate mentioned in their content.
Set page Status to Publish when the content is ready.
2. Build the UTM-tagged affiliate link
The affiliate link is the landing page URL with UTM parameters appended as query string values.
For the landing page at yourdomain.com/podcast-listeners, the full affiliate link looks like this:
yourdomain.com/podcast-listeners?utm_source=podcast-brew-with-james&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=spring-2026Build this URL in a spreadsheet before distributing it. Keep a running table of all affiliate links — affiliate name, landing page slug, UTM source, UTM medium, UTM campaign, coupon code, and launch date. This table is the source of truth for matching UTM source values to partner names when reading the Analytics report.
Provide the full UTM-tagged URL to the affiliate. The affiliate should use only this URL in their content — not the bare landing page URL without UTMs.
3. Review affiliate traffic in Analytics
Open Analytics → Reports and set the date range to the period after the affiliate link went live.
In the Source breakdown, look for the utm_source value you assigned to this affiliate. The row for this source shows sessions, page views, and bounce rate for traffic from this affiliate.
Filter the report to the specific landing page URL to see how many page views the affiliate's landing page received versus the rest of the site. Cross-reference against Ecommerce → Orders filtered to the same date range to estimate the affiliate's contribution to order volume.
4. Create a partner coupon code (optional)
If the affiliate prefers to share a discount code rather than a link, create a corresponding coupon in Ecommerce → Coupons → Add New.
Name the coupon after the affiliate in a recognisable format: PODCAST10. Set the Discount Type to Fixed cart discount and the Amount to the agreed referral incentive. Set the Usage limit per coupon to cap total redemptions if you have a budget ceiling.
Track coupon redemptions via the Uses column in the Coupons list. Cross-reference Uses against the UTM-based traffic in Analytics to get a complete picture of the affiliate's contribution: link-based visitors (UTM report) plus code-only purchasers (coupon Uses).
5. Maintain the affiliate tracking reference document
Maintain a reference document (outside SGEN, in a shared team drive) with the following table for every affiliate:
| Affiliate | Landing page slug | UTM source | UTM medium | Coupon | Launch date | Review date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brew with James | podcast-listeners | podcast-brew-with-james | audio | PODCAST10 | 2026-05-13 | 2026-08-13 |
| Acme Fan Blog | blog-readers | blog-acmefan | blog | — | 2026-05-20 | 2026-08-20 |
This reference document is the source of truth for all active affiliates. When reviewing Analytics → Reports, refer to this document to match UTM source values to the correct partner name.
6. Quarterly affiliate performance review
Set a recurring reminder to review each active affiliate's performance every quarter.
For each affiliate, open Analytics → Reports, set the date range to the past 90 days, and filter by UTM source. Note sessions, page views, and bounce rate. Cross-reference against Ecommerce → Orders for the same period to estimate order attribution. If the affiliate uses a coupon code, check the Uses count in Ecommerce → Coupons.
After reviewing all affiliates, decide:
- Which affiliates are driving enough traffic or orders to justify continued partnership.
- Whether any landing pages need updating (new product focus, refreshed copy).
- Whether coupon codes need to be rotated, capped further, or discontinued.
Set the page Status of inactive affiliates' landing pages to Draft when partnerships end.
What success looks like
At the end of setup, every affiliate component should be in the following state: Specific checks after the first affiliate link goes live:
- Ask the affiliate to click their own link from an external device. Open Analytics → Reports and confirm the UTM source value appears in the source breakdown within 24 hours.
- Confirm the affiliate landing page renders correctly in a private-browsing window.
- If a coupon code was created, run a test cart with the code to confirm it applies the correct discount.
What to do if it does not work
Confirm the affiliate is sharing the full UTM-tagged URL, not the bare landing page URL. Also confirm at least 24 hours have passed since the first click — Analytics data may have a processing delay. Ask the affiliate to click their own link from an external device and recheck after 24 hours.
This happens when the UTM parameters are stripped by a URL shortener or social platform. Some platforms rewrite outbound links and remove query strings. Test the affiliate's shared link by clicking it yourself and checking that the UTM parameters are present in the browser URL bar on the landing page.
Open your tracking reference document and identify the conflict. Update one affiliate's UTM source to a unique value, rebuild their link, and ask them to replace the old link in all their content.
Confirm the page Status is Publish and the slug matches the URL being shared. If the slug was changed after the link was distributed, the old URL breaks. Restore the original slug or ask the affiliate to update their link.
Open Ecommerce → Coupons, find the affiliate's code, and confirm Status is Publish. A Draft-status coupon will not be accepted at checkout and will not increment the Uses counter.
This is normal. UTM tracking captures link-based visits; coupon tracking captures code-based purchases. Some visitors arrive via the link but do not use the coupon code. Others may receive the code from a friend and purchase without ever visiting the affiliate link. Both data points together give the most complete picture of affiliate impact.