Measuring Referral Campaigns - Airbridge Help Center

You can use Airbridge tracking links to measure the performance of referral marketing initiatives, such as share-the-campaign and invite-a-friend campaigns, and identify users who refer your service to others to reward them accordingly.

Referral Campaign User Scenario

Here is a typical user scenario using an Airbridge tracking link as a shareable link to measure a referral campaign:

User A clicks a CTA button, such as a Share button or Invite a Friend button. A link will appear that the user can copy and share with others. This link will contain the user ID that can be used to identify User A for rewards.
User A shares the link with User B through email or messenger.
User B clicks the link.

When the app is not installed: User B is redirected to the app store where the app can be downloaded. By using deferred deep linking, User B can be redirected to a specific in-app location upon launching the app for the first time after the app install.
When the app is already installed: The app is launched on User B’s device. By using deep linking, User B can be redirected to a specific in-app location.

User A can be rewarded after User B installs and launches the app or performs a certain app event.

How to Use Tracking Links for Referral Campaigns

The following steps should be handled by a developer. Ask your developer for help.

Develop a CTA button so that when a user clicks the button, the Tracking Link API is called. Make sure the user ID of the user who clicks the CTA button is included in the tracking link. The following parameters shall be used.

Parameter	Description
`channel`	The channel name you wish to look up in the Airbridge reports and raw data files to find the data collected through the tracking link should be entered. This channel name will be considered a Custom Channel name.
`params`	Campaign parameters such as `campaign`, `ad_group`, `content`, `term`, `sub_id` can be included to record additional campaign data.
`deeplinkURL`	The in-app destination and the user ID of the user who clicked the CTA button should be entered.

For a sample request, refer to the example below.

Tracking Link API Sample Request

$ curl -d '{
  {
  "channel": "in_app_referral",
  "campaignParams": {
    "campaign": "referral-01",
    "ad_group": "referral",
    "ad_creative": "invitation"
  },
  "isReengagement": "Off",
  "deeplinkUrl": "ablog://good-product-growth-team?referrer_id=1668",
  "deeplinkOption": {
    "showAlertForInitialDeeplinkingIssue": true
  },
  "fallbackPaths": {
    "option": {
      "ios": "itunes-appstore",
      "android": "google-play"
    }
  },
  "ogTag": {
    ...
  }
}
}' -X POST "'https://api.airbridge.io/v1/tracking-links" -H "Authorization:{AIRBRIDGE-API-TOKEN} -H "Content-Type: application/json

The above codes contains the following information.

channel: The referral campaign data collected through the tracking link should be made available under the channel name in_app_referral in the Airbridge reports and raw data files.
params: The campaign name should be recorded as referral-01, ad group name as referrral, and the ad creative name as invitation.
deeplinkURL: Users who click the tracking link should be redirected to ablog://good-product-growth-team. The user ID of the user who clicked the CTA button and created the shareable link is 1668. If the user ID is 1700, the parameter value should be ablog://good-product-growth-team?referrer_id=1700.

The tracking link should be provided to the user who clicks the CTA button as a shareable link. We recommend providing the trackingLink.shortURLparameter value from the Tracking Link API response as the shareable link, which follows the format as follows.

{default or custom domain}/{shortID}

To use your custom domain instead of abr.ge, which is the default setting, refer to this article and configure your custom domain in the Airbridge dashboard. For a sample response, refer to the example below.

Tracking Link API Sample Response

{
    "data": {
        "trackingLink": {
            "id": 77281,
            "link": {
                "click": "http://abr.ge/@airbridge/my-channel?...",
            },
            "shortID": "6nwx4w",
            "shortURL": "http://abr.ge/6nwx4w",
            "trackingTemplateID": "706f9839a7b50d87ab917dbb1b9fa7f3",
            "channelType": "custom"
        }
    },
    "at": 1585104275
}

Provide the trackingLink.shortURL parameter value as the shareable link to the user who clicks the CTA button.

Configure the deep link callback to get the user ID of the user who clicked the CTA button. You can use the user ID to identify users who participated in your referral campaign and provide rewards.

Android

Set up the deep link callback to parse the URI of the onSuccess function.

referrer_id: The user ID of the user who clicked the CTA button

Airbridge.getDeeplink(getIntent(), new AirbridgeCallback<Uri>() {
	@Override
	public void onSuccess(Uri result) {
		// Parse the {result} parameter to get the referrer_id or any other parameter.
	}
}

Airbridge.getDeeplink(intent, object : AirbridgeCallback<Uri> {
	override fun onSuccess(result: Uri) {
		// Parse the {result} parameter to get the referrer_id or any other parameter.
	}
}

iOS

Set up the deep link callback to parse the deeplinkURL parameter.

referrer_id : The user ID of the user who clicked the CTA button

[AirBridge.deeplink setDeeplinkCallback:^(NSString * _Nonnull result) {
	// Parse the {result} parameter to get the referrer_id or any other parameter.
}];

AirBridge.deeplink().setDeeplinkCallback { result in
	// Parse the {result} parameter to get the referrer_id or any other parameter.
}

Event Collection

NoteIf you are using the DeepLink Plan, only data collected through the tracking links used in the referral campaign is available in the Airbridge dashboard. Note that user actions regarding sharing cannot be collected, and relevant metrics or GroupBys are not available to create a report.

To properly measure your referral campaign, specific user actions relevant to the referral campaign, such as clicking the CTA button, should be collected as an Airbridge event. Such action can be collected as Share event (airbridge.share) which is a Standard Event or can be collected as a newly defined Custom Event. If the Airbridge SDK is already collecting such user action and sending the events to Airbridge, no additional task is required. If not, however, you need to reconfigure the Airbridge SDK to collect such user action and send the events to Airbridge, conduct SDK testing, and release your app with the new Airbridge SDK. Refer to the developer guides listed below for SDK configuration.

Developer Guides for SDK configuration

Platform	Developer Guide
Android	Android SDK Android SDK (Deprecated)
iOS	iOS SDK iOS SDK (Deprecated)
Web	Web SDK
React Native	React Native SDK React Native SDK (Deprecated)
Cordova-Ionic	Cordova-Ionic SDK Cordova-Ionic (Deprecated)
Flutter	Flutter SDK Flutter SDK (Deprecated)
Expo	Expo SDK Expo SDK (Deprecated)
Unity	Unity SDK Unity SDK (Deprecated)
Unreal	Unreal SDK

Performance Reporting

The performance of your referral campaigns can be viewed in the Airbridge reports and raw data files. You can use the following metrics and GroupBys to visualize the data in the reports.

Metric or GroupBy	Description
channel	The channel name of the referral campaign. Shows the `channel` parameter value.
campaign	The campaign name of the referral campaign. Shows the `campaign` parameter value. If not configured, no data is available.
ad group	The ad group name of the referral campaign. Shows the `ad_group` parameter value. If not configured, no data is available.
ad creative	The ad creative name of the referral campaign. Shows the `ad_creative` parameter value. If not configured, no data is available.

Attention

Campaign parameter settings

When calling the Tracking Link API, we recommend configuring the campaign parameters to collect detailed information on your referral campaign.

User ID

The user ID should be a unique identifier assigned to each user account of your service. Note that Airbridge does not manage the user IDs.

​Referral Campaign User Scenario

​How to Use Tracking Links for Referral Campaigns

​Event Collection

​Performance Reporting

​Attention

Referral Campaign User Scenario

How to Use Tracking Links for Referral Campaigns

Event Collection

Performance Reporting

Attention