You know when you’ve done everything right, followed the steps in a recipe exactly, and still not gotten the picture perfect result you were expecting?

It’s often a simple mistake or misstep.

If your referrals are being assigned to the wrong person, most likely it's something that's happening during your tests and nothing's actually gone wrong.

Here's what happening.

What usually happens after you’ve set up your SparkLoop campaign and want to start testing the referral link, is that you grab the referral link associated with your email, open a new tab, paste the link, and sign up with a different email address.

Hey presto, it works.

Better try with another link as well, just in case, right?

So then, off you go, grab a second referral link associated with a different email address, open up a new tab, and do it all over again.

This time, however, your referral is still assigned to the first email address.

Why does this happen?

Blame the cookies.

The first time you visit the sign-up page with the referral link, we generate a cookie in your session. The cookie lasts for 30 days, which means that if someone else lands on this page from any referral link, the credit will still go to the person with the first link.

Basically, if a referral is assigned to A even though they clicked on B's link, it's because they'd clicked on A's link at some point in the past. And SparkLoop gives the referral points to whoever's link they clicked on first.

The solution is simple. Every time you want to test a referral link, use an incognito tab so that no cookies are created.

Without cookies generated, any referral link you use is assumed to be the first, so the test will work each time.

And if it still doesn’t work?

Here’s how to get in touch with us.