Count the Sale: Promo Codes, Affiliate Dashboards and Store Traffic

Every sponsor would love to know exactly how many products a racer sold. Most never will. A tire bought at a dealer three states away, a spark plug picked up at a parts store the week after a race, a helmet ordered because a local hero wore one: those sales happen, but they don't come with a note explaining why.

What brands can do is put markers in the path between the racer and the sale. A promo code, an affiliate link, a store visit with a car out front. None of them capture everything, but each one turns part of a racer's value into a number someone can count. At my Sponsorship Summits, the brands that track sales described the tools they use, and the racers who use them well tend to get noticed.

Give the sponsor something it can trace

Eric Seibold of ITW Permatex was candid that his company doesn't run a formal ROI calculation on sponsorships. "We know what works and what doesn't," he said. Permatex fills in that judgment with whatever it can trace: "If we can measure where traffic comes from to our website, which we have ways to do, if we can measure if those clicks click through to Advance Auto, say, or if we partner with someone and we use a promo code and then they use that code at an AutoZone or an O'Reilly, we have ways to track some of these things with metrics. So we get an idea of what works." ▶ Watch Eric Seibold on tracking

A brand that sells mostly through retail stores can't see a racer's fans buying its products at the counter. A code or a tracked link is how that sale shows up in its numbers.

The racers who move product get found

For brands that sell direct, tracking also helps them find talent. Robert Wilson, strategic partnership manager at Boxo USA, sends most of the racers who contact him to the company's affiliate program, which gives each one a code to share. "There's a dashboard that you can sign on anytime, you can see who's using the code and what your commission's going to be, and then we have access to that," he said.

Boxo is a small company, and Wilson can't personally evaluate every racer who writes in. The code data does that for him. "We can set alerts, right, and if we see somebody that's got their code being used 10 times in a month where the average is zero or one, that automatically allows us to start looking into that person," he said. Everyone who pitches thinks they deserve the deal. The code shows who actually sells. ▶ Watch Robert Wilson explain the affiliate program

Enjuku Racing's general manager described the same idea at the Drift Sponsorship Summit. For bigger-name sponsored drivers, the parts retailer would issue a personal discount code, printed on a flyer for the track. "We'll track that and see, like, oh, driver X, 50 people used that coupon this month, and driver Y, 200 did," he said. "And that'll definitely weigh into what budget may be allocated to that in the following year." ▶ See the full answer

Read that last sentence again if you're negotiating a renewal. Your code redemptions can become next year's budget.

In my own promotions I've seen something similar. Some of my affiliates with a couple hundred followers have redeemed more promo codes than organizations with tens of thousands of members, because a small, tight group trusts the person recommending something. A big audience isn't the same as an audience that buys.

Bring the car to the store

Some sales can't be tracked with a code, but you can still see them happen. Permatex wants racers to help it "drive retail traffic to our stores," which Seibold defined as "the big four: NAPA, AutoZone, O'Reilly and Advance Auto."

He suggested a simple way to do it on a race weekend. "If you have a race in a certain city that weekend and you have the opportunity to visit an O'Reilly or an Advance store with your car and show the car out front, that helps that store out, but you can also sample our products there," he said. ▶ Watch Eric Seibold on store visits

A store visit gives you things to put in a report: how many people came by, how many samples went out, and what the store manager said about the day. And it helps the retailer, who is your sponsor's customer.

The same thing happens at the dealer level in powersports. Pat Lopez, athlete manager of OGIO Powersports, relies on his sales reps to point out local amateur riders who influence what other riders buy. He described a young rider who brings his friends into a Florida powersports dealer to buy OGIO bags. "Now I kind of have this regional kid that is helping drive to the brick and mortar, which is where dirt bikes are sold," Lopez said. "Those have to be healthy. The brick and mortar has to be healthy." ▶ Watch Pat Lopez explain this

An amateur who keeps a local dealer busy is worth a lot to a brand that sells through dealers, and the dealer can tell the brand's sales rep about it.

Know when tracking isn't possible

Not every sponsor can draw a line to a sale, and you should know which kind you're dealing with. Jackie Donahue, marketing manager at NGK Spark Plugs, put it plainly on the Why Brands Sponsor & How to Calculate ROI panel. "The ROI is like the kryptonite, right? I cannot never measure it," she said. "We don't sell to consumers, so trying to figure out if racers are moving the needle with sales, it's very difficult."

She also tried paying for a social-media measurement service and dropped it, because many of the racers she sponsored didn't have business accounts the service could follow. "I was spending like $30,000 and not really getting any good reports that I could use," Donahue said. ▶ Watch Jackie Donahue on measuring ROI

For a sponsor like that, a promo code may not be possible at all. What helps is evidence the brand can't easily collect on its own: content showing the product in use, testimonials, and records of the store visits and retailer events you supported.

The takeaway

• Ask every sponsor whether it has a promo code, affiliate link or tracked URL you can use. If it doesn't, suggest one.
• Put your code on everything you control: flyers at the track, the pit display, every post, your website.
• Report redemptions in every recap, even small numbers. A trend from zero to ten a month gets attention.
• On race weekends, offer to take the car to a retailer that carries your sponsor's products, and record what happened.
• If a sponsor can't track sales, document what it can't see for itself: product in use, store traffic, testimonials and retailer feedback.