Integrate Advocate with Optimize

This guide explains how to integrate Advocate activities with Optimize, ensuring that referral and advocate-driven traffic is accurately tracked and displayed in Optimize reports.

Integrating Advocate with Optimize allows you to:

Attribute referral traffic and conversions to the Advocate channel.
Analyze the performance of advocate-driven campaigns alongside other marketing channels.
Surface advocate activities in Optimize reports for better decision-making.

Prerequisites

Universal Tracking Tag (UTT) or Page Load API must be implemented on your website to report all referral activity to impact.com.
Your Advocate program must be active and generating referral links.
Need to have access to Optimize with permissions to configure channels and rules.

How Advocate activities are tracked in Optimize

Advocate activities are tracked in Optimize by capturing clicks and conversions that originate from referral codes or share links generated by your Advocate program. These activities are identified using specific URL parameters and are categorized into the appropriate channel within Optimize.

Optimize uses a combination of the following to allocate traffic to channels:

UTM parameters (e.g., utm_source, utm_medium)
Custom parameters (e.g., rscode)
Referrer data

Setting up Advocate as a channel in Optimize

Step 1: Enable default channels

In the left navigation menu, select Optimize → Settings → Channels and ensure that the Direct and Organic Referral channels are enabled.

Step 2: Configure Rules to Identify (RTI) for Advocate

In the left navigation menu, select Optimize → Settings → Channels.
Select Create Channel or select [Menu] → Edit if you already have an existing Advocate channel. Learn more about creating a channel.
Ensure that Identify Channel Traffic is [toggled on].
In the Rules to identify section, define rules that capture traffic with parameters unique to Advocate referrals (see next section).

Step 3: Test and save your rule

Test by generating a referral link from Advocate and clicking through to ensure the activity appears in Optimize under the correct channel.
Select a credit group to assign the rule to.
Select Save to save your channel configuration.

Key parameters for tracking

rscode A unique referral code parameter appended to Advocate-generated links. Optimize can use this to identify and attribute traffic to the Advocate channel.

utm_source=referral Standard UTM parameter used to indicate referral traffic. Ensure your Advocate links include this parameter for best results.

UTM parameters:

utm_medium
utm_campaign

Tip: Always ensure that Advocate-generated links include both rscode and relevant UTM parameters for maximum attribution accuracy.

Example request

{
 "user_id": "12345",
 "activity_type": "referral",
 "channel": "email",
 "parameters": {
   "rscode": "ADVOCATE2025",
   "utm_source": "referral",
   "utm_campaign": "november-promo"
 },
 "timestamp": "yyyy-mm-ddT00:00:00Z"
}

Example response

{
 "status": "success",
 "message": "Advocate activity recorded.",
 "activity_id": "act_67890",
 "visible_in_optimize": true,
 "caveats": [
   "Activity will be visible in Optimize reports within 15 minutes.",
   "Only activities with valid rscode or utm_source=referral are displayed."
 ]
}

Visibility conditions & caveats

Advocate activities are only visible in Optimize if:

The UTT or Page Load API is correctly implemented and capturing all click data.
The Rules to Identify (RTI) are set up to recognize Advocate-specific parameters.
The referral traffic is not filtered out by other channel rules with higher priority (Check the assigned credit groups).

Caveats:

If the Advocate program uses non-standard parameters or custom implementations, additional configuration may be required.
Only last-click attribution is supported for Optimize channels. If your program uses first-click or mixed attribution, results may differ.
Postback programs (where data is provided by another program) are not supported for Optimize reporting.