Chapter 10: Influencer and affiliate marketing through web-to-app funnels

Influencer and affiliate traffic is a rapidly-growing acquisition motion, and it shouldn’t be considered an afterthought or second-in-command to paid user acquisition.

If you’re considering influencer marketing, or already working with affiliates but looking to try web-to-app, this guide walks through the steps to adapt a funnel journey for creator and partner traffic. Working off the back of your core setup, we’ll cover tracking placements, keeping attribution and payout separate, and validating and troubleshooting a creator campaign.

Building the creator <> funnel journey

One of the biggest risks of affiliate marketing is the potential disparity between your influencers’ content, and your funnel. Mismatched content or a clunky transition can throw users off, pull them out of the buying journey, or erode trust with the creator.

Whether you’re using ongoing affiliate discounts or a one-off campaign sponsorship, the creator’s content and your funnel should feel like one conversation.

1. Continue the problem, demonstration, or result introduced by the creator
2. Show the relevant part of the product quickly
3. Add proof appropriate to that creator's audience
4. Present one approved offer with clear price and terms
5. Complete web checkout and give the purchaser an obvious redemption path

We talked about URL parameters and funnel settings in chapter three of the core setup, and these are just as important for influencer campaigns as they are in paid UA.

UTMs provide readable labels; custom parameters and platform-generated IDs provide stable identifiers that still work if a campaign or ad set is renamed. Using consistent naming rules and standard parameters ensures RevenueCat data links purchases to users, and means your metrics are comparable across multiple campaigns.

Use one stable creator key, utm_source for the platform, and utm_content for different assets. Add a creator parameter only for partner-specific personalization or routing, and confirm every short link preserves the full query string. Non-standard parameters like creator need to be declared under Funnel Settings → Parameters — see the Deploying Funnels Docs for the setup.