How to post affiliate links & discount codes on Instagram
Here’s how to post affiliate links and discount codes on Instagram.
BFCM 2026 Merchant Guide
Black Friday and Cyber Monday occur on the last Friday of November and the following Monday, which for 2026 is 27th November and 30th November. Data from across Avelon suggests the period will start even earlier this year, with traffic and conversions ramping up from 6th November.
In this guide, we'll cover the below topics:
Key dates and timelines for BFCM
Black Friday and Cyber Monday occur on the last Friday of November and the following Monday, which for 2026 is 27th November and 30th November. Data from across Avelon suggests the period will start even earlier this year, with traffic and conversions ramping up from 6th November.
It is more important than ever to be prepared for BFCM as early as possible. As we’ve seen across Amazon’s promotion of BFCM, they go hard early.
Types of offers & content
The type of offers you want to run over this period will have a big impact on whether affiliates actually promote them and how well you perform over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period.
The most popular offers with affiliates include:
- Flash sales
- Product/category specific sales
- Sitewide sale
- Affiliate-specific exclusive discounts
- Affiliate-wide discounts
The recommended approach from our top publishers is to have a mixture of offers, with one or two hero offers with increased discount % on specific products, alongside a sitewide or general sale. This gives the affiliates something to really shout about and increases the likelihood of inclusions in Black Friday/Cyber Monday roundups and deal content.
We have also seen great success with merchants offering ‘EXTRA10’ codes to publishers. These codes are to be used on top of existing deals.
Some great examples of content for sales throughout the year include the below. These sales saw great success due to the communication Sigma Sports had with the publisher in the weeks leading up to the event. They also increased commission through their commission tables, which took their commission for publishers from their standard rate to double the commission for the sale period.
Commission and placement strategy
It’s not only strong offers that can improve your likelihood of being promoted over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period. Temporarily increasing commission rates for individual affiliates on your program can make you stand out from competitors.
Using commission increases in return for guaranteed placements and promotion of your offers is also a great way to work with affiliates on your program. You can contact affiliates directly through the chat feature in Avelon and discuss opportunities. We would recommend you do this asap to ensure plenty of time to organise product samples and planning content.
We also recommend using your commission table (available in program settings) to set commissions against specific products. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to use your commission table.
Tenancy deals & advertorial
Tenancy deals are classed as advertorial, and they go hand-in-hand with how publishers like to operate throughout the BFCM period. Tenancy deals are paid upfront and typically start from £500.00 for the coverage plus your commission rate.
Tenancy deals mean the publisher either offers:
- An article specific to the deals you have over the BFCM period, or;
- A deals roundup post with multiple deals from multiple merchants
If you would like to discuss tenancy deals or guaranteed coverage over BFCM, please reach out to one of the Avelon team and we can present what is available.
Voucher code management
If you’re planning on creating discount codes for individual affiliates over Black Friday/Cyber Monday, use batches of one time use codes through Avelon’s Discount Code Groups to allocate them to the right affiliate. If you use Shopify, you can create batches of codes directly in the Avelon platform and assign them to affiliates.
Once you’ve created your codes, update each publisher’s link to a Smart Referral Link. This creates a bespoke landing page for each affiliate, improving conversion rates and using anti-bot technology to avoid code leakage.
Creative assets
Supplying creative assets, especially seasonal assets with key messages or product focuses, is a great way to engage affiliates on your program over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period.
Tracking
Ensuring your tracking is up to date and working correctly means your reporting in the Avelon platform gives a true reflection of your performance over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. To check your tracking is working correctly, go to settings and view the date we last saw a transaction via our API.
If you are using one of our native integrations: if the date shown does not match when the last sale was placed on your website, then your tracking is most likely not working.
If you are using a custom integration or you have integrated through Google Tag Manager: if the date shown is older than your last reported sale in Avelon, or it does not show a date at all, then your tracking is broken.
Alternatively, reach out to us and we can check for you.
Communication with affiliates
Affiliates will decide from thousands of offers from merchants, so it’s important to communicate offers to affiliates clearly and with everything they will need in one place. Starting your communication earlier is incredibly important – as the top affiliates will be bombarded with requests from other merchants and PR teams – so get yourself organised early.
Below is a simple checklist of things to include in your outreach:
- Offer title
- Offer description
- Discount amount
- Landing page URLs
- Creative asset links
- Contact details
Be as clear as possible what’s included in the sales and commission enhancements and what isn’t. If you’re pushing specific products, be sure to add the SKU’s into your commission tables to ensure affiliates get rewarded correctly.
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