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With Dub Partners, you can create dual-sided incentives for your affiliate/referral programs, which give special discounts to customers who sign up via a referral link.
Some examples include:
  • 25% discount for the first 12 months
  • 30% lifetime discount
  • $50 one-off discount
This can drive powerful word-of-mouth growth as partners are more likely to share their link if it gives their audience/user base additional discounts, and on the other hand, their users are more likely to click on their links as well if they’re getting a special deal. In this article, we’ll learn how to set up dual-sided incentives with Dub Partners. If you’re using Stripe for payments, you can follow these steps to set up direct link-based discounts for your partner referral links:
Link-based discounts provide better attribution accuracy since you get visibility into the customer’s geolocation, device info, referrer details, and UTM data.The trade-off here is that it requires some engineering work to set up.
1

Create a discount on Dub

First, navigate to the partner group that you want to create a discount for. Under the Discount tab, you’ll be able to create a discount for the group
Group discounts page
If you already have a discount set up for your default group, you can just duplicate it. If not, click Create to create your first group discount:
Program discounts tab
New Stripe couponIf you don’t have a coupon set up on Stripe yet, you can use the New Stripe coupon option to create a new coupon based on the discount type (percentage vs flat), amount, and duration set in Dub.Use Stripe coupon IDIf you already have an existing coupon on Stripe, you can enter the Stripe coupon ID (should be an 8 alphanumeric code) under the Use Stripe coupon ID option.
Since Stripe doesn’t support updating coupons after creation, you’d need todelete your discount in Dub and create a new one if you want to update any of the discount parameters.Note: Deleting a discount on Dub does not delete the corresponding Stripe coupon.
2

Add coupon logic to checkout flow

The key to implementing link-based discounts is to check if a customer is eligible for a discount using Dub’s Customers API, then automatically apply the appropriate Stripe coupon to their checkout session.Here’s how the flow works:
  1. When a user clicks a partner referral link, Dub tracks them as a potential customer
  2. During checkout, you query the Dub Customers API using the user’s ID
  3. If they’re eligible for a discount, you apply the coupon to their Stripe checkout session
  4. If not, you allow them to enter promotion codes manually
import { dub } from "@/lib/dub.ts";
import Stripe from "stripe";

const stripe = new Stripe(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY!);

// Get customer discount eligibility from Dub
const customers = await dub.customers.list({
  externalId: userId, // their user ID within your app
  includeExpandedFields: true,
});

const customerDiscount = customers.length > 0 ? customers[0].discount : null;

// Create Stripe checkout session with conditional discount
const stripeSession = await stripe.checkout.sessions.create({
  success_url: "https://app.domain.com/upgraded",
  cancel_url: "https://app.domain.com/pricing",
  line_items: [
    {
      price: "price_1MotwRLkdIwHu7ixYcPLm5uZ",
      quantity: 1,
    },
  ],
  mode: "subscription", // or "payment" for one-time purchases
  ...(customerDiscount
    ? {
        // Apply discount automatically if customer is eligible
        discounts: [
          {
            coupon:
              process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production" &&
              customerDiscount.couponTestId
                ? customerDiscount.couponTestId
                : customerDiscount.couponId,
          },
        ],
      }
    : {
        // Allow manual promo code entry if no automatic discount
        allow_promotion_codes: true,
      }),
  customer_email: userEmail,
  metadata: {
    userId: userId,
    ...(customerDiscount && { dubDiscountId: customerDiscount.id }),
  },
});
Once this is set up, eligible customers will automatically see the coupon code applied at checkout:
Stripe coupon applied

​
Option 2: Using Stripe promo codes (no code required)

If you prefer a no-code solution, you can set up Stripe promo-code-based discounts for your partners.
Stripe promo-code-based discounts is much easier to set up (no code required).However, you do sacrifice on attribution accuracy since you won’t have any insights into the customer’s geolocation, device info, referrer details, and UTM data. Our Stripe integration will try to derive the customer’s location based on their Stripe billing address, but it can sometimes be inaccurate.
1

Create a discount on Dub

First, navigate to the partner group that you want to create a discount for. Under the Discount tab, you’ll be able to create a discount for the group
Group discounts page
If you already have a discount set up for your default group, you can just duplicate it. If not, click Create to create your first group discount:
Program discounts tab
New Stripe couponIf you don’t have a coupon set up on Stripe yet, you can use the New Stripe coupon option to create a new coupon based on the discount type (percentage vs flat), amount, and duration set in Dub.Use Stripe coupon IDIf you already have an existing coupon on Stripe, you can enter the Stripe coupon ID (should be an 8 alphanumeric code) under the Use Stripe coupon ID option.
Since Stripe doesn’t support updating coupons after creation, you’d need todelete your discount in Dub and create a new one if you want to update any of the discount parameters.Note: Deleting a discount on Dub does not delete the corresponding Stripe coupon.
2

Create your partner code

Open the partner profile that you’d like to create a discount code for, then click Create Code in the “Discount codes” section.
Partner links page
Here you can select which referral link you’d like to associate the code with. Then you can create the discount code.
Partner links page
Discount codes cannot be edited after creation, so ensure that you have everything correct before creating the code
After the code has been created, you’ll see its value populated in the Discount Code section, and it is ready for use. In the Partner Dashboard, they’ll also see the associated discount code within their partner links.
Partner links page with discount code

​
Displaying discount banner

Once you’ve set up dual-sided incentives, a potential next step would be to display the discount information on your pricing page / landing page hero. To do that, all you need is to install the @dub/analytics script with client-side click-tracking enabled – then, when someone lands on your site via a valid referral link, the script will automatically fetch the partner and discount data for you. This data will be stored as a JSON-stringified object in the dub_partner_data cookie in the following format: 
{
  "clickId": "xxx", // unique ID of the click event
  "partner": {
    "id": "pn_xxx", // unique ID of the partner on Dub
    "name": "John Doe", // name of the partner
    "image": "https://example.com/john.png" // avatar of the partner
  },
  "discount": {
    "id": "disc_xxx", // unique ID of the discount on Dub
    "amount": 25, // discount amount (either a percentage or a fixed amount)
    "type": "percentage", // type of the discount (either "percentage" or "fixed")
    "maxDuration": 3, // maximum duration of the discount in months
    "couponId": "XZuejd0Q", // Stripe coupon code
    "couponTestId": "2NMXz81x" // Stripe test coupon ID
  }
}
You can access partner and discount data in your application code using the useAnalytics() hook. If you’re working in a non-React environment, you can use the DubAnalytics object directly. Here is a quick example of how you can display a discount banner using the useAnalytics() hook: 
// Display a banner that says: _"John referred you to Acme and gave you 25% off"_
import { useAnalytics } from "@dub/analytics/react";

function DiscountBanner() {
  const { partner, discount } = useAnalytics();

  if (!partner || !discount) {
    return null;
  }

  return (
    <div className="flex items-center gap-2">
      <img
        src={partner.image}
        alt={partner.name}
        className="size-6 rounded-full"
      />
      <p>
        {partner.name} referred you to Acme and gave you {discount.amount}{" "}
        {discount.type} off
      </p>
    </div>
  );
}
Here’s an example of how the discount banner will look like:
A screenshot of the Dub partner data example
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