Published 2026-10-09
Which source converts: post, reply, DM, group or newsletter?
DealPage is a referral link tracker that labels each short link with where you shared it, so you can compare post, reply, DM, group and newsletter clicks side by side.
The honest answer is: it depends on your audience
You will find plenty of confident claims about which channel works best for creator offers. Treat them with suspicion. They come from someone else's audience, product and timing, and they rarely say how the numbers were measured.
What you can do instead is measure your own. It takes no special skill — just a little setup before you post, and the discipline to compare like with like.
The five sources worth separating
Your main post: the one on your own profile, seen by your followers and whoever it reaches beyond them. Replies: your comments under other people's posts, which reach their audience rather than yours. Direct messages: one-to-one conversations where someone asked you for the code.
Groups: Telegram channels, Discord servers and similar, where you post to a community. Newsletter: your email list, if you have one. These five behave differently enough that lumping any two together hides something.
Reasonable hypotheses, not answers
It is reasonable to expect DMs to produce few clicks but a high share of sign-ups, because the person asked for the code. It is reasonable to expect the main post to produce the most clicks overall, because it has the widest reach. Replies might punch above their weight when they sit under a large account's post on the same topic. Newsletters might be steady rather than spiky.
Every one of those is a hypothesis. Your audience might break all of them. That is the point of measuring.
Setting up a fair comparison
Give each source its own link before you share anything. If two sources share a link, they cannot be separated later, and referrer data will not save you: many apps and messaging clients send no referrer at all, so DMs and group clicks often arrive as unknown.
Run the comparison on the same offer, over the same period. Comparing a reply about one product with a newsletter about another tells you about the products, not the channels. And give it time; a single day mostly measures when you happened to post.
Keep a simple log next to your links: what you posted, where, and when. Clicks tell you what happened; the log tells you why it might have happened, which is what you will want to know when you look back a month later.
Clicks are not conversions — read them carefully
A short link can count clicks. It cannot see sign-ups, which happen on the brand's site. So what you measure per source is clicks. To get closer to conversions, compare the click split with the sign-ups the program reports for the same period, and look for sources whose clicks move with sign-ups and sources whose clicks do not.
If a program does report sign-ups per link or per sub-ID, use that. Otherwise be explicit that you are comparing clicks.
Doing it in DealPage
When you create short links for a Deal, you label each one: post, reply, DM, group or newsletter. Clicks are counted per link, with known bots excluded and unique visitors estimated without storing IP addresses. The statistics page shows clicks by source over time and by country.
Free accounts see the last 7 days, which is enough for a single campaign. Pro keeps a longer history, which is what you need to compare across several campaigns. The guides to tracking referral link clicks by source and to seeing which tweet drove sign-ups cover the setup step by step.
What to do with the answer
Once you have a few campaigns' worth of numbers, the decisions get easier. A source that consistently sends few clicks may not be worth the time it takes. A source that sends clicks out of proportion to its effort deserves more. And the split itself is useful to sponsors: it is information they cannot get from their own analytics.
Revisit the comparison from time to time. Audiences shift, platforms change how they show links, and a group that was lively last quarter may have gone quiet. A habit of giving every share its own link costs a few seconds per post, and it means the answer is always available when you need it — whether you are deciding where to spend your evening or answering a sponsor who asks where the clicks came from.
Frequently asked
- Which channel converts best for referral codes?
- It depends on your audience and offer. The reliable way to know is to give each channel its own link and compare clicks on the same offer over the same period.
- Why not rely on referrer data?
- Many apps and messaging clients send no referrer, so clicks from DMs and groups often show up as unknown.
- Can DealPage show sign-ups per source?
- No. DealPage counts clicks per source. Sign-ups are reported by the program you refer for.