Written by Josh Hutter
Originally published October 2022 • Updated March 2026

In affiliate marketing, delivering the right content to the right audience is essential for driving engagement and conversions. Showing generic deals to everyone simply doesn’t perform as well as tailored, relevant offers.

FMTC provides powerful tools within its API—specifically Deal Types and Categories—that allow publishers and merchants to better segment content and target specific audiences. By using these tools effectively, you can create more personalized user experiences and significantly improve performance.

Why Targeted Affiliate Content Matters

Not all deals are relevant to every user. A student discount, for example, only applies to a specific audience, while a sitewide sale may appeal more broadly.

By targeting affiliate content, you can:

  • Increase click-through rates
  • Improve conversion rates
  • Deliver a more personalized experience
  • Reduce irrelevant or low-performing content

FMTC’s structure makes this possible by organizing deals in ways that are easy to filter, segment, and display dynamically.

How to Identify and Segment Affiliate Content

Before targeting content, you need a way to organize it. FMTC’s getDeals endpoint offers human-validated deals delivered via API. Within this data are a few important fields, which are verified by FMTC for accuracy and will help you target specific types of deals:

● Deal Types → what kind of promotion it is (e.g., coupon, free shipping, student discount)
● Categories → what the deal is about (e.g., apparel, electronics)

These two dimensions work together to create highly targeted content experiences.

Using Deal Types to Target Affiliate Audiences

Deal Types define the nature of the promotion. This is where targeting becomes more powerful.

Examples of Deal Types include:

  • Coupon (offers with coupon codes)
  • Free shipping offers
  • Sitewide sales
  • Student discounts
  • Buy One Get One (BOGO)

By filtering based on Deal Types, you can tailor content to specific user segments. View the full list of Deal Types located here and an explanation of our getTypes endpoint here

Example Use Cases

  • Student audience: Show only student discounts or gated offers
  • Deal-focused users: Highlight coupon codes and percentage-off deals
  • High-intent shoppers: Surface sitewide sales or limited-time offers

Using Categories to Organize Content

Categories allow you to group deals based on product type or vertical.

For example:

  • Apparel
  • Travel
  • Electronics
  • Home & Garden

This makes it easier to:

  • Build category-specific pages
  • Filter deals based on user interests
  • Match content to site structure

If a user is browsing a fashion page, you can dynamically pull only apparel-related deals, ensuring relevance.

A full list of categories can be found here). The specific category you want to pull will be the parent category “group-discount.” Subcategories for targeted groups, such as students or teachers, will be listed below the parent category.

Combining Deal Types and Categories for Better Targeting

The real power comes from combining both dimensions.

For example:

  • Apparel + Coupon (Codes) → fashion deals with immediate savings
  • Electronics + Free Shipping → high-ticket items with added incentive
  • Travel + Limited-Time Offers → urgency-driven bookings

This layered targeting creates a much more refined and effective content strategy.

Best Practices for Affiliate Content Targeting

To get the most out of FMTC’s targeting capabilities:

  • Match content to user intent
    Don’t show every deal to every user
  • Use both categories and deal types together
    This creates more precise targeting
  • Highlight high-value deal types
    Coupons and exclusive discounts tend to convert best
  • Keep content fresh
    Update frequently using the API
  • Test different combinations
    Optimize based on performance data

As always, our team is ready to help you! If you have any questions or concerns, contact your account manager or email us at support@fmtc.co. Curious about other FMTC technologies? Find more information on FMTC’s tools in Tech Corner:

FMTC Tech Corner: getDeals Deep Dive

FMTC Tech Corner: getMerchants Deep Dive

FMTC Tech Corner: Get Deals and Get Merchants

FMTC Tech Corner: Deal Types and the getTypes API

The post How to Target Affiliate Marketing Content Using FMTC APIs (Deal Types & Categories) appeared first on FMTC.