You do
not create a new FT account to get RB -- that is a violation of TOS that could get your account(s) closed, withdrawals held up, and/or you potentially banned. You do have to create a new account at RakeBackPros, which is FT's own RB provider.
As others mentioned, typing in a promotion code or not does not always determine your affiliate status. Usually affiliate status is determined from browser cookies. What gets most people messed up is they are browsing around the net looking at various poker forums, training sites, rakeback sites, etc. and clicking links but not actually signing up. Then later they decide to signup for FullTilt and go straight to FullTilt.com and download/install the client. There's a very good chance that, if cookies were not properly cleared first, a cookie dropped by one of your previous browsing sessions is still in place and now you're attached to that affiliate without realizing it. And FT has a policy to not tell you who your affiliate is.
I will say though that if you signed up for FT since their 60-day deposit affiliate policy went into affect (not sure when exactly, but at least 2 years or so ago), and did not deposit within 60 days of signup, then any affiliation will expire and you should be eligible for having your account converted to RB. So you have 60 days to deposit or your affiliate loses the referral and your account becomes unaffiliated. However FT grants RB on a case-by-case basis, and takes varying lengths of time to get it done. Some people have requested it for months before being given RB, while others (myself included) got it within a few days. Others have never gotten it while being certain they aren't affiliated and/or never deposited.
Until recently FT was a lot less generous with converting accounts, but around the time that Stars lowered their VIP requirements to make rewards more attainable by the less hardcore players, it seemed to me that FT started granting RB at a much quicker pace. Coincidence? I think not.
