Customizing the Suite Bar

I'm trying to come up with a way to add links to the suite bar in SharePoint 2013 (and 2016 soon) without modifying the master page. I've come across a few articles detailing how to do this with a custom delegation as below.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/findnavish/2013/02/07/sharepoint-2013-customizing-suite-bar/

http://www.learningsharepoint.com/2013/02/22/change-sharepoint-in-top-left-bar-in-sharepoint-2013-with-logo/

http://gadm-tech.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/adding-links-to-suite-bar-in-visual.html

http://www.learningsharepoint.com/2013/02/10/addremove-links-in-top-suitebar-skydrivesitesnewsfeed-in-sharepoint-2013/

They're all pretty much the same and I'm pretty sure I've followed them correctly.

However every time I deploy the solution, I lose the current stuff in the Suite Bar sure enough, but the stuff I'm adding doesn't appear.