How to Track Affiliate Marketing – Tracking your affiliate marketing efforts is the key to success. But, few actually do it. You need to know which links are working and which ones aren’t. The book How to Track Affiliate Marketing will show you how to do this for free using Google Analytics. This will allow you to track everything, including your outgoing links, your affiliate links, your top content and much more.
Monitoring affiliate marketing is important, so today we’ll discuss how you can set up your tracking system so your website receives credit for sales. There are three parts to the affiliate marketing customer journey: registration or lead capture, driving traffic to the affiliate’s website, and conversion. Let’s figure out which elements of the customer journey each method of tracking can monitor
Table of Contents
Everflow.io
Everflow is arguably the best affiliate tracking platform out there with a great UI and an extensive feature set. Everflow has some of the most advanced campaign management and reporting functionality. Also, starting at only $200/ month, Everflow is one of the most cost effective solutions out there. Its prominent features include: • Live data in the form of graphs and reports • Advanced notification system • Super fast response times • Advanced media buying tools • Graceful handling of mobile and desktop traffic * Fully exposed API 100 percent of the time • Private partitioning of traffic • Multidimensional reporting and analytics system.
AffTrack
AffTrack happens to be the lone enterprise SaaS solution that offers unlimited clicks. Being leveraged by numerous big affiliate networks since 2009, it is more than just another affiliate tracking system. With an extremely mobile friendly interface, this program makes it very easy to track on the move. Its prominent features include: • Proxy detection service (free) • 100% Real time analytics • Brandable interfaces • Suppression file management • Invoice and billing tools • Access to granular level • File manager • Unlimited advertisers and affiliates • Device targeting • Client side tracking • Geo-targeting • Affiliate referral program
Impact Radius
Established by the founders of Savings.com and Commission Junction, Impact Radius has created quite a buzz since 2008. Its key features include: • Automation of onboarding, contracting, reporting, and tracking of direct affiliates • Call tracking • Monitoring of promo codes • SEO-friendly links • Flexible tracking options via FTP upload, Pixel, Data Post, REST API, Mobile SDKs, etc. • Integration with CRM and Salesforce.com • Real-time analytics
HasOffers
Has Offers Tracking Software is the preferred choice of over 11,500 online businesses. Accommodating global brands such as Social, Living Social, and Zynga, among others, you can rest assured that this software is replete with all the features you’ll need to operate and maintain a profitable affiliate marketing program. Some unique features include: Fraud protection, unlimited affiliates, 99% tracking uptime, comprehensive API, superior measurement, great tracking metrics and devices, an option for dedicated solutions, among others. You can also leverage as an ad agency for advertising your e-commerce store. You can try HasOffers for free for 30 days and can also test the software yourself.
CAKE
Those who’re seeking a robust management tool to optimize and monitor your affiliate networks would do well to explore the cloud-based CAKE. Within one convenient dashboard, you can check your network’s overall performance and manage contacts while reviewing the results. This tool has a wide range of interesting features that include: • Fraud protection • Pixel management • Targeted campaign by device or location • Real-time metrics • Individual portals for affiliates as well as clients • 24/7 support • Referral rewards • Customizable The pricing is intrinsically based on usage and depends on what your business necessitates. The three price levels include Pro, Select, and Enterprise.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the best web analytics platforms available on the market. It helps you collect data, and track and analyze your entire website traffic, so affiliate tracking is just one of the metric types Google Analytics tracks.
So, you’ve decided to start tracking affiliate links in Google Analytics. What do you have to do? We’ve described how to track affiliate links in Google Analytics below.
- The first step is signing in to Google Analytics and setting up a property. Properties are where you send data and set up reporting views. The whole process is described here.
- Creating a property generates a tracking ID (shown below)in which UA-XXXXX-Y is your personal tracking code.
<!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-132808825-1"></script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'UA-XXXXX-Y');
</script>
Make sure that this code is installed, even if your property has already been added to Google Analytics, as the script we are going to describe below works exclusively with it.
- Place the tracking code on the pages you would like to analyze.
How to track outbound links in Google Analytics
If you want to track inbound links, you can simply place your personal tracking code into your site code. If you want to track outbound links, you have to copy and paste this code as the first item into the <HEAD> of every web page that you want to track.
<script>
var trackOutboundLink = function(url) {
gtag('event', 'click', {
'event_category': 'outbound',
'event_label': url,
'transport_type': 'beacon',
'event_callback': function(){document.location = url;}
});
}
</script>
You’ll also need to add (or modify) the onclick attribute to the links you are going to track. The following example can be used as a model for your own links:
<a href="http://www.example.com" onclick="trackOutboundLink('http://www.example.com');return false;">Check out example.com</a>
How can you check that the tracking is functioning correctly?
- Click on the Real Time tab in your Google Analytics account
- Click on the Events tab
- Click on several links on your website
- Return to Google Analytics and see if there are any new events listed
FirstPromoter
Affiliate tracking especially for Saas companies, FirstPromoter is the first one our list. An all-in-one software, Firstpromoter allows SaaS companies to track, manage, and optimize any type of referral-based marketing programs easily.
Affiliates can easily see their stats and share the referral link from their private dashboard while companies can reward both affiliates as well as their friends for signing up. It asl supports a one-click payout option using which companies can pay all their affiliates in one go.
Firspromoter is highly flexible as it allows businesses to have different affiliates for different marketing campaigns as well as different commissions/rewards structure, messaging(emails), links and signup pages
Key Features:
- Create private campaigns to invite specific affiliates
- Set percentage or fixed commissions
- One-click automated payouts
Conclusion
The Affiliate Marketing industry is very confusing to the newcomer. There are always new programs popping up claiming they are the next greatest thing. It can even be confusing for veteran affiliates trying to pick and choose which program to promote. That’s why we’ve put together this little guide.