This tutorial identifies the steps required to track a sales funnel using ClickMagick from the clicking of an advertisement to a landing page through to the sale of an affiliate offer. In our example the ad will be a Bing Ad and the affiliate offer will be one on the MaxBounty affiliate network
The Theory Of Click Tracking On A Sales Funnel
ClickMagick makes this pretty easy through these features:
- Link Groups
- Link Groups allow you to associate the various links in the sales/conversion funnel
- Front End Link
- The front end advanced link setting lets you identify the first link in the funnel. This normally links to your landing or optin page.
- Non Front-End Funnel Links
- Other links in the funnel are specified by choosing the same link group and by clicking the advanced setting conversions to this link AND the Front End link. This will include the link in your landing page to the main offer, but could also includes one or more upsell or downsell offers or free bonus offers
- ClickId Token
- The special token, [clickid] which when added to a ClickMagick link, generates a unique ID which is used to track the conversion downstream in the affiliate network
- Global Postback URL For Tracking Sales
- MaxBounty will activate the postback URL after a sale or conversion has taken place. This updates ClickMagick link marking it as a conversion and adds revenue so you can show earnings per click
- Ref Parameter
- The ref parameter on the postback URL can indicate what part of the funnel has resulted in a conversion. So you might use tracking pixels with ref=#OFFID# (the MaxBounty offer ID) for the main affiliate sale, and ref=upsell1, ref=upsell2, ref=downsell1 or ref=bonus for various thank you pages on upsells, downsells and bonuses.
A Worked Example Of Click Tracking On A Sales Funnel
We'll assume we're using a Bing Ad to drive traffic to the landing page which in turn has a link through to an offer on the MaxBounty affiliate network.
The offer is a CPA offer which pays $3 for the registration form completion as a panelist for the YouGov market research company.
The order of the steps below may vary a little depending on what the affiliate manager needs to see in order to give approval for you to sell the offer. In this example, we'll assume the affiliate manager wants to see both the ads and the manager before giving approval.
Prerequsites
- Set Up MaxBounty Callback URL
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We'll assume you've already signed up with the MaxBounty affiliate network and set up your ClickMagick global Postback for Sales Tracking as the MaxBounty callback URL.
This is just done once as the same callback URL is used for all MaxBounty links.
- Set Up ClickMagick Custom Tracking Domain
- This step is optional. Instead you can use the ClickMagick URLs which are of the format http://www.clkmg.com/yourusername/yourlink.
In this example, we have set up a custom tracking domain so the links that appear in the ads use our our domain rather than a ClickMagick owned domain.
How To Set Up Tracking On The Sales Funnel
There are 8 steps involved in creating and track a sales funnel that contains an ad, a lander and the affiliate offer.
- Create Bing Ad
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Create your text ad with a compelling call to action having completed some keyword research.
The keyword research allows you to determine the search phrases for which your ad will be displayed.
You will also set a maximum price per click which will filter out expensive keywords. Bing allows you to dynamically include the keyword in the ad itself.
Normally you would create several ads to see which performs best. In our example we will just create a single ad.
- Create Landing Page For YouGov Offer
- Create your landing page where you persuade the visitor to take action. The desired action is for the visitor to click the button to go through to the YouGov offer and then complete and submit the form.
The landing page will explain the benefits of being a YouGov panelist. For best conversion results the landing page should seamlessly bridge the gap between what the person types into Bing, the wording of the ad and the final offer.
- Signup Up For YouGov Offer
- Create ClickMagick Link Group
- Under Tools > Domain Manager set up a link group called YouGov Panelist. This will contain the links in our sales funnel: the lander link and the offer link.
- Create ClickMagick Front End Link To Lander
- Set up a link to the landing page and specify this link as a Front End Link. Put this link in the YouGov Panelist group.
- Update Ad With ClickMagick Lander Link
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Edit your ad and set the link destination to be your ClickMagick lander link
Copy this URL and update your Bing Ad with the ClickMagick link as the Destination URL. At the end of the URL are included tokens for the Keywords and the Ad ID.
These will be used as SUBID1 and SUBID2 in ClickMagick.
When the ads are clicked this will generate rows in ClickMagick for each combination of search phrase and ad. You can then assess which ad is clicked most often and which search phrase yields the most clicks.
You will therefore be able to fine-tune your keywords and ads hence make your ad campaign deliver results more quickly.
- Create ClickMagick Link To Offer
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Set up a link to the Maxbounty offer link and specify the front end link attribute as Conversions to this link AND the Front End link.
Put this link in the YouGov Panelist group. It is critical to add the parameter &s1=[clickid] to end of the affiliate link so ClickMagick can track the conversion.
- Update Landing Page With ClickMagick Offer Link
- Edit your landing page and set the link destination of your call to action button to be your ClickMagick YouGov offer link
At MaxBounty sign up for the YouGov offer. This particular offer does not require approval. Other offers do require approval and you may be required to show your landing page and your ads before the affiliate manager makes a decision.
Findings
After a false start where we used the wrong postback URL, this worked fine. The conversion was attributed to the clickid on the offer tracking link and also to the landing page tracking link (by virtue of both links being in the same funnel)
However, ClickMagick's recommended approach is different from that given above. Rather than use the clickid on the offer link they recommend that the clickid is put on the lander link instead and then this is passed through the funnel. Javascript is used on the landing page to copy the clickid into SUB-ID1 on the the offer links. This approach is described in ClikMagick FAq 146. I believe this more involved approach may offer better SUBID reporting however I have not yet proved this is the case as testing is not complete.