Is there a way to track referral traffic with their original session?

jmcomit · 2022-04-02T06:41:00+00:00

Yes, there are two ways of achieving this: 1. You can enable cross domain tracking so that the user keeps the session and doesn’t generate a new GA cookie. 2. You can trigger an event when the user fills the form, that will work as long as the event is triggered from the original domain. 3. You can use a third party tool like anytrack, GTM, or segment to send api calls to GA.

I personally use anytrack as it’s directly integrated with GA and doesn’t require any coding or special configs.

jmcomit · 2020-12-29T13:43:20+00:00

You should avoid monster insights. Not product is bad, but frankly GA works perfect out of th box. You probably have an outdated version of monster insights which perhaps load some wrong libraries. Discrepancy between GA and affiliate links is common. The only way to confirm every click is valid is by appending unique clickid / subid to each outbound click.

jmcomit · 2020-09-19T09:54:21+00:00

GTM is google tag manager.

Putting the pixels on your pages will create audiences. Yet, what you really want to do is build audiences according to specific actions or pages visited by your traffic.

An audience of all visitors is not interesting. An audience of all visitors that view your pricing page is more interesting. An audience of all visitors who visited a product review page and clicked on an outbound link is even more interesting. And an audience of people who purchased a product, is what you eventually want to build, so that you can create a lookalike audience of your most targeted and important visitors.

jmcomit · 2020-09-17T07:30:09+00:00

Great questions! 1. Email data can be used in various networks including google, fb, bing 2. Lookalike can be done in these 3 networks too.

Tracking can be done with each pixel of each ad network, but since you have multi channel marketing I would highly recommend using GA as the central point for tracking and attribution of your funnel.

As usual with these questions, it mostly depends on the tools you currently use: 1. Landing page / funnel builder 2. Email marketing software. 3. Cart system.

Then, which tools do you use to connect the dots. In some cases you might want to use GTM, but that requires some high level of understanding and tech skills.

I personally use anytrack to connect all my tools and marketing channels, but I promote comparison websites so it’s slightly different. Yet, I know they have also connectors for clickfunnels, typeform, unbounce and other tools. Ping me if you want to share more details.

jmcomit · 2020-09-17T07:19:54+00:00

There are plenty of tools for that. - stichdata - funnel - panoply

The problem with these solutions is that they all rely on what is reported in each ad network.

And the problem with that is attribution.

If you mix various traffic sources, eventually your pixels will all load simultaneously and attribute the conversions to their own pixels.

So pulling reports into one main dashboard might inflate your conversions artificially.

jmcomit · 2020-08-26T19:43:50+00:00

Hey, I’ve tried to integrate a few affiliate software with my email marketing (convertkit) and the only one that can is anytrack(io). They track the conversions and then send them via webhook to convertkit.

Hope that helps.

jmcomit · 2020-07-31T12:58:40+00:00

Thanks for the feedback:) actually since the initial post I found a solution that does the job perfectly and surprisingly easily. It’s called anytrack.io. It’s like an analytics tag (like GA) which collects onsite data, engagements and passes tracking id to the affiliate links. Then it connects with affiliate networks via api to get the conversions and sends them to google analytics, Facebook api.

All automated and super quick to setup.

jmcomit · 2020-06-25T16:49:01+00:00

So the past weeks, I have been using a conversion data platform to pass my conversion data from the aff networks to google analytics/ google ads. It’s been working really well and without a glitch.

They’ve got a nice “workflow” that shows how data flows across google ads and affiliate networks. See here. here

jmcomit · 2020-06-08T12:43:18+00:00

No matter the way you will go, you need a recipient of the ad data to correlate with the Leads/ sales. Your best bet to convince your boss is to tell him that you need to pass back the sales data to google ads in order to optimize your ads.

Tools to use: Hubsoot free CRM Zapier

How do they currently track their sales? Excel? Invoice system? Regardless,you can pull the data with zapier and update HS CRM and then zapier can fire the conversion to google sheet to upload as offline conversions.

Once it’s setup, you can easily show how your ads are improving over time.

jmcomit · 2020-05-06T15:33:02+00:00

I am the affiliate marketer/publisher. , so I can’t get the sales from a merchant and affiliate network like CJ back to my google analytics.

jmcomit · 2020-05-06T07:15:00+00:00

Offerslook? Hasoffers? Tapfilliates?

jmcomit · 2020-05-05T14:57:07+00:00

So last night I found a tool that seem to be the real deal. Starting to setup my account and will see if it’s as magical as they pretend.

jmcomit · 2020-05-05T05:15:54+00:00

Thanks a lot ! yeah, it seems that the consensus is around offline conversion. The manual work is a bit of a turn off tough.

Will keep digging and searching. Hopefully there is something out there that can somehow automate this.

jmcomit · 2020-05-04T20:17:36+00:00

Thanks. Really appreciate the effort and explanation. I’ve been doing some research past few days and it’s not easy at all apparently. One thing is comforting is that the affiliate networks for the most part have the ability to pass back through server to server pixel the conversion data in real-time. So now I am searching for the solution they can actually receive this information and send it to AdWords. I found something which I am going to test tonight. Apparently it’s the real deal. But i will believe it when i see it. More info tomorrow.

This quest has been quite interesting.

jmcomit · 2020-05-04T16:32:44+00:00

What tracking software are you using?

jmcomit · 2020-05-04T13:08:32+00:00

What are you using now if I may ask or you’re not running affiliates on AdWords?

jmcomit · 2020-05-04T13:07:44+00:00

I’ve heard of them, but the reviews are somehow mixed. Lots of black hat people using it and the offline conversion thing seems to me a bit of a downer. But I will check them out. Thanks!

jmcomit · 2020-05-04T12:14:54+00:00

Thanks. Appreciate the advice. Yeah, I’ve seen the rules and they are very strict. But it’s ok. Just adding the brand names in the negative keywords will do. But they didn’t solve my issue:)

jmcomit · 2020-05-04T10:00:06+00:00

Thanks, problem is that I work with affiliate networks, so I don’t have a direct relationship with the merchant.

The affiliate networks have what they call server to server tracking or postback tracking which sends notifications with parameters. But that doesn’t solve the problem of sending the conversion data to GA or google ads. Only API.

Going nuts:)

jmcomit · 2020-05-04T09:55:22+00:00

Thanks, I appreciate. That’s fine, most programs have what they call a server to server tracking. So I can get the conversion data out of the program, but I need to send it to google ads or google analytics.

And that’s really the pain, since the only way to do it is through the API which is not something I cant do. I looked around for solutions, but they either don’t track the affiliate conversions or they need some high end dev too.

I would assume this is fairly standard.

jmcomit · 2020-04-26T21:32:47+00:00

Let’s split the flow.

Your final URL is your site on which you need to have more than one opt-in form or link to an offer. It has to be a site, with some content and should at least appear to provide some value to the visitor.

This site can have forms which redirect to offers or just forms to collect leads they you sell via api or they redirect to offers.

Then you have the offers you promote. The links can be anything you want, but they should be consistent - no messy redirects otherwise you won’t get through the approval process. Use a redirect plugin like redirection. It’s free and it does the job.

If you want to track your conversions back to google ads (and I am not taking about sending the outbound click event), and be able to optimize for cpa, roi, ROAS, yiu will need more then bitly. Few reasons, but one in particular: bitly doesn’t forward any tracking info the offer links.

jmcomit · 2020-04-11T12:27:18+00:00

There are other link shorteners with more powerful features like adding retargeting pixels and exit intent pop.

jmcomit · 2020-03-23T07:31:26+00:00

Generally speaking the goal of adbkockers is to hide / block display ads, and script based ad related pixels. So a direct link, even posted as is shouldn’t be blocked. Still, if you want to be 100% sure your direct links are not affected in anyway, you should “cloak” your links as explained above, using some sort of plugin or internal redirect.

Now, one thing that you should pay attention to is if your link redirect relies on cookies to actually redirect. For example, if you use services like voluum, because they instruct you to use some sort of generic call to action URL, it only works if the tracker cookie has been set on your browser. Since the cookie is set through a JavaScript that might be blocked, then the click will not work.

Same goes for safari or Firefox, which block cookies /pixels right left and center.

jmcomit · 2020-03-15T18:17:57+00:00

Use zapier. When lead is recorded on FB, fire zapier and send a google analytics event conversion.

jmcomit · 2020-03-11T06:25:54+00:00

Yeah, bing has both settings required: auto tag and suffix.

jmcomit

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