How tracking platform innovations can help affiliate networks
Affiliate networks rely on their tracking platform for accurate data, transparency, and reliable management tools to help them reach their targets and identify optimizations. Moreover, tracking platforms can assist affiliate networks by learning the biggest pain points and implementing innovative tools.
Here are five essential ways tracking platforms should be helping you reach your targets with innovative tools and optimized practices.
1. Critical analytics consistently available on your dashboard
It should be standard practice for tracking platforms to display all of the critical data on your dashboard. This includes your gross profit, performance metrics comparing yesterday to today, and quick access to your hourly/daily/weekly/monthly progress. However, many tracking platforms fail to display everything you need.
The Swaarm team looked to solve this industry-wide issue by displaying essential data on the dashboard, making it easier and faster to view performance and take action when necessary. We help our clients get ahead of the curve by offering a more comprehensive data display than any other tracking platform. The most critical information is available without needing to use CSV files. Our display includes top offers and how they are performing versus yesterday. This can be viewed for offer level, publisher, advertisers, and by country. You also have quick access to the top ten offers and the bottom ten offers, so you can see the critical areas that require fast action.
2. Scan tracking links without a third-party vendor
Although it is logical to check tracking links to ensure they are fully functional, a common problem for affiliate partners is that occasionally they can’t remove an offer from the feed once the cap is reached. As a result, they won’t get any return after this point. One solution is for affiliate networks to work with a third-party vendor to scan tracking links to see if they are redirected to an MMP (Mobile Measurement Partner) or a store. However, this requires you to share data with a third party.
Swaarm uses an integrated tool that enables clients to scan tracking links without sharing data with a third party. When an offer is active, we scan links regularly to ensure they are hitting Store – meaning you save money by avoiding sending traffic that isn’t doing anything and save money as a result. You can also do this as a test while approving offers from a network.
3. Explorer: Know your best performing publishers for optimization
Without knowing your best-performing publishers, it can be difficult to confidently know where to invest and who to drop. This is just one example of how limited data insights can affect your ability to make critical decisions. These insights are commonly learned by pulling CSV files from your tracking platform, which takes time and resources that could otherwise be spent on analysis and optimization.
Fortunately, there is a way your tracking platform can help. Swaarm uses an integrated tool, Explorer, that allows clients to see data insights in real-time. The tool lets you select what you want to filter, split and measure so that you can gain critical insights and optimize performance. For example, you can use Explorer to learn which publisher performed best within the last 30 days in a single country, based on total revenue. You can also see how much traffic is discarded based on certain rules, such as mismatched targeting or if the publisher was not approved. Moreover, clients are also not limited to any amount of data or timeframe and can view at any granularity.
4. Attain transparency and visibility with network integrations
Another common problem with tracking platforms occurs during network integrations and offer approvals. When integrating a network you may not have an option to select certain offers: you are required to select them all and put them on your platform. This is too limiting for the client, who may want to be selective about which offers to advertise.
Swaarm offers the ability to integrate networks and then decide if you want to automatically approve offers for that network. You can also view their feed and select which offers you want to approve. This provides greater transparency and empowers clients to be more selective with the offers they approve and save time with auto-approvals. You can also scan tracking links before approval to check that the link is successfully sending traffic to that source.
Clients can also see how an offer from another network has performed on their platform in the past, providing insight that may inform whether to approve it once again.
5. Innovative automation
Automation is a critical component of tracking platforms, simplifying processes to give you more time to spend on analysis. As automated processes become more advanced, it is essential to use them to stay ahead of your competitors. Tracking platforms can help account managers by automating anything and everything related to daily operations. For example, you need to be able to create triggers, for new offers and make changes to existing offers. With the right technology, all of these tasks can be done autonomously by defining certain conditions – allowing you to focus on your strategy moving forward. With Swaarm, you can complete all of these tasks with automation, as well as adding multiple advertisers and setting triggers for active offers. You can also approve and block publishers, set click budgets, conversion budgets, and plan payouts.
Contact us to find out how our innovative technology can help you grow your business at scale.
