A common problem affiliate marketers often must resolve is the need to track opt-ins to their mailing list, while also tracking sales of an affiliate offer page that they do not control.
The problem stems from the fact that the affiliate doesn't control the vendor's offer page and can't normally insert tracking codes on it directly. While some vendors will place a tracking pixel on their offer page for affiliates with demonstrated sales track records, more often it's the case that they will not.
Fortunately there are two common solutions to this situation that we'll address here.
Let's say for the sake of this example that you running paid Facebook traffic to a Clickbank health and fitness promotion. You've created an enticing landing page where visitors are offered a lead magnet in exchange for opting in to your list.
Your goal is to capture the opt-in and hopefully record a sale as well, all while tracking the cost effectiveness of your ad campaign.
In the 'Thank You Page' settings in your autoresponder you've entered your affiliate link, which sends the visitor to the vendor's offer page once they've opted-in to your list. Your lead magnet is then delivered to the visitor via autoresponder.
So how do you track both the sales results of your ad campaign, and the opt-ins that result from this specific ad campaign (as opposed to opt-ins and sales from other traffic sources)?
Old School Method: Build An Interstitial Page
The first "old school" solution is to manually insert an "interstitial" or "intermediate" page between the opt-in page and the affiliate offer page, and insert whatever tracking code you are using (a Facebook pixel in this example) to record the action.
The visitor would pass through the interstitial page, causing the pixel to fire and recording the opt-in, before being sent on to the vendor's offer page. If a sale occurs later on, it will be captured using Clickbank's POSTBACK feature.
It's fairly simple to set up such an intermediate page to fire a tracking pixel or execute a piece of tracking code. But it is a bit of a hassle and if it can be avoided, let's avoid it!
Lazy Person's Method: Use ClickMagick's Advanced Pixels Setting
An easier method is to utilize ClickMagick's advanced Pixels setting to accomplish the same thing. This eliminates the need to know how to work with HTML or set up an extra page.
By creating a ClickMagick tracking link using this feature, the tracking link itself will automatically build the page for you behind the scenes, fire all your pixels and execute all your tracking code, then redirect to the Primary URL (or split test URL) of the tracking link.
Instead of the pixel firing when the visitor lands on the affiliate offer destination page, it fires while the link is redirecting to the destination page.
To do this you first create an affiliate tracking link within ClickMagick, pointing to the affiliate offer page. While creating the link, insert your pixel or JavaScript code into the Pixels setting of the tracking link. You would then use this link as the Thank You page URL within your autoresponder.
Take the conversion pixel generated above, and place it in the pixel field, below. Then save your work and you're all set..
With this link setup, when the opt-in page redirects through the tracking link to the sales page of the affiliate offer, the pixels will fire and the JavaScript code will execute. You will know that this opt-in resulted from this specific ad campaign. Any sales within Clickbank's platform would be recorded as resulting from this ad campaign as well.
Again, the purpose of utilizing this tracking link feature is to allow you to fire tracking pixels or execute Java Script in situations where you do not have the ability to insert code on the offer page in question.
In summary, to set this up within ClickMagick:
- Create a new tracking link and set the Primary URL to your affiliate offer.
- Create a new tracking pixel using the Pixel setting of the tracking link.
- Choose the type of pixel you wish to use (Action or Engagement), choose a "Reference' value and click on 'Add Pixel' to add the newly created pixel to your tracking link. Be sure to save the link, and you're all set.
Note that you are not limited to using only the ClickMagick pixels. Pretty much any other tracking pixel is fair game, including third party retargeting pixels, Facebook pixels and others. Simply paste one or more of these within the pixel setting. It is OK to use more than one pixel type at a time.
Want to take ClickMagick out for a test drive? Just click this link to get a 14-Day FREE Trial. Explore every powerful feature and see for yourself just how easy it is to start tracking and optimizing your online business.