Offer Sub ID Tracking for Affiliates

[avalanche]

Okay, I realize you have nothing to do with aff management - just provide the software, but every good piece of affiliate software on the market today offers affilates the ability to subid track their sales. Essentially, this is an optional variable appended to the URL that the affiliates can provide - usually a string of characters (up to 50-100 chars).



The value of this to affiliates is that they can track where their sales are coming from. Right now I make a sale and did it come from my Yahoo ads? Google? On-site promotions? What keyword? Who knows... not me.



My point is that your software will have less value to merchants who want to seriously want affiliate software to run their campaign because they will not get any affiliates that bring in much revenue.



Anyway, if e-junkie wants this to be world-class, they need to consult with actual affiliates and merchants who currently run successful affiliate programs (outside of using e-junkie software. That's like asking my Mom if I'm a good singer) to find out what will make the software work.



Oh, and if you can change the login so I can use my roboform, that would be awesome.

[deflo]

hello avalanche,

i completely agree to your suggestions, i just sent them a request for the same purpose. hope there is a way to implement sub.id tracking!



greetings,

s.

[avalanche]

yeah, this wouldn't be hard. All they need is to grab the subid off the URL, pass it through to the completion in a cookie, and throw it into a mysql database. Reporting would be just simply adding a column with the subid in the earning report.



Just that one feature would take the merchants affiliate programs to a whole new level. I have a few merchants I promote with this but I don't use any of the methods I traditionally use to scale a campaign to high sales volumes because I'd have no clue what is working. usually 1 of 10 promotional methods work out so I'd be throwing away 90% of my money. That would mean I'd be most likely losing money (and hence quit promoting).



There are probably a ton of merchants very dissatisfied with the performance of their affiliate programs and this is why. The big fish won't touch this unless they are only using one method of promoting.

[E-junkie_Guru]

We've added support for a couple things recently that haven't been announced:



Affiliates can now add &aff_custom= to their affiliate link URLs. For instance, if the affiliate's standard E-junkie-issued Affiliate code looks like this example:



<a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=XXXXX&c=ib&aff=YYYYY" target="ejejcsingle">Click here to visit MERCHANT NAME website!</a>



...this part would be the affiliate's link URL:



https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=XXXXX&c=ib&aff=YYYYY



...so if an affiliate wanted to track all sales which resulted from, say, an AdWords campaign, they could modify the URL like this before they submit it to AdWords:



https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=XXXXX&c=ib&aff=YYYYY&affcustom=adwords



Whatever value they put after the "=" sign is entirely up to them (but stick to letters and numbers with dashes-and_underscores only to be safe), and of course they should make this value different for every location where they place a link. That value will be passed through any transaction where they earn a commission to show up in the affiliate's sale notification and Affiliate Earnings Report, so the affiliate can see which specific links resulted in which specific sales and commission earnings.



Also, any extra parameters they add to their link URL that is not otherwise already used by E-junkie would be passed through to your landing page URL. For instance, if you specify your Hop Link landing page URL like this:



http://www.example.com/productpage.php



...and if the Affiliate modifies their URL with a custom parameter like this:



https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=XXXXX&c=ib&aff=YYYYY&name=value



...then the buyer would arrive at your landing page with this URL in their browser:



http://www.example.com/productpage.php&name=value

[avalanche]

I'm not seeing where this data shows up in the earnings log - little help here?



thanks,

[E-junkie_Guru]

Hm, I had thought that &aff_custom= values should show up in the referring affiliate's Earnings Report logs, but I'm not seeing a column for it in there. Does it show up in the Sale Notification email you get when you earn commission on a sale?



Sorry I can't be more definitive at the moment; I'm only passing along what Development described when they implemented this new feature, so perhaps there was some misunderstanding there, and I've asked for clarification but haven't heard back from them yet.

[avalanche]

Not seeing it in the emails & I should have more than enough test transactions run. Would be of infinitely more value if they passed it in the log since most of your (experienced) prospective affiliates have software that will parse those spreadsheets and match up the subid transactions with their appropriate marketing channels.

[rohan]

Hi Tyson,



Have you heard back from the department yet? I'm also keen to use this feature :)



Rohan

[stefanie]

Hi Rohan,



We still don't have any solid information. We'll post something just as soon as we have any news!

[rohan]

Hi guys,



I'm keen to get a campaign started and I need this feature, could you possibly follow it up and let me know how it's going? Sorry to bug you, I'm just keen to get started.



Thanks!

Rohan

[rohan]

Bump. Any word, guys?

[E-junkie_Guru]

From what I gather, Development added support to track the aff_custom value and store that in our database, but they have yet to modify the reporting functions to actually report that value back to affiliates in the sale notification emails or earnings report log.



As soon as they modify those functions to actually display the aff_custom values we've been tracking, those values will show up, but there's no way for you to view or access them at present.

[rohan]

Ok, thanks for letting us know :)



Rohan

[E-junkie_Guru]

Apparently there had been some internal miscommunication among staff here about the aff_custom "sub-ID" tracking feature previously. That particular feature is currently still in the planning stage and has yet to be implemented. However, we have at least been "passing through" any extra parameters you may add to affiliate hoplink URLs as described above. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or misunderstanding regarding this matter.

[alex]

Sub-ID tracking would be definitely nice :)



I already started a campaign for my own product, so I can manage.

But, as soon as I get affiliates on board they would expect a sub-id tracking functionality...



Every tracking program on the market today sends a sub-id, and no one relies on pixels alone anymore, some not even bothering to ask to place a pixel.



On the other hand, as mentioned above, most affiliate scripts allow for this, so it's a huge no-no for an affiliate to find that it cannot be done.





Cheers,

Alex

[madcap]

Any update on this?

[farinspace]

bump... any updates?

[blissofbeing]

Any update on this? This is pretty important for our affiliates.

[E-junkie_Guru]

This feature is still in development; that's all we can say about it at the moment.

[brownoxford]

This is pretty much the one thing holding me back from using e-junkie (and I'm sure that I am not alone)... Any affiliate knows that it is pointless to throw money at campaigns if you cannot tell what is converting and what isn't.