The new normal, or post-COVID-19 era, is, to a large extent unknown. The world has been hit by the novel coronavirus, resulting in the shutdown of the global economy. Aswath Damodaran, in his video chat with Noah Kagan titled, “NYU Finance Professor Explains This Financial Crisis,” states that the world has never seen such a crisis; therefore, no one knows what the future holds. He believes that we will be able to restart the global economy. It is a matter of how and when.
Most businesses have pivoted their operations from a brick-and-mortar model to an online model. And, because over 50% of the world’s population is still at home, there has been an increase in eCommerce shopping activities. And, a viable, and valuable online shopping model is the affiliate marketing model.
What is affiliate tracking?
Thus, let’s consider a definition of affiliate marketing before we describe affiliate tracking.
Wikepedia.com defines affiliate marketing as a “type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing effort.
In other words, affiliate marketing is a digital marketing technique where merchants or product owners pay (advertisers) commission to bloggers and website owners (affiliates) who effectively promote their products online. And, by way of thanking the affiliate, the merchant pays a percentage of the sales to the promoter.
This ad revenue needs to be tracked to ensure the affiliate are remunerated adequately.
Enter affiliate tracking: “the process of managing and tracking marketing activities, usually through the use of special software and different plugins installed in affiliate websites.
Why do you need a tracker: Benefits of affiliate tracking software?
The raison d’etre and benefits of an ad tracker or affiliate tracking software are one and the same. Therefore, by way of explaining why you need an affiliate tracker, let’s consider some of the more important benefits of using affiliate tracking software:
Accurate accounting
Affiliate tracking software provides affiliates with the tools to accurately track, measure, and optimize affiliate marketing programs. Typically, the modern affiliate signs up with several affiliate networks and has to drive customer conversions to increase sales. Therefore, the affiliate has to keep track of many ad campaigns using more than one tool that costs a sizeable sum. An affiliate software tool that integrates with more than one affiliate marketing program keeps track of customer details as well as visits, clicks, conversions, the budget spent.
Informative data analysis
As highlighted above, the pertinent part of the affiliate tracking software business process is to track customer behavior. This data is then analyzed by the software and presented to the marketing. This assists the marketer with decisions around which products to market, how to advertise the products, and how to improve their website or landing page so attract visitors and convert them into returning customers.
Automate manual processes
The age-old adage: “Time is money” has merit in today’s world. Many affiliate markets start and remain single-person businesses. And they utilize automation software to complete many of the manual tasks, such as automating marketing campaign optimizations. Advanced ad tracking software (some trackers have in-built smartlinks) will automatically send your website traffic to the best performing offers; thereby, increasing your chances of product sales and customer conversions.
Final thoughts
The world of affiliate marketing is fast-paced, with a vast number of brands and products appearing on the market each day. Therefore, to be a successful affiliate marketer, it is vital to deploy an affiliate tracker to automate tasks, keep track of sales, and provide insight into ad campaign.