Use Case: You won’t get anywhere in affiliate marketing unless you keep your affiliates happy and make sure they know about the offers you want them to promote.

It’s easy to communicate with all of your affiliates in a variety of ways using LinkTrust. Over the next couple of weeks, our tips of the week will teach you more about how to use LinkTrust to stay in touch with your affiliates.

Our first tip is how to connect your mail server with your LinkTrust account.
Next week we’ll talk about using email templates (custom and default) in LinkTrust.
The third part of the series will cover how to use tokens in emails to send your affiliates the information they need to get moving on offers.

How to Customize Your Email Setting and Server in LinkTrust:

Not all users have access to this part of LinkTrust, only ones with the “manage email settings” right enabled for their user account.

To access Email settings, select the Account tab within your LinkTrust account, then Email Settings.

First, set up your default email settings by identifying a from name and email address. These are the settings that will be used in your default email templates. Next, setup the mail server settings. We suggest setting up your own mail server. You can use the LinkTrust mail server, but you have more control over the deliverability of your emails if you set up your own.

If you select Use my own email server, the following information is required:

• SMTP Host Name
• SMTP Port
• UserName (optional)
• Password (optional)
• Enable SSL/TLS

We suggest setting up your own mail server to control your own email deliverability, because the use of the LinkTrust email server does not guarantee delivery.

The setup of a broadcasting mail server is not generally the concern for marketers managing the campaign. But you should check that your email Service Provider or in-house broadcaster is using these techniques:

• Setup physical address on sub-domain. The sub-domain of the main client sent is used for a physically separate broadcast service, e.g. : http://email.domain.com, for example: http://email.amazon.com (This is not essential, but good practice).
• A & MX records An „A‟ record is needed for click and open tracking. The „MX‟ record is for emailing. This setup is needed to verify sending IP address and for replies/bounces to be routed back to the server.
• Setup Sender Policy Framework.
• Setup Yahoo! Domain Keys.

Check out this article on Econsultancy for 15 best practices for improving email deliverability.

Next week we’ll cover customizing your email templates within LinkTrust. For more help on connecting your mail server to your LinkTrust account, please contact LinkTrust support.

You may not know it, but pretty much every time you see something posted from LinkTrust, I’m the person behind the monitor writing the blog posts, tweeting, Facebooking and sending emails. My name is Kyna Taylor and I’ve been working at LinkTrust for a few years now. I love sharing all of the latest things that LinkTrust has done and helping you to understand the system a little more. Today I thought I’d share an experience I had recently that taught me some interesting things about team work.

The last weekend in April I got to participate in the first ever Ragnar Trail Relay at Zion National Park in Southern Utah. I learned a lot about myself and felt like I took away a lot of applications to every day life.

Your team is important.
The group of friends that I ran the Ragnar with were just doing it for fun. No one cared about how fast we got our legs done, just that we finished and we had a good time in the process. (There were a lot of elite teams there who were working to win the race. Because Ragnars are relays, it doesn’t matter how fast you are — if you don’t have a good team, you won’t win.)

For the majority of the teams who were there, the team was important because they were able to give you the support you needed along the way and help you be a part of something the average runner will never do. Namely, run approximately 120 miles in 24 hours. Also, there’s a lot of downtime in between your legs. My teammate rubbed my feet after they got blisters on the first trail. Now that is teamwork.

Your coworkers, employees and business partners can either be a great support to you, help you find your strengths and work on your weaknesses, or they can trip you up and not be there for you when you need them to be. Make sure your team has the right people.

Get the right gear.
Every runner knows that you can’t run a race in brand new shoes. While I ran the race in my trusty, broken in running shoes, I made the mistake of using a new kind of socks. Between the new socks that were too tight and the abundance of sand on the first leg, I ended up with at least 5 blisters after the first 7.5 miles.

In business it’s so important to choose the right tools to help you succeed. Runners need good shoes and socks. Affiliates, networks and advertisers need good technology. If you get a technology that doesn’t fit and won’t work with you to do what you need — your business is going to get blisters.

Have a game plan.
I did not train for this race. Bad idea.

Just like in business, if you get into performance marketing, start running a race or build your own lead gen offer without thinking it all the way through — how do you know you’ll be successful? You might make it through the first leg fine, but the second and third ones will just get more difficult and you’ll wake up the next day with calves so sore you can’t walk right.

You can study all you want to about performance marketing, you can follow all the forums and read all the blogs and get prepared. But then you’ll be in the middle of your work day and you’ll hit a challenge you’re not sure how to handle. Find someone to give you advice about the smartest choices to make.

Know what you’re getting in to and have a plan for the upcoming days and months.

Stop Making Excuses

After we finished the race we realized that we have no excuses left as to why we won’t work out. Running a Ragnar we ran in the middle of the day when it was more than 80 hot degrees outside. We ran without water. We ran after having already worked out that day. We ran in the middle of the night by the light of a headlamp and the moon. We ran during the coldest time of the night. We ran on little to no sleep. We ran while we were sore and we ran in places that were unfamiliar.

You can always find excuses for why you’re not performing, why you’re not finding success. There are no excuses that can’t be negated. You can do it. Gather a talented team, get the right technology, figure out your game plan, find a mentor and stop making excuses.

And then when it’s all over, take a break and go on a beautiful hike with some friends. (And don’t forget to sport the LinkTrust hat!)

Use Case: Many of your campaigns need to have the same filters and settings.

LinkTrust feature:
We’ve given you more ways to customize your campaign settings in recent releases, but now you can set default campaign settings for every campaign created. These new settings won’t update campaigns already created, it just applies to new campaigns created.

To create your default campaign settings, visit the campaigns tab in your LinkTrust account. In the left-hand navigation select “Default Settings”.

From here you’ll be able to set the standards you want to apply to all future campaigns. You can change any setting on individual campaigns, but this will save time in setting up campaigns.

Default settings:

• Cookie life
• Group
• Impression URL
• Click Tracking URL
• Statistical Viewing Rights
• Transaction Export Rights
• Affiliate Pixels
• Impressions
• Clicks

For more information about how to set up your default campaign settings, please contact LinkTrust support.

All previous LinkTrust Tips of the Week.

When most people think of Utah,  rapid tech growth and unrivaled unemployment don’t usually come to mind. Yet with increasing speed, tech giants are setting up shop alongside thriving start ups like LinkTrust and calling the “silicon slopes” home.

Recently named the number one state for business and careers by Forbes for the third consecutive year, Utah’s economy is booming with consistent job growth and an environment that fosters innovative new products and solutions. Check out this awesome infographic from Utah’s Office of Economic Development and learn more about the perks of LinkTrust life.

Use Case: We often have customers who use the SubID and the affiliate reference ID interchangeably. This can end up with some incredibly large reports that take forever to sift through.

LinkTrust Feature:

LinkTrust has designed the SubID to be used for performance purposes.  That means that you can use the SubID to keep track of the sources of traffic for various offers.

Because traffic types are redundant, the sub ID value is repetitive. This allows you to use sub ID reporting to identify which sub ID is performing the best. It is common practice for affiliates to place a sub ID on a tracking link.

Popular uses of the SubID include:

• For an affiliate network to monitor affiliate traffic
• For affiliates to monitor traffic sources (Facebook, Twitter, PPC, banner ad)
• For affiliates to monitor sub-affiliates
• Detecting high-performing affiliates or traffic sources

LinkTrust has designed the affiliate reference ID to be used for tracking purposes.

Reporting information cannot be gathered on the affiliate reference ID because it should be unique data.

You can have common data in the affiliate reference ID, but since you cannot retrieve any reporting information like performance information, it is not worthwhile.

Popular uses for the affiliate reference ID include:

• third-party system value
• CRM value
• Unique Value for Server-to-Server tracking

SubIDs in LinkTrust:

To add a sub ID, do one of the following:

• To add a sub ID to your tracking link, add the parameter &SID=Sub_ID_Here.

For example, http://[TrackingDomain]/click.track?CID=XXXX&AFID=XXXX&ADID=XXXX&SID=Sub_ID_Here

• If you are using a search engine friendly (SEO) URL, add /SID/Place_Sub_ID_Here.

For example, an SEO tracking URL might look like the following:

http://[TrackingDomain]/click.track/CID/XXXX/AFID/XXXX/ADID/XXXX/SID/Place_Sub_ID_Here

Affiliate reference IDs in LinkTrust:

The affiliate reference ID is used by affiliates to pass data to LinkTrust on their tracking URL. The full tracking URL has a tracking domain followed by parameters and their values.

For example, a tracking URL follows the following format:

TrackingDomain CID=value&AFID=value&SID=value&AffiliateReferenceID=value

For more information about the difference between a SubID and an AffiliateReferenceID please contact LinkTrust support.

Use Case: Pre-populate a website with data from a previous page.  Let your affiliate capture information about the visitor on their site and pass it to the merchant’s landing page.

For example, the merchant has a website form with fields for a consumer’s first name, last name, and email address. The affiliate also has a website with a form that has already captured the consumer’s first name, last name, and email address. The affiliate sends the consumer to the merchant’s page along with the consumer’s first name, last name, and email address. When the consumer lands on the merchant’s page, those three fields are pre-populated on the merchant’s page with the data sent by the affiliate.

This happens because the affiliate appended the first name, last name, and email address parameters to the URL and passes the values to the merchant. This saves the consumer time having to re-enter the information twice.

Basically, by using additional data parameters and values, the affiliate can populate the merchant’s website with the consumer information it has already collected.

LinkTrust Feature: Propagate Additional Data

This option allows LinkTrust to append any additional data which was added to the affiliate’s tracking link to the landing page URL.

Why would I enable this?
If you want any additional data appended to the affiliate’s tracking link to be sent to the merchant on the landing page URL or the alternate landing page URL, enable the Propagate Additional Data option.

Why would I disable this?
If you want to block any appended data from being added to the landing page URL or the alternate landing page URL location, disable the Propagate Additional Data option.

Additional Data is any name=value pair that has been added to the Tracking URL.  When this additional data passes through LinkTrust, it is recorded and displayed for each transaction within the Transaction Details Report.  The ability for an Affiliate to pass additional data through LinkTrust can be limited.  By default, LinkTrust doesn’t allow additional data on a Tracking URL to be passed to the Merchant’s landing page.

However, if you wish to pass the CID, AFID, SID or ADID all you need to do is add a token for the appropriate value you wish to pass.

Tokens available for the Landing Page URL:

• Campaign ID : [=CID=]
• Affiliate ID : [=AFID=]
• Creative ID : [=ADID=]
• Sub ID : [=SID=]
• Click ID : [=ClickID=]
• Affiliate Reference ID : [=AffiliateReferenceID=]
• Alternate ID : [=AltID=]
• NonEncoded URL for Dynamic landing pages: [=NonEncodedURL=]
• Additional Data : [=Field Name=]

Additional Data Tokens
If you wish to place a token that provides a specific value from an Affiliate’s Tracking URL, place [= and =] around the name of the field that was provided on the URL.   For example, if your affiliate appended “&site=google&type=search“ onto their Tracking URL, you can pass these values on the landing page by adding “&site=[=site=]&type=[=type=]“.

Enable Additional Data Tokens in LinkTrust on the Campaign Settings Page below the Landing Page URL.

For more information about passing data, contact LinkTrust support.

Use Case: Avoid cookie-less tracking or to have accurate mobile tracking.

Server-side tracking is one of the most accurate ways to track your campaigns and offers. It’s also one of the more technical ways to track your affiliate marketing.

We’ve talked about cookie-less tracking before, but for this week’s LinkTrust tip we wanted to explain some of the basics of server-side tracking. Many affiliate marketers use server-side tracking to manage their mobile traffic tracking or when they want their normal web traffic to be extra-accurate.

LinkTrust Feature: ClickID Pixel Postback

ClickID Pixel Post starts by adding the click ID to the tracking URL. The click ID is a unique number associated with individual clicks.  The click ID can be passed to the landing page or the merchant/ advertiser’s server. When it is passed back to LinkTrust on a post back URL, LinkTrust will use it to track the conversions without any need for a cookie.

This method is considered very secure, because a transaction can only be generated by using a click ID. Because the click ID can be used more than once, you can secure the click ID post by white listing the posting server’s IP address.

The following is an example of a postback URL with the added click ID:

http://your_tracking_domain/pixel.track?&ClickID=04_835477_fb93f424-788d-4c48-bfb1-98516f855839

How do you add the ClickID to the tracking URL?

The click ID can be added to the landing page URL by adding the click ID token [=ClickID=] to the URL.

Why change a recorded transaction?

Every online retailer has a CRM that helps them keep track of all of their customers and the products that each customer has purchased. Affiliates drive traffic to these online retailers and get people to buy products or sign up for free trials.

But what happens when a customer signs up for a free trial and then cancels before the free trial ends?

The online retailer doesn’t want to pay the affiliate for a consumer who cancelled during a free trial. If you have LinkTrust, you can record the initial transaction. Then when the consumer successfully completes the trial offer, you can give credit to the affiliate by modifying the transaction remotely.

LinkTrust Feature: Transaction Modification API

When a conversion has already tracked in LinkTrust it is possible to change the payout, revenue or approval of the transaction. Using the Transaction Modification API, you can make these changes from anywhere. That means your merchant/advertiser can have access to editing their transactions, if you give them approval.

Even though this change can take place outside of the secure LinkTrust environment, we’ve enhanced the layers of security for this feature. That means that you must enable external transaction modification for each campaign separately and provide a custom password. You can also restrict changes to come from only specific white listed IP addresses.

NOTE: LinkTrust highly recommends using HTTPS for all transaction edit API calls to ensure secure communications. This requires your inbound URL to be configured for HTTPS. You must have a secure certificate setup with LinkTrust to do this.

To adjust a transaction, you need the updated affiliate payout, merchant revenue, or approval status with a valid click ID, transaction ID or a combination of merchant reference ID and campaign ID with the security password.

The ability to use the merchant reference ID and campaign ID combination requires you to enforce a unique merchant reference ID for each transaction in the campaign settings. Merchants can also modify transactions within LinkTrust by passing their own ID from their back office CRM or shopping cart instead of needing to record and use LinkTrust identifiers.

For more information about how to set up your advertisers with this ability to change recorded transactions, contact LinkTrust Support. 1-877-287-7822

There are many times when an affiliate payout might need to be dynamic. One example of a dynamic payout is when the advertiser doesn’t pay on a percentage basis and wants to be able to change the affiliate payout based on the amount of the sale.

There are many other instances that this might be useful, if you have questions about how this might apply to your company, please contact LinkTrust Support.

Using custom conversion parameters from LinkTrust on a confirmation pixel, you can control the affiliate payout, merchant payout and transaction approval on an as needed basis.

What is a parameter? A parameter, also known as a “key” is a fundamental data representation in computing systems and applications. In LinkTrust an example of those parameters are: AP, MP, A. When you combine keys and values, you get a custom conversion parameter. The value associated with those parameters (0.00) in LinkTrust becomes the actual monetary amount for the payout or the approval/unapproval of a transaction.

In LinkTrust, you need to set up your confirmation pixel with the following custom conversion parameters if you want to be able to dynamically change an affiliate payout, merchant payout and/or transaction approval.

Affiliate Payout =
“&AP=0.00″

Merchant Payout =
“&MP=0.00″

Transaction Approval=
“&A=N” or “&A=Y”

To enable this feature in LinkTrust, just visit the campaign settings page.

You can add these parameters to your confirmation pixel and then teach your advertiser where to put the appropriate values.

For more information about adding custom conversion parameters to your conversion pixels, contact LinkTrust Support. 1-877-287-7822

Even though LinkTrust tracks transactions in real time, approving them may come much later. If a qualified transaction gets approved later via the Transaction Modification API, you can use the same API to execute an affiliate’s server-side pixel for that specific transaction by adding a new parameter that tells LinkTrust to execute the affiliate’s pixel.

Whether you modify the transactions yourself through the new API or give your merchant’s the instructions, it allows you to adjust transactions based on click, transaction or merchant reference IDs.

Watch the LinkTrust training video to get a step-by-step walkthrough of using the Transaction Modification API.

For more information on how to start using the feature in your LinkTrust account, please contact LinkTrust support by email (support@linktrust.com) or phone (1-877-287-7822)