Introducing myself...

[TrackingGuru]

Hello everybody,

I've been in the IM space for several years now, mainly promoting affiliate and CPA offers.

Right from the start I've always put a lot of focus on tracking as much as possible, and as accurately as possible (i.e. avoiding pixel tracking whenever possible and using e.g. S2S instead).

So tracking became kind of my passion and eventually it happened that I've been asked to take on some private students to teach them advanced tracking techniques.

Also, some super affiliates approached me asking me to help them with scaling up their proven funnels to additional traffic sources (mainly pop traffic). This got out of hand pretty soon doing it the manual way so the next logical step was to get a software developed that took a lot of the manual work (mainly tracking the results of hundreds or even thousands of targetIDs) out of the scaling process. That software has been a huge success, my clients are very happy with the scaling results.

I joined the Dojo to get back into CPA marketing (which I have been neglecting for a while now due to the other projects going on) and to take advantage of the Dojo tools and landers.

 

[TrackingGuru]

Hey @Marc,

thanks a lot for the warm welcome, highly appreciated.


>Did I understand you correctly? You've developed your own software? WOW!!

Well, yes - but I took kind of a shortcut by having all the raw data collected by Voluum (which is a GREAT tracking platform btw). My software basically pulls that data via their API and then does a lot of number crunching, and in the end sending me alert emails in case it has found targetIDs that are underperforming.

>Is it a known software or is it a secret, to tell the name?

It's not on the market - I'm just using it for the management of my client's campaigns (and starting to use it for my own affiliate campaigns as well). I don't think such specialized software is the right fit for the general public - especially as it requires some training sessions to fully understand in the ins and outs. That's because by definition the topic of 'tracking' is not as straight forward as setting up a few followup emails in Aweber


>Furthermore, you said, you avoid pixels. Could you tell us why?

Sure. Actually there are 2 main reasons for that:

(1) Lost pixels
(2) Cross device

regarding (1): pixels can get lost, and they get lost time and again, for various reasons. I've seen figures mentioned of 5%-10% loss that can occur with pixel tracking. So that's a significant loss worth fighting against whenever possible. You can't always avoid it, but you can minimize the use of it. For example if there's somewhere an option to choose between 'pixel' and 'S2S' I'd always choose 'S2S' (Server-To-Server - which sometimes unfortunately is even called Server-To-Server "pixel" which is IMO is a total mixup of terms).

regarding (2): the bigger the time span between the original (tracked) click and the point in time when the conversion happens the more likely it becomes that the user might perform the conversion on a DIFFERENT device. Think someone who signs up to an email list during their lunch break from their work computer. Welcome email goes out immediately, first followup message (let's say with a soft pitch) the same evening. What are the chances of that user clicking the offer link in that first followup email from their work computer? Pretty slim I'd say - more likely the click comes from their home computer, their tablet or even their smartphone. So in this scenario a pixel tracking solution is pretty useless - but they are out there on the market (e.g. ClickMagick has got such a pixel-based option for email followup action tracking). Instead the required tracking information (in most cases that's just a clickID) should be stored on the email subscriber object (think Aweber or Getresponse custom fields) and then incorporated into the links of the outgoing email followups and broadcasts. Et voilà, your tracking works cross devices

Uuups, that answer got longer than I expected - sorry for that haha Hope it kind of answers your question though...

 

[Marc]

Uuups, that answer got longer than I expected - sorry for that haha Hope it kind of answers your question though...

No, waaay too short...

Wow, what an answer and very well to understand.
I hope you give us the one or the other 'Follow Along' or 'Case Study'. With your expertise you would be an invaluable great help and support!

 

[T J Tutor]

Hello everybody,

Hi @TrackingGuru , welcome to AffiliateFix and the Dojo!

I've been in the IM space for several years now, mainly promoting affiliate and CPA offers.

Right from the start I've always put a lot of focus on tracking as much as possible, and as accurately as possible (i.e. avoiding pixel tracking whenever possible and using e.g. S2S instead).

So tracking became kind of my passion and eventually it happened that I've been asked to take on some private students to teach them advanced tracking techniques.

Also, some super affiliates approached me asking me to help them with scaling up their proven funnels to additional traffic sources (mainly pop traffic). This got out of hand pretty soon doing it the manual way so the next logical step was to get a software developed that took a lot of the manual work (mainly tracking the results of hundreds or even thousands of targetIDs) out of the scaling process. That software has been a huge success, my clients are very happy with the scaling results.

I joined the Dojo to get back into CPA marketing (which I have been neglecting for a while now due to the other projects going on) and to take advantage of the Dojo tools and landers.

Tracking is among the top discussions here on the Fix. You'll be able to help a lot of folks out with some guidance and advice.

We have loads of great contributors posting actionable information every day.

I'm sure you will find we are a friendly and engaging group of marketers and easy to forge relationships with.

Looking forward to your posts and threads.

See you around the forums.

T J

 

[TrackingGuru]

Hey T J,

thanks a lot for the warm welcome!

I'm sure you will find we are a friendly and engaging group of marketers and easy to forge relationships with.

Sounds great, looking forward to it!

You'll be able to help a lot of folks out with some guidance and advice.

I'll probably be focusing more on the landing page and offer related threads to be honest - so I might miss those tracking related questions. If that's the case and there's a specific open question regarding tracking (and especially regarding Voluum) then please don't hesitate to ping me about that post and I'll do my best to provide a valid answer.

 

[servandosilva]

Welcome to the forum!

 

[TrackingGuru]

cheers @servandosilva!

 

[Dr. Forum]

Great and first things first, welcome to the family buddy. I am happy that you are joining the forum with experience in INternet marketing. For sure we will be able to learn from each other as days go by. Personally, I am a software developer and also an internet marketer. I am more focussed on creating landing pages and other software solutions for my clients. I do most of the optinization especially on the websites and systems that I develop. It has been an awesome experience and and thank the forum and it members.