Reporting and tracking your sales is very important. Successful affiliate programs will have reporting and tracking software that will update their affiliates 24/7 and monitor their progress.
Monthly reports just don’t seem to be enough if you want to be able to tweak your promotions based on the performance statistics. Some affiliates have had bad experiences with merchants in the past so a reporting interface offers some level of assurance with their affiliates.
A really great affiliate tracking software will include such information as:
- Referrals, per click, per sale and per lead; custom commissions on a per affiliate basis
- Split commissions
- Automated fraud protection
- First party and flash cookies + IP recording to ensure that leads are recorded correctly as this is a big concern for affiliates.
- The ability to set cookie duration
- Full transaction history
- Affiliate communication system (newsletters and sale notifications).
- Extensive reporting in various formats, including Excel export and pie charts
- Supports PayPal, Bank Wire and Check affiliate payments + custom methods as specified by merchant.
- Refund and chargeback management
- Generates search engine friendly links
- Support for standard, rich media and rotating banners
- Popup and pop-under support
- Affiliate interface news feature for relaying announcements to your publishers
- Sale and affiliate signup automatic or manual approval
… and that’s just naming a few. You can see where you would have a much greater benefit going with an affiliate program that offers reporting and tracking features.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Adrienne,
Someone in a forum was asking about affiliate tracking software and after ‘googling it’ to see if there was any (I’d never looked before) your post came up. I put your link up directing them here, so I do hope they pop over because this explains very well what an affiliate should expect in their members area.
Thanks Adrienne,
Julie
Julie recently posted..A Pyramid Scheme: Is That What Network Marketing Is?
Twitter: adriennesmith40
February 12, 2012 at 2:31 PM
Hey Julie,
Yey, my post popped up for those keywords. Don’t ya just love it!
Hope they’ll find this post helpful and I appreciate you sharing the link.
Thank you Julie!