DirectTrack is an affiliate management, ad serving, and tracking solution for online merchants/advertisers, affiliate networks, and ad networks. DirectTrack puts you directly in control of your affiliate/partner relationships, and provides incredible market reach via our CrossPublication portal. Worldwide, DirectTrack can be found in over 28 countries and has been translated into 8 different languages. Because of our global footprint, DirectTrack is widely recognized as one of the most versatile and trusted tracking platforms in the affiliate marketing industry.
1. Setup your account
Most of the initial setup within DirectTrack is done at the Account Setup tab. Here, you can customize the email messages that go out to affiliate partners, create an affiliate signup page, edit your partner agreement, and build a private labeled look and feel for your affiliate interface.
2. Enroll and approve Partners
Potential partners enroll within your affiliate program/network by completing the customizable signup form that you create. Once they complete the form, their information is stored within your DirectTrack account’s database. You can then either manually approve all affiliates or setup auto approval/denial criteria that the affiliate’s info will be scrubbed by. This is all done under Affiliate Management > Pending Items. The whole theme behind DirectTrack is, It's your program, you set all the rules.
3. Create an advertising campaign
To create and launch a new campaign, the steps are:
- Go to Campaign Management > Campaigns
- Click Add a Campaign
- Complete the Add a Campaign Form
- Upload your banners and or text creative
- For lead and cost-per-sale campaigns, you will need to implement the lead tracking or sale tracking pixel found within option 2 > Tracking Information.
- Test the tracking to make sure everything works correctly. If you run into problems during this step, send an email to our help desk: directtrack@help.directresponse.com
- Activate the campaign
- Notify your affiliate partners
It's really that easy! You have complete control. Not happy with the performance of one of your banners? No problem, simply login to the management interface and modify it. Getting more leads or more sales than you can handle? Again, no problem, simply login to the management interface and deactivate the campaign or add a cap to limit the leads you receive.
4. Track Your Results
DirectTrack keeps statistical information up-to-date in real time so that you can monitor the performance of your campaigns and quickly make adjustments to optimize each campaign.
5. Pay your partners
DirectTrack keeps detailed records of the clicks, leads and sales generated by your partners. Whichever day you choose to run billing scripts (the billing script day is setup under Account Setup > Financial Management), DirectTrack will run an affiliate payout report which can be found under Financial Management > Affiliate Payments. The system computes how much they are owed based upon the settings and payouts you created upon building the campaign.
There are two primary ways to track clicks within DirectTrack, the standard cookie based tracking method and via DirectLink tracking:
- The standard click tracking method found within DirectTrack can also be found in most all affiliate tracking platforms in this industry. When a visitor to one of your affiliate’s sites, emails, newsletters, etc… clicks on one of your banners, text or html ads, that visitor is instantly redirected through DirectTrack servers and on to your landing page. During this instantaneous process, DirectTrack drops a cookie on the visitor’s computer. Since DirectTrack tracks unique clicks only, if the same visitor were to click the same link within 24 hours, DirectTrack would not track the click again. You have complete control over how long the cookie will stay live on the visitor’s system (anywhere from 0 – 365 days).
- The second option to track clicks is through a module called DirectLink. This option does NOT require a redirect through the DirectTrack servers. Rather, you place a JavaScript code on your landing page(s), and the JavaScript reads the location of where the user is being redirected from and places the cookie on their computer. This option is for those who are concerned with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Some other technologies call this method of tracking Naked Linking but rest assured, this is the exact same thing. You will get full SEO credit for each affiliate click.
There are multiple methods to track both leads and sales. The most common method is by using our cookie/pixel system. This method works based on the cookies that are placed on a users computer upon a click, interacting with a ‘pixel’ code that is placed on a Confirmation or Check-out page on the advertisers site (also called a ‘thank you’ page). The pixel tracking reads the cookie on the users machine and credits the appropriate affiliate with the lead or sale.
Another DirectTrack option for lead tracking is via our Hosted Lead Form. Using this method of lead tracking, you can build your own lead form within DirectTrack and either drive traffic directly to this lead form or allow affiliates to grab the code and post the lead data into your DT system. From there, DirectTrack can provide that data to an advertiser either by having them export it manually, batch email it, http post, or programmatically send the data via a SOAP API call.
A third and more technical option for tracking both leads and sales can be done by passing the affiliate ID directly to the advertisers landing page via sub-id tracking. From there, the advertiser can associate any lead or sale with that affiliate ID on their end and programmatically pass that data via a SOAP API call back into your DirectTrack system. This method requires a higher level of integration and programming, but is beneficial to those who are concerned with cookies being deleted by a user. For additional questions on this method of tracking, simply write a help ticket to our technical support at directtrack@help.directresponse.com.
DirectTrack has multiple campaign types. Each campaign can be set up with different commission structures. You can pay affiliate for sales (known as Cost Per Sale or CPS) as either a percentage of the sale or a flat sale amount. You can also pay affiliates for sales on individual products. You also have the option to commission affiliates on repeat purchases, also called sub-sales, or on an ongoing rev-share model (subscription basis).
In addition to sales, you can commission affiliate for leads (Cost Per Acquisition or CPA), clicks (Cost Per Click or CPC), and impressions (Cost Per Thousand Impression or CPM). DirectTrack also supports hybrid payouts. For instance, you can pay an affiliate a flat fee per lead AND a percentage of sale, all from one affiliate click.
In addition there are advanced campaign types called CoRegistration (CoReg) and CallTrack. CoReg is like a CPA program that allows you to pay affiliates a commission per lead as the user fills out multiple lead forms within an incentivized ‘path’. CallTrack is a unique feature in DirectTrack that incorporates toll-free phone numbers that act as tracking links for your affiliate. So when a user calls an affiliate’s CallTrack 800 number that DirectTrack provides, you can commission the affiliate for the call and the user is directed to your call center.
All data collected in your DirectTrack account is yours. This includes all affiliate information, financial info, statistics, and creatives. We do not touch the data or share it with any other party… Privacy is of the utmost importance. All data is saved and stored from the very first day you start with DirectTrack.
This depends on the version you require, the amount of traffic you do, and any additional services that you would like us to help you with. For each version of DirectTrack there is a one-time start up fee, and a monthly hosting fee. The monthly fee includes product updates, support (different levels based on versions), and a certain level of traffic. We also offer services to help you manage your affiliate program or design your website and/or creative. Feel free to contact us for full pricing info on each version we offer by calling 866-773-4460 x2 or by emailing us.
DirectTrack has been around since 1997 and is widely considered to be the industry standard for affiliate tracking. We currently power hundreds of ad networks worldwide and thousands of merchant’s affiliate programs. Without creating one of the most reliable and trusted environments within this industry, we would never have been able to build our system to what it is today.
Because of DirectTrack’s solid reputation and huge industry presence, our company was acquired by Digital River in January 2006. Digital River (NASDAQ: DRIV) is a publicly traded company and has invested millions of dollars into the datacenter that houses every DirectTrack account. Maintaining reliability will continue to be a strong focus within DirectTrack’s long term roadmap.
We do not currently offer the ability to host DirectTrack outside of our own data center. Because we regularly update our platform on a bi-weekly basis, we have determined the support and costs for systems outside of our environment is not feasible at this time.
We take affiliate fraud very seriously. Since we have run our own affiliate network, we know first hand how to handle fraud and we’ve built tools into DirectTrack that we use to monitor and prevent fraud. There is a panel within the Admin interface called FraudMeter, which is used to help manage, report on, and prevent fraud. We give you the ability to assign parameters around key elements that may be indicative of fraud. For instance, you can assign a conversion threshold that warns you when certain affiliates have far exceeded your average conversion rates. You can also auto-deny affiliates based on location, IP address, website URL, and other parameters that you have the option to create.
We have a couple options to assist. First, we can discuss brokering your campaign to our DirectLeads Affiliate Network where we would act as your Super affiliate and control our own smaller affiliates to promote your offers. On a grander scale, we also power hundreds of ad networks worldwide and through the CrossPublication portal, you can build relationships and share your ad campaigns with all of these ad networks. There are hundreds of thousands of affiliates across all of these networks, so your potential reach is far greater than just working with one network. CrossPublication can be an extremely lucrative tool and can provide exposure that is unmatched within the affiliate marketing industry.
Every DirectTrack License includes 10 business days of installation/setup support and 72 hour response email support. The Merchant Pro and Network Version of DirectTrack also includes ongoing phone support between normal business hours (8am – 5pm EST Monday thru Friday). Merchant Standard clients may upgrade to a phone support package as well for a low yearly fee.
If you require a more hand’s on support representative to manage affiliates and technical tasks, we also offer a ‘Managed Services’ contract. This means that you can contract with one of our DirectTrack specialist from 2-8 hours per day, and they will report to you and represent your company.
Yes. Through our Managed Services division, we can create a training and setup package that is based on a set of amount hours. A dedicated managed services rep will guide your team through a detailed demo of DirectTrack, all while helping you to set your system up. We also offer in-house training packages where a DirectTrack specialist will come to your office and educate your staff on DirectTrack, best practices in the Affiliate industry, and offer suggestions to improve your program.
In addition we hold a yearly client summit for 2-days of training, education, and networking with others in the industry.
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