Mastering Tracking Link Setup: Boost Your Affiliate Marketing Performance

In the ever-changing landscape of affiliate publishing, getting the most out of your marketing initiatives isn't simply a goal—it's a requirement. Understanding the full power of tracking links is essential for navigating this dynamic landscape.

This article will guide you through the principles of tracking link setup—through Google Analytics and Strackr (a much easier alternative for affiliate marketers).

Let’s get started.

What Is a Tracking Link?

A tracking link is a unique URL associated with a specific product or service an affiliate marketer promotes.

It contains the affiliate’s username or ID. When affiliates promote multiple products, each product has its tracking link. These links monitor sales and ensure that the affiliate receives their rightful commissions.

Creating tracking links for affiliate marketers is a breeze with Strackr's Link Builder.

Use this tool to effortlessly create tracking links for any page on your affiliate marketing website. All you need to do is paste the product page link, and the tool will generate the tracking link based on your linked networks. You can also access the Strackr Link Builder via the API, giving you greater flexibility and control when managing your tracking links.

Why Are Tracking Links Important?

Precise Attribution

Tracking links are extremely valuable because they enable marketers to pinpoint the source of actions and conversions accurately. This degree of accuracy provides a thorough understanding of the performance of different marketing channels, highlighting the ones that generate the most engagement and conversions.

Performance Evaluation

Tracking links are critical in measuring key performance indicators, including sales, conversions, and click-through rates.  They help affiliate marketers determine where their affiliate sales are coming from, like which ads or campaigns are performing best. This helps them optimize their marketing efforts and allocate resources effectively.

Campaign Optimization

Marketers can distinguish high-performing strategies from ones that require improvement by thoroughly examining tracking link data. This constant review opens the path for continued marketing campaign improvement, ensuring optimal results and remaining ahead of the curve.

Audience Insights

Tracking links provide valuable insights into audience behavior, preferences, and demographics. This information enables marketers to create focused strategies for personalized and relevant marketing campaigns, resulting in stronger connections and higher engagement rates.

Budget Allocation

Marketers can maximize their budget by utilizing tracking links to focus on channels and campaigns with the highest returns. This approach reduces waste and boosts overall campaign efficiency.

How To Set Up Tracking Links Using Strackr

1. Create a tracking link in the dashboard

On the left menu, click Tools, then Link Builder. You should see something like this:

Copy the advertiser's URL directly from your browser, and try to clean it up as much as possible by removing unnecessary parameters.

For example:

https://www.website.com/iphone/apple_iph_11_64go_red.html?keyword=iphone&source=search&id=123456789

…could be written more cleanly as:

https://www.website.com/iphone/apple_iph_11_64go_red.html

Then, paste the URL in the deep link field, click Get tracking links, and the Link Builder will automatically create a tracking link.

2. Add Customs

If you need to add customs (clickref, subid, etc.) to the tracking link, you can add a custom before clicking on Get tracking links.

You can separate several customs with commas if you need to add multiple.

For example:

entry 1, entry 2

How To Set Up Tracking Link Using Google Analytics

1. Identify Source, Medium, and Campaign

To set up a tracking link with Google Analytics, you need to identify three things:

• Source: Where is the link coming from? For example, it could be a website, an email newsletter, or a PPC campaign.

-Medium: How will the link be used? For example, it could be organic (organic search traffic), email (email marketing campaigns), or ppc (paid search campaigns).

• Campaign: What is the purpose of this campaign? For example, it could be the product name or any other campaign-specific detail.

2. Open Google’s Campaign URL Builder

With Google Analytics, you can build three distinct monitoring tags.

Two enable you to track traffic to new apps on app marketplaces. The third option (and the one we’ll focus on) is Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder. Click the link to open up the tool.

4. Fill in UTM Parameters

Now, it’s time to start filling in the details.

The only field we haven’t covered yet is URL. This is simply the full URL of the page you want visitors to land on.

Fill in the blanks with:

• Source
• Medium
• Campaign

5. Generate and Use the Tracking Link

Once you've entered the parameters, the program will build a one-of-a-kind tracking link for you. Copy the generated tracking URL and paste it into your marketing materials, such as social media posts, emails, or adverts.

6. Measure Success

When consumers click your tracking link, analytics tools collect the relevant data. You may then use this data to evaluate the performance of your campaign on affiliate dashboards.

Best Practices When Creating Tracking Links

Review Reports Regularly

Regularly analyzing reports to uncover irregularities, such as inaccurate UTM codes, is critical. While thorough documentation minimizes errors, mistakes can still occur. Detecting errors promptly enables swift repair, preventing issues from escalating and ensuring data precision.

With Strackr, you can gain valuable insights that will help you fully understand the importance of your data. You can increase your revenue and expand your business by using essential KPIs and valuable tools. Accessing your data is straightforward, with no complicated customization required.

Strackr streamlines the process so you can focus on what matters most.

Determine Which Campaigns Warrant UTM Parameters for Tracking

A flexible tool, UTMs provide thorough marketing tracking across the consumer lifecycle. This holds for several campaign kinds, including:

Email campaigns

UTMs are helpful in email marketing since they can monitor clicks on links, CTAs, and images. This information helps you refine your strategy over time by estimating the conversion rates of various email kinds.

Social campaigns

Using UTMs can benefit e-commerce marketers using social media as a core channel. By adding UTM attributes to their URLs, marketers can gain insights into which platforms and post types generate the most effective results. Additionally, our technology for social media advertising can assist in this effort.

Digital ad campaigns

It's recommended you use UTM settings in addition to your digital ad vendor's dashboard. This method thoroughly analyzes the relationship between ads and conversions and simplifies the comparison of effectiveness across multiple marketing channels.

Use a UTM Parameter Builder

A UTM parameter builder allows you to add specific tags (UTM parameters) to your URLs, which act like signposts for Google Analytics. By defining these parameters, such as source, medium, and keywords, you can accurately track where your website traffic is coming from and how users interact with your content. This enables you to better understand which marketing efforts drive the most engagement and conversions.

Consistency is Key

The consistency of your name conventions heavily influences your UTM strategy's performance. One of the most important first steps is to guarantee alignment across your UTM parameters.

Gaining a complete and accurate picture of the effectiveness of your marketing might be challenging if there is even one UTM parameter that needs to be corrected. This is especially important when several team members participate in UTM tracking activities.

Consider the following recommendations to simplify your UTM code naming conventions:

• Lowercase only. Because UTM codes are case-sensitive, variations such as "Facebook," "Facebook," and "FACEBOOK" are monitored separately. Tracking inconsistencies are avoided by upholding lowercase consistency.

• Underscores are better than spaces. Instead of using spaces, choose underscores. Spaces might confuse and generate several codes for the same object. However, brands may also use dashes, percentage symbols, or plus signs in addition to the advised underscores.

• Keep it simple. Although descriptive UTM codes lessen ambiguity, excessive complexity increases the possibility of creation errors. Put simplicity first for successful results.

It's important to adhere to established naming conventions strictly. Also, avoid including sensitive company names, words, or phrases in UTM parameters since they’re visible to customers. Following these guidelines will strengthen your UTM strategy and ensure precise long-term tracking.

Check UTM Parameters When Copying and Pasting Links

It always pays to double-check the links you’re copying and pasting.

For example, links to Instagram posts you copy from the web have unique UTM codes that should be deleted to keep links clean. By ensuring your UTM parameters are correctly copied and pasted with your links, you can track the performance of your marketing efforts accurately.

6. Use a Reputable Affiliate Tool.

When creating a tracking link, using a reliable affiliate tool is a must. These tools make the whole process easier and give you accurate information about how your marketing is doing.

Strackr is a reliable tool that helps you track your links and gives you advanced analytics and useful publisher tools for managing your partnerships. Our intuitive dashboards and reporting features give you an overview of all your affiliate campaigns, allowing you to adjust them accordingly.

So, if you want to maximize your tracking links and boost your marketing ROI, try Strackr!

Conclusion

When it comes to affiliate publishing, it's crucial to track your links accurately. This approach is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of your campaigns, maximizing performance, and targeting your audience effectively.

At Strackr, we give you the tools to ensure your affiliate marketing program runs smoothly and successfully. With powerful data consolidation and analytics, Strackr provides an easy-to-use tool for affiliates to manage their campaigns and optimize their revenue.

Try Strackr for free today!