'Net Features : linktrust

LinkTrust Saves Best for Last

Michael Garrity — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:15:00 GMT

It's officially fall, and with the pumpkin spice lattes and the reappearance of our sweatshirts, also comes the end of LinkTrust’s Summer of Love, a summer-long series of Webinars.

However, LinkTrust, an affiliate management and tracking software provider, is ending the season and its series with a bang, announcing it is now offering the ability to utilize additional landing pages, hide click referrers, manage all traffic caps in a single report and clone creatives from existing campaigns. These fresh features were added to help both affiliate networks and merchants optimize their traffic and tighten affiliate security, in an effort to increase their profits.

Many of these additions were included with an eye on the mobile Web, as LinkTrust found that an increasing number of campaigns are being optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices.

For instance, now LinkTrust customers can create a rule that redirects traffic that contains specific device names in the user agent (e.g. “iPhone”) to a specific, optimized landing page. But these unique additional landing pages aren’t only for mobile, as customers can also make pages that display based on the user’s operating system, browser, non-mobile device or some other user agent attribute. These additional landing pages are a great way for LinkTrust clients to prepare and optimize their sites to be more useful for all of their traffic.

The ability to hide click referrers was put in place to prevent affiliate poaching. This can be done before the consumer traffic redirects to a merchant’s landing page so that the traffic is not interrupted. Any clicks and conversions that take place are still recorded by LinkTrust, but merchants won’t see the click’s referrer to see where they came from.

LinkTrust is also introducing Traffic Cap Reports to assure new advertisers, that want to work with an affiliate program, that they will get quality traffic. Additionally, traffic caps allow advertisers to vet a program’s traffic and protect the relationships between affiliates and their advertising partners. LinkTrust traffic caps are set on an individual affiliate/campaign basis, or simply across an entire campaign. Being able to monitor caps in a single location lets advertisers make informed decisions quicker by letting them see which caps have been met and the affiliate’s progress with the others.

For security purposes, LinkTrust is including new affiliate fraud enhancements to prevent the sale and transfer of affiliate accounts. Clients are now able to restrict affiliate login based on the users’ country or IP address.

The Affiliate Center is getting a bit of a makeover, as well, with a couple of new additions, such as the option to hide or show campaigns by affiliate group on the Request Offers page, the ability to re-agree to terms and conditions, a custom stylesheet for pop-out pages and a feature that lets clients add an “http://” to their website URL.

The Summer of Love finale also comes with the ability for affiliate managers to: update global pixels from within the Affiliate Center, filter by affiliate group on commission and performance reports and more. There is even an option for a new type of creative, called “File,” for any creative image package, PDF, zipped files, externally hosted data feeds and others.

Stay Informed About Affiliate Traffic Trends

Michael Garrity — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:30:00 GMT

It’s always nice to have an educated assumption about how well one’s investments are performing. This is why so many people take the time to follow the stock market and keep a keen eye on their money and how well (or not) their ventures are doing.

In the Web world, the same case can be made for affiliate marketing, and affiliate tracking and affiliate program software provider LinkTrust is addressing that very topic in the latest round of features released as a part of its Summer of Love updates.

Users will be able to access an affiliate trends report, allowing them to effortlessly determine which of their affiliate partners are seeing their traffic numbers grow and which of them are declining. These figures are determined using a proprietary algorithm and will forecast a LinkTrust customer’s affiliate trends for the current day, and informing them if they “should be concerned” about certain traffic levels.

Customers can now get mobile and email alerts that provide information about campaign requests, new task and task completed notifications, and tax document updates. Plus, the task manager has been updated to allow them to mass assign tasks, so that they can assign the same task to multiple users at once, and then monitor their progress as they all go about completing it.

Of, course, there is much more. LinkTrust is also releasing the User Agent Black & Grey list to help continue battling against fraud. This will let its customers block spider searches and screen scraper bots before they begin to affect their site statistics.

In addition, it’s offering a new custom sign up form that lets its customers automatically approve affiliate applications that let loyalty sites transform their users into affiliates, and then provide them with tracking links. This is meant to help loyalty, membership, and daily deals sites all maximize the potential of their suite of affiliate management features.

The third Summer of Love update also comes with an account traffic graph, an update of the external transaction modification API, the ability to search all of one’s affiliate partners by campaigns associated with a specific merchant, and other enhancements regarding user information, including merchant performance, merchant channels, new user rights, and response data.

LinkTrust Helps in the Fight Against Fraud

Michael Garrity — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Some affiliate marketers have to spend so much time fighting off fraudsters, they probably feel like Batman. And, like The Dark Knight, they don’t have to worry about taking on these rogues all alone.

One trusty ally in this on-going struggle is LinkTrust, the affiliate tracking and affiliate program software provider that is unveiling a number of new ways to combat fraud as part of a huge feature release coming out this fall.

A part of this new feature set is a Transaction Details API, which will help make everything from marketing analytics to fraud detection a much simpler process. In this case, it works seamlessly with three top-notch fraud analytics and prevention companies, CPA Detective, Fraudlogix and ScrubKit, who can help clients study their traffic to uncover, eliminate and prevent affiliate and transaction fraud. LinkTrust customers only have to enable Transaction Details in their API rights to start using it right away.

The company is also giving its clients affiliate- and campaign-centric ID (CACID) numbers. Assigning IDs on an affiliate or campaign basis (and adding a [=CACID=] token to a campaign’s landing page URL) lets LinkTrust send the ID to an affiliate’s merchant partner. Normally, these merchants have to have their own CRM ID passed back to them in order to track a customer’s purchasing history and facilitate accurate recurring commissions for affiliates.

LinkTrust is also offering new email templates that make communicating with affiliates much faster and more efficient. Clients can create customized affiliate email temples that can be used by everyone within a company, so they can all be on the same page and won’t waste anymore time typing or pasting email messages from files on their desktops.

And last, but not least, LinkTrust is showing campaign groups on campaign performance reports.

Trying to ward off fraud can be a demanding task for affiliates, but with the right tools, and the right partners, it can be a considerably easier. They’ve just got to know who they can trust.

Top-tier Solutions in Affiliate Program Software

Linc Wonham — Wed, 11 May 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Most businesses on the Web will go only as far as their software takes them, and affiliate programs are no exception to the rule. It’s been a while since we examined some of the top providers in the space, which has become more competitive and crowded with qualified vendors.

Below are some of the most popular solutions available today:

HasOffers
Popular for its ease of use and affordability, HasOffers has become one of the leading providers of affiliate tracking software since launching two years ago. More than 8,000 businesses now use the platform to track their affiliate programs, including Groupon, Tapjoy and Tippr. HasOffers provides its customers with one month of free service on any of their editions, which include the Basic ($99 per month) package for novices, the Pro ($279/mo.) package for growing advertisers and new networks, and the Enterprise ($799/mo.) package for established networks and large brands.

LinkTrust
LinkTrust is recognized by merchants and affiliates as one of the most reliable tracking and lead management software platforms available to the performance marketing industry. Exceptional customer service, world-class technology and hardware are some of the most notable features. LinkTrust customers use the white-labeled system to manage affiliates, access real-time reporting, enjoy first-class fraud prevention tools and optimize their programs as well as any other solution out there, but the pricing is steep. The Lite package starts at $200 per month after a$300 setup fee, and the next available edition is $500 per month with a $600 setup fee. Three more packages are available under a customized pricing structure.

iDevDirect
One of the affiliate industry’s first management and tracking software providers, iDevAffiliate has been around almost as long as the Web. Administrative features include two control panels for affiliates to sign up and manage their individual accounts while you manage the entire program, and security features include built-in commission fraud controls and an API for external code integration. Editions include the Standard for $99.99 per month, the Gold for $199.99 and the Platinum edition for $299.99 per month.

Post Affiliate Pro
Version 4 of the Post Affiliate Pro program software provides high-scope tracking reliability and limitless extendibility with plugins and search engine-friendly linking for higher rankings. The already flexible system is designed for elaborate customization and the folks behind it urge their customers to suggest new functionalities and solutions if they believe something is missing. Pricing starts at $199 per month for the Xpress service and runs all the way to $1,899 per month for the Network package.

DirectTrack
A product of the Digital River companies, DirectTrack’s affiliate program software includes cookie-based and cookie-less hybrid tracking, mobile ad delivery and next-generation APIs. Last year the company introduced post-impression view-through conversion tracking and the affiliate industry’s largest proprietary performance-based advertising/campaign distribution marketplace. Widely considered the most comprehensive performance marketing software provider, DirectTrack’s solutions also come with a higher price tag.