Exclusive Affiliate Coupons for you…& you…& you

There is a great deal of concern around issuing exclusive offers and coupons to affiliates as they too often fall into the wrong hands and you end up paying too much with upset affiliates. DirectTrack (DT) has built in technology to help protect links from abuse; it won’t eliminate the actual coupon usage through commerce but can stop the extra commissions you are doling out to abusers.

If you are DT client these features already exist in your network, you just need to learn how to use them. If you aren’t a DirectTrack client, I would encourage you to take a look at the capabilities around link protection and think if a standalone separate tracking tool for your coupons and offers is a good idea. You can easily (and inexpensively) launch a private tracking system for your coupon tracking in just a few weeks.

I have identified 7 features of DT that aid in the protection of links and can easily be adapted to support coupon protection.

Private Campaigns – This technology speaks for itself, you can easily create a different program term that is completely hidden from all other affiliates. Then just add creative that drives your coupons into this campaign, let the link validation do it’s job.

Hidden Links – Should not be used alone on a public campaign but gives you the ability to hide any link from all affiliates. Doing this requires you to hand hold the creation of the links, deliver them to affiliates and keep side notes so you can easily retrieve performance data.

Passing Unique Variables in Links – This is one of my favorite features. Because DirectTrack uses a link redirection for it’s core tracking, you can setup the links to pass a number of different variables from the affiliate site back to yours after the redirection happens. Here is a sample link that I am using on a client that has a several of the DT variables being tracked as well as a few of my own.

http://www.directtrack.com/?source_key=auniquesourcekey&source=auniquesourcename&bid=%PROGRAM&aid=%ADD_CODE&dt=%DTOPT

The variable values that begin with % are DirectTrack options, there are a total of 15 known variables that can be passed through links inluding the cookie ID, link name and number, program identifier, ad pools and more.

Link Checking & Validation – This is my own terminology for a unique way that DirectTrack talks back and forth between affiliates and links. For example a sample DT link might look like:

http://affiliate.directtrack.com/z/24/CD1

The “24” is a unique link identifier, that is assigned directly to a campaign that has affiliates (CD1) assigned to it. If there is a kink in the chain, for example: CD1 is not associated with the campaign that link #24 is associated with, the commission will not happen.

Referring URL’s – One of the VERY few affiliate platforms that allows you dig deeper into the click referrals. If you have DO see exclusive coupon code abuse slip through, it’s really easy to see where the traffic is coming from. DT provides IP, URL strings and more information for you to find who is taking advantage of you.

Approved Website Validation – Some other affiliate networks and platforms have incorporated this technology over the years. It requires affiliates to “register” their website, if an action is tracked outside of that URL that is registered sirens go off. Another great way to identify abuse!

Encrypted URL’s – There are tons of tools on the market that do this but none will ever work as good as coming directly from the network or tracking solution.

What are other networks and solutions doing to protect their links and offers?

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