They also shared best practices around the following topics:

• Evolving consumer privacy changes including browser updates and how marketers can stay one step ahead to maintain accurate tracking
• How to leverage affiliate marketing to generate quality leads, plus tips to efficiently distribute leads to buyers
• Innovative and creative methods to make money with lead distribution, while following guidelines and having transparency with partners
• Why automated lead distribution software is essential to find the best buyer for each lead to ultimately earn the highest profit
• How to get the most revenue out of leads generated, including:
  • Using upsells on the initial lead capture to promote similar offers
  • The importance of lead response time and real-time reporting
  • Advanced lead selling methods such as Ping Post, how it differs from the standard lead selling process, and when to use this method
  • Various lead distribution and lead selling models, like multi-sell and exclusive sell
• The pros and cons of using a SaaS solution, versus building an in-house lead distribution system

View the full podcast on Youtube, Spotify, or Apple.

To learn more information about lead distribution, access the following resources:

Whitepaper: Launch and Grow your Lead Distribution Program with Technology

Blog: How to Sell Leads to Maximize Profit: Everything you Need to Know

Article: 9 Tips or Affiliate Networks to Maximize Profitability with Lead Distribution

The post Podcast: Lead Distribution Trends and the Growth Potential For the UK Market appeared first on CAKE.

Below are five best practices to help you streamline the onboarding process and get to revenue faster.

1. Clearly communicate T&Cs and offer restrictions

Brand integrity is a top priority for your new advertiser — which means it needs to be a top priority for you too. Right from the start, ensure your advertising partners are clear on the affiliate program terms and conditions. This means agreeing on:

• Who you want to target and what type of traffic you will accept to your offer, e.g. Is the offer only available to consumers over the age of 18?
• What types of media are acceptable, e.g. banner, social, and email
• Any other specific requests or requirements from the advertiser, e.g. PPC campaigns are permitted but a specific list of keywords are prohibited

2. Get aligned on your new advertiser’s compliance requirements

Advertisers have various methods for handling vast amounts of personally identifiable information (PII) for consumers, making consumer privacy a top priority.

To ensure you’re aligned with your advertiser’s requirements, take the following steps:

• At a minimum, loop in your compliance officer or data protection officer early in the onboarding process. (If you don’t have one, consider appointing someone to oversee your data privacy and security processes.)
• Establish and communicate use policy for collecting and sharing PII. Every partner in your affiliate marketing ecosystem will be responsible for how they handle PII and manage their own compliance.
• Regularly audit your system to stay updated with all regulations—CANSPAM for email, GDPR, CCPA, and others—as they are constantly evolving.

Taking these steps early will build trust within and establish a high standard within your marketing ecosystem that will drive success.

3. Identify affiliate partners that are the right fit for your new advertiser

After you’ve taken the steps to understand your new advertiser’s requirements, it’s time to identify the affiliate partners that are the right fit and only approve campaigns from those affiliates.

During this phase, closely monitor traffic from your affiliates to new advertisers. High conversion rates, high click-thru rates, and no fraud all indicate high-quality traffic and help to validate that the audience your affiliates are targeting is resonating with the advertiser.

You can also use tools such as click and conversion caps to help prevent fraud and manage the budget with your advertiser.

4. Minimize and address tracking discrepancies

When you’re working with numerous partners all of which have various technologies and software, you’re bound to have discrepancies in measuring campaign performance.

To reduce the risk of discrepancies as much as possible, work with the new advertiser to agree on what tracking methods, attribution methods, and timeframes you’ll use:

• Will you use last-touch attribution or first-touch attribution?
• Will you have a 30-day attribution window?
• Will you use server-to-server tracking or cookie-based tracking?
• If you’re using a cookie-based conversion pixel, will it be placed directly on the Thank You page or within a tag management system?

Also, be sure to decide upfront how you will handle discrepancies if they occur. Will you always use the advertiser’s numbers or your own numbers? Will you reconcile monthly?

5. Standardize offer and campaign configurations with your new advertiser

The questions you cover to reduce discrepancies will also inform how you standardize offer and campaign configurations. Work with your new advertisers to agree on the following, which will ensure a quick and easy setup for future offers:

• What are the tracking parameters you will use? (e.g. Source ID, SubAffiliate ID, Creative ID, Placement)
• Will you be using server-to-server tracking or cookie-based tracking?
• Will all campaigns use the same attribution model and window?

Taking the time to agree on these decisions early on in the relationship will reduce the back-and-forth questions typical of new advertiser relationships and accelerate the entire process. You’ll go live with new campaigns faster so you can get to revenue faster.

Other content you might be interested in:

• 5 CAKE Features to Streamline the Onboarding of New Affiliates
• 5 CAKE Features to Simplify Communication with Affiliate Partners
• Using CAKE Features to Find and Stop Affiliate Fraud

The post 5 Best Practices for Onboarding New Advertisers appeared first on CAKE.

This is when CAKE stepped in. Adleadr decided to partner with CAKE and unify its lead distribution and affiliate marketing programs on a single platform. Since then, Adleadr has achieved significant business improvements including:

• Boosted partner satisfaction
• Lower fraud rates
• Improved lead quality
• Increased efficiencies

“CAKE’s flexible, robust software is a vast improvement for us. Rather than flipping between two independent solutions, having both lead management and affiliate tracking within one platform has streamlined our approach to managing and optimizing our customers’ performance marketing campaigns. Overall, clients, buyers, and affiliates have a far more professional view of our services now. I look forward to continuing to work with CAKE and grow further!”

Richard Walters, Founder, Adleadr

Check out the full case study to learn more about how Adleadr leveraged CAKE to increase profitability and business efficiencies.

The post Adleadr Improves ROI by Streamlining Its Lead Distribution and Affiliate Programs on a Single Platform — CAKE appeared first on CAKE.

Effectively managing all of these moving parts ensures a strong start with your affiliates, which leads to more revenue—faster!—plus long-term loyalty with your affiliate partners.

These five CAKE features will help you put your best foot forward to kick off your relationship with your affiliates.

How to streamline the onboarding of new affiliates

Utilize the Affiliate Signup Page or Affiliate Signup API

CAKE offers a Signup Page (example linked here) that you can use to manage new affiliate sign ups for your affiliate program. It includes all the major contact information and the types of campaigns the affiliate focuses on.

Or, if you already have your own signup page, you can integrate the CAKE Affiliate Signup API into your backend system, which will push details collected from your form into CAKE. This will accelerate management of the remainder of the onboarding process.

Manage the Pending Affiliate Queue

All information collected from the affiliate signup page or from the Affiliate Signup API will be pushed to the Pending Affiliate queue. Here you can view the affiliates’ information, make notes, validate contact details, and then approve or deny the new affiliate partner.

In the Pending Affiliate queue, CAKE also shows the IP/Geolocation of the affiliate that signed up so you can verify whether their location matches what they put in the form.

Give Access to the Affiliate Portal

The CAKE Affiliate Portal streamlines communication and provides your new affiliates with a one-stop-shop to access all the information they need to be successful in running campaigns under your program. Affiliates can also use the Affiliate Portal to:

• View contact information for their account manager (AM) / email their AM
• Update their billing information
• Update their contact information/change password
• View documents such as Terms & Conditions (more on this below) and Insertion Orders (campaign level agreements)
• Subscribe to your newsletters (emails sent via your instance)
• Access the full API library, including reporting and accessing campaign details
• View available campaigns and assets
• View earned commissions, bills, and bill statuses

Customize Your Terms & Conditions

Your performance marketing program’s Terms & Conditions agreement is an important step in setting a solid foundation with your partners. CAKE provides a default set of Terms & Conditions that you can use as a sample document. However, we strongly encourage you to work with a legal representative to customize the document to fit and protect your company and your advertisers.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to simplify this process:

• You can upload your custom T’s & C’s document into CAKE so affiliate partners can refer back to it in their portal.
• If you use CAKE’s Affiliate Signup Page, you can choose to email the affiliate the acknowledged T’s & C’s from the Signup Page for record-keeping.
• If your T’s & C’s change at any point during your partnership with the affiliate, the next time they log in to the Affiliate Portal they will be prompted with the new terms and conditions and have the opportunity to acknowledge the changes.
• A record of the affiliate’s acknowledgment will be noted in the History section of the Affiliate card with a timestamp.

Upload Documents to the Affiliate Portal

Beyond the Terms & Conditions, you can also upload and host other documents—like a campaign insertion order, W8/W9, invoicing information, etc.—in CAKE’s Affiliate Portal. This makes it easy for your affiliates to access these documents at any time.

To learn more about leveraging CAKE to onboard and communicate with your affiliates, check out the following resources:

• 5 CAKE Features to Simplify Communication with Affiliate Partners
• 3 CAKE Features to Easily Manage Affiliate Commissions
• CAKE Knowledge Base

The post 5 CAKE Features to Streamline the Onboarding of New Affiliates appeared first on CAKE.

In this spotlight Q&A, we caught up with Elizabeth D’Arcy-Potts, CAKE’s Managing Director of EMEA with over 15 years of experience in digital and affiliate marketing.

Here are some highlights from our conversation.

What is your role and tell us about your journey at CAKE?

I am the Managing Director for CAKE EMEA, heading up our office in Fiztrovia, London. I started at the company in 2013 as the first Sales Director on the ground in the UK, having come directly from another performance marketing company. As UK Sales Director, I started to build the sales team and the growth strategies for our market, becoming the Head of Sales for the region before being promoted to Managing Director in 2018.

My current role is primarily focused on generating and maintaining revenue for the EMEA region with suitable organisations, developing strategic partnerships, as well as building our brand and awareness in new markets. I also directly manage the EMEA sales team, developing and executing our strategies for revenue growth and acting as the liaison with our other global offices. 

In the last year, how have you seen the affiliate marketing industry shift?

In 2020 we have seen some dramatic trends across the industry, largely driven by the coronavirus pandemic which caused widespread changes to consumers’ day-to-day lives. The majority of brick-and-mortar stores have moved online in one capacity or another, so we have seen a huge increase in affiliate awareness for ecommerce stores of all sizes. Restaurant chains, bars, bakeries, and even some farm shops have also gone online in an effort to keep providing services during coronavirus restrictions, so we have seen many organisations beginning to use affiliate marketing to drive awareness and sales on a more predictable pay-for-performance model.

Stability has also been a priority for current CAKE clients and prospective clients alike. This encompasses different facets of stability from financial stability of their technology partner, to regulatory framework adherence and stability, as well as new clients looking for a stable long-term platform to build their programs on.

We have seen growth in some verticals — health and beauty, ecommerce, online dating — and challenges for other verticals which have been harder hit with coronavirus related restrictions.

Outside of work, how do you enjoy spending your time?

I have two young children to keep me busy outside of work. We moved to Kent last March which allows us more opportunities to go to the beach or for walks in the woods. We also keep geese and chickens now and I get quite mesmerized watching the chickens pecking around. In the mornings I like to run as that sets me up for the day (and allows a little peace and quiet where I can focus on listening to a podcast).

What do you love most about heading up the EMEA office?

I love the variety at CAKE. Over the years I have had different responsibilities, team configurations, and many products and features to introduce to our market. Our clients come in all sizes and range across all verticals — in one day you can be speaking to a retail company in the Middle East, a dating company in Lithuania, a mobile network in South Africa, and everything in between. 

However, the main reason I love working at CAKE is the team. I never really understood how important the team that you are working with is until I started working here.

Are there any new or interesting trends coming out of the UK?

We have seen an increase in the number of new B2C and B2B lead generation companies being started in the UK since the 2nd half of 2020. Most of these organisations are leading with a vertical that is directly expanding as a result of changes caused by the pandemic. For example, loans like the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), consumers upgrading broadband for working from home, and home insulation grants in the home improvements vertical. 

What advice do you have for individuals looking to grow their performance marketing program?

I would always advise to treat publishers like they are your extended sales force, so those relationships should be nurtured and developed for the best results on both sides. Additionally, communication is key to ensure your partners understand what you are trying to achieve with your campaigns, that they understand how to get there, and have the resources they need from you to drive quality traffic and referrals. It helps to bring your partners closer to the brand or network wherever possible. It’s also important to listen when they have their own ideas about how to grow your program too. 

What’s the best place you’ve traveled to?

This is such a tricky question as everywhere I have travelled to has something that makes it “the best” by one criteria, but if I had to choose just one place it would have to be Croatia. It is less than two and a half hours on a plane from the UK but always feels like an exotic, tropical escape with its crystal-clear waters and long sunny days. Croatia has a fascinating history that is still so well-preserved, beautiful vineyards, olive groves, mountain ranges, sun-drenched beaches, and the food maintains the many influences of its historical past — Italian, Greek, Hungarian, and Turkish to name a few. It offers something for everyone so I hope to return with my children in the future. 

Other content you might be interested in:

• Spotlight Q&A With Karen Nugent, CAKE’s Senior Director of Client Services
• Blog: CAKE Joins the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework
• Blog: How to Run a Successful Lead Generation Program on CAKE

The post Spotlight Q&A With Elizabeth D’Arcy-Potts, CAKE’s Managing Director, EMEA appeared first on CAKE.

While our traditional web interface is accessible on desktop and mobile browsers, the CAKE Dashboard iOS mobile app streamlines the process of running a performance marketing program by offering real-time visibility into performance metrics while on the go. It enables you to perform all of the major affiliate and campaign management functions that you need in CAKE—now from your mobile device.

We are committed to helping customers connect with their partners and manage, measure, and optimize campaigns, affiliates, and offers from their iOS device.

“The CAKE Dashboard app has a very well-structured design which provides us with an exceptionally clear view of reporting. The app is really convenient by allowing us to pull down individual reports and refresh our stats in real-time. When you click on a specific affiliate you can easily gain access to insights about their performance at the campaign level, as well as change the status, price, caps, and pixel for specific campaigns. This level of granularity while on the go is exactly what we need to successfully run our performance marketing program.”

                                                                                    Steiner Hann, Affiliate Manager, Advidi

The CAKE Dashboard app enables customers to perform the following functionality:

• Update the status, payout, caps, and pixels of a campaign
• View the affiliate and campaign reports to see performance insights including: conversions, clicks, cost, revenue, CVR, and CTR
• Access the full affiliate list to view their campaigns, affiliate ID, status, and account manager
• Modify an affiliate status
• View all campaigns with details such as campaign ID, payout, caps, pixel, and Media Type
• Login securely with MFA

We also have a dedicated mobile development team focused on building additional features that will be released in the coming months. The upcoming features include:

• Update offers
• Add a new campaign
• Generate tracking links
• View the advertiser report for detailed performance insights
• Modify an advertiser status
• Drill down into the advertiser offer report
• View the Top 10 affiliates chart
• Access the full offer and advertiser lists

To download the new CAKE Dashboard app, visit the Apple Store here. Please note, the CAKE Dashboard app requires an existing login to the CAKE platform. For any questions regarding the iOS mobile app, you can reach out to our support team at support@getcake.com.

The post The New CAKE iOS Mobile App Is Live appeared first on CAKE.

Looking back at the 2020 holiday shopping season, online sales spiked 49 percent compared to the previous year, along with a 22 percent boost in digital adspend. As brands continue to invest heavily in promotions and performance marketing to reach online shoppers, digital advertising is expected to grow at a nearly 16 percent average rate from 2021 to 2024. Additionally, ad revenue for digital media companies, notably Facebook and Google, is predicted to surge 14.1 percent this year.

Digital marketing statistics to grow your business

In this post, CAKE has compiled a list of noteworthy affiliate and digital marketing statistics to help you leverage data and knowledge to guide your marketing strategy, successfully hit those 2021 KPIs, and grow your business.

Affiliate Marketing

Digital advertising revenue worldwide is predicted to jump 10.2 percent and reach $651 billion in 2021, and affiliate marketing will play a role in the expansion. Digital marketing statistics show that the multibillion dollar affiliate marketing industry has grown 10 percent each year since 2015, and is expected to reach 8.2 billion in the U.S. by 2022.

Source: Statista

With these growth rates, it’s predicted that a greater share of advertising dollars will be invested in affiliate marketing programs as people will be looking for performance-oriented advertising amid the coronavirus pandemic. With performance marketing, you only pay for what performs, so you eliminate the risk of investing large budgets without knowing your return. Many publishers will grow their affiliate revenues this year, and understandably so. Early last year, PerformanceIN’s network data revealed that around one in four shoppers were new to the brands they bought from through affiliate links. Fast forward to the peak of the UK’s lockdown in April 2020, this number jumped to 37 percent, and has consistently remained above 30 percent.

• By 2021, affiliate marketing in the U.S is projected to reach $7.4 billion in spend. (eMarketer)
• In July 2020, search for “affiliate marketing” hit its highest mark in 11 years. Additionally, the term’s popularity ranking increased around 300 percent during the past five years. (mediakix)
• Affiliate marketing programs generate 15-30 percent of all sales for advertisers. (Authority Hacker)
• The vast majority of advertisers – 83 percent – use affiliate networks to secure deals with publishers. (Forrester Group)
• Marketers turn to the affiliate marketing industry to boost their conversion rates and improve online purchases. Additionally, 83 percent of them use it to increase brand awareness, and 79 percent of them use it to engage existing customers. (Rakuten)
• Affiliate marketing makes up 15 percent of all digital media revenue. (Hosting Tribunal)
• 90 percent of advertisers think affiliate programs are essential to their marketing strategy. (Forrester)

Social

• There are more than 3.48 billion social media users worldwide. That’s roughly 42 percent of the world’s population and 80 percent of internet users. If you’re investing in digital marketing, this means your audience is likely using social media in some respect. (Global Digital Report)
• 4 percent of millennials report using social media, compared to 77.5 percent of Gen X, and 48.2 percent of Baby Boomers. (eMarketer)
• 90 percent of brands use social media to increase brand awareness. (Hootsuite)
• U.S. Facebook adspend reached $25.56 billion, a 107 percent increase from 2016. (eMarketer)
• Social media adspend is forecasted to reach $18.4 billion in 2019. (Statista)
• 78 percent of U.S. Facebook users have been initially influenced by this platform when discovering new products. (Kleiner Perkins)
• 55 percent of individuals purchase products online after discovering it on social media. (Kleiner Perkins)
• 70 percent of social media marketers leverage Facebook as the most useful platform for meeting their goals. (Sprout Social)
• Instagram’s engagement beat Facebook’s with a median engagement rate of 1.73 percent per brand post. (Sprout Social)

Search

• Long-tail keywords make up more than 70 percent of all web searches, and typically garner a 36 percent conversion rate. (Search Engine Watch)
• Organic and paid search proved to be a strong team in 2020, with 68 percent of all trackable website traffic coming from a combination of the two tactics. (SmartInsights)
• Google searches doubled for small businesses in 2020. (Forbes)
• The average cost per action (CPA) is $49 for paid search. (WordStream) 
• The average click-through rate (CTR) is 3.17 percent for paid search. (WordStream)
• Appearing in mobile search ad results can boost brand awareness by 46 percent. (Think with Google)
• The first three ad spots usually garner 46 percent of clicks on the page. (Power Traffick)

Ecommerce

• eMarketer projects that U.S. retail ecommerce sales will reach $843.15 billion in 2021, up from $794.5B in 2020. (eMarketer)
• U.S brands and retailers pulled in $12.8 billion in digital revenue on 2020’s Black Friday, up 23 percent compared to 2019. (SalesForce)
• Consumer behavior has changed. One report reveals that 82 percent of shoppers will continue buying online even as stores reopen. (BusinessWire)
• Merchants see an average of 23 percent of their revenues coming from affiliate marketing, which is on par with SEO and PPC marketing. (Authority Hacker)
• The average online order is 31 percent higher with affiliate marketing customers. (CJ Affiliates)
• Consumers are likely to spend 47 percent more when they have a personalized experience. (e-commerce Platforms)

Video

• Mobile and desktop video adspend is expected to show an annual growth rate of 5.1 percent between 2021-2025, and market volume is projected to reach $45.6 million by 2025. (Statista)
• App developers and advertisers can’t afford to ignore video streaming, with revenue in the segment projected to reach $71.2 million in 2021. (Statista)
• People are 1.5x more likely to watch video daily on a smartphone than on a computer. (Facebook) 
• 83 percent of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads and 84 percent of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a brand’s video. (Wyzowl) 
• Marketers report digital budgets have increased 25 percent year over year. Approximately 86 percent of marketers are using video content in their campaign outreach efforts. (IAB’s 2019 Video Advertising Spend Report)
• 82 percent of internet traffic will come from video by 2022. (Cisco)
• Roughly five billion YouTube videos are viewed daily. (Omnicore Agency)

Email

• 31 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute)
• Email marketers are sending 27 percent more emails than they did pre-pandemic. (HubSpot)
• Affiliate marketing and email marketing account for 16 percent of all ecommerce transactions in the U.S. and Canada. (Business Insider) 
• For every $1 spent in email marketing, the average campaign earns $42 in ROI. (DMA, 2019)
• Segmented email campaigns result in a 760 percent increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor)
• Emails that contain personalized subject lines are 26 percent more likely to be opened. (Campaign Monitor)
• Compared to Facebook and Twitter, email marketing is 40 percent better at converting users. (Annuta Group)

Mobile

• Mobile buyers account for 60.9 percent of the U.S. population, and are expected to grow exponentially by 2024. (Statista)
• Mobile advertising grew to $240 billion in 2020, and is projected to reach $290 in 2021. (SEJ)
• Almost 25 percent of companies invest in mobile optimization as a top SEO tactic. (HubSpot)
• 57 percent of mobile users will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. In fact, 80 percent of users are more likely to purchase from companies with mobile sites or apps. (Think with Google)
• 70 percent of mobile searches lead to an action or purchase within an hour. (iAcquire)
• More than 50 percent of online U.S. traffic originates from mobile devices. (Statista)
• On average 53 percent of emails are opened on mobile devices. (Campaign Monitor)

Display

• The Google Display Network reaches 90 percent of internet users worldwide. (Google, 2019) 
• Worldwide display advertising is expected to grow by 18.5 percent in 2021. (eMarketer)
• Advertisers increased spending on programmatic digital ads in the U.S. by more than 10 percent in 2020, a number that will grow to 24.1 percent growth in 2021. (eMarketer)
• Mobile screens are now the principal place for display ads considering tablets saw a 34.5 percent drop during the first half of 2020. (Bannerflow)
• The average cost per action (CPA) is $76 for display ads. (WordStream)
• Display advertising revenue is projected to amount to $7.9 million by 2022. (Statista)
• Advertisers who leverage smart display campaigns have 20 percent more conversions at the same CPA when evaluated against traditional display campaigns. (Google)

Other content you might be interested in:

• Blog: What is Performance Marketing and How Has it Evolved? 
• Blog: How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Program – 5 Tried-and-True Tips
• Blog: Brand Integrity and Affiliate Marketing – 6 Affiliate Marketing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

The post Digital Marketing Statistics That Will Shape 2021 appeared first on CAKE.

The new setting requires that all apps adhere to the AppTracking Transparency framework and require consumers to opt-in to the IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers). When a consumer opens an app for the first time, they will be prompted with an opt-in to allow or disallow the app to track them and provide access to the IDFA.

The opt-in prompt will be displayed to all iOS users who have not enabled Apple’s Limited Ad Tracking setting on their device. While this setting was previously buried in the iOS settings, now it will be front and center when a consumer opens an app for the first time.

Originally slated for September 2020, the IDFA ad tracking changes have been postponed until early 2021 (still no specific date).

While these settings are disrupting how performance marketers track mobile campaigns, CAKE has a solution to help you still ensure accurate measurement.

Use CAKE’s mobile postback URL to track mobile campaigns

Since most of our customers do not use IDFA, the new privacy protocols will not have an impact on your campaign tracking.

However, if you’ve integrated your mobile marketing campaigns within CAKE, our new solution will help you address the iOS privacy changes. Now you can easily integrate CAKE’s mobile postback URL within any mobile marketing platform (MMP), allowing you to easily manage your mobile campaigns alongside the rest of your affiliate marketing program and maintain all reporting within a single dashboard.

For more information on how to configure CAKE’s mobile postback URL, please visit our knowledge base article here.

Other content you might be interested in:

• CAKE Best Practices for Accurate Measurement (without Cookie Tracking) 
• Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0 (ITP) – How will this impact you?
• Google Chrome 80: Everything You Need to Know as a Performance Marketer

The post iOS 14: What this Means for Mobile Campaign Tracking in CAKE appeared first on CAKE.

The advantages of buying or licensing affiliate network software is well-documented. The right solution plays a key role in enabling an affiliate network to efficiently and effectively manage, measure, and optimize affiliate campaigns, which drives more revenue opportunities.

On the other hand, some wonder about the other option — building your own in-house solution. In this blog, we’ll debunk the top three most common myths surrounding the resource requirements for building and maintaining your own affiliate network software.

3 common myths about building your own solution

• Myth #1: We’ll make back the money we spend building, over time.
• Myth #2: We have a large technical team or we are a tech company with resources to build our own solution.
• Myth #3: We can customize a solution to our exact needs.

The reality check: Weigh the resources required and benefits

Building and maintaining affiliate network software to support billions of actions and scale as your company grows is not simple. To get it right requires significant amounts of resources and expertise.

Essentially with licensing, your organization pays an annual fee for software and support that’s available via a third-party.

In contrast, software built in-house must be conceptualized, designed, developed, configured, and maintained. The reality is that many companies may not be equipped to handle the numerous moving parts associated with building an affiliate network software in-house. Below are the realities of what it takes to build your own solution.

• Requires significant infrastructure costs: When building a solution in-house, you’ll need to consider the costs of building software for data collection, cloud hosting or physical hardware, reporting, data operations, quality assurance for deployment, and ongoing care for the platform. In other words, heavy investment into an infrastructure that guarantees uptime and provides redundancies when servers go down.
  
  While solutions often rack up significant restructuring costs as performance and functional demands grow, under a SaaS model, additional licenses and functionality can be easily added with minimal lead time. Over time, the use of software built in-house can create a loss of revenue due to the lack of scalability or essential functionality.
• Involves a lot of human capital management: Developing and managing your own solution requires significant manpower. Companies need dedicated engineers and LiveOps on staff to support your infrastructure to maintain business continuity, avoid security threats, and possible downtime. Their salaries alone can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. In fact, engineering is widely considered one of the most lucrative and in-demand career choices, with salaries that can exceed $100k per year.
  
  Employee retention is also critical, as the cost of turnover is extremely high. For technical positions, the cost of losing an employee jumps to 100-150 percent of his/her salary. It’s estimated that 33 percent of all costs due to turnover is lost to recruitment efforts, while two-thirds is intangible costs, including lost productivity and knowledge. For example, when a member of your tech team leaves, they take with them proprietary technical knowledge. This typically leaves a company scrambling to figure out how to maintain software. With affiliate marketing, it’s imperative that the technology runs smoothly to keep affiliates and publishers happy. Failing to do so can damage credibility and result in massive revenue losses very quickly.
• Increases risk of data protection fines: With any software collecting data, it’s critical to regularly audit your system to stay up to date with all regulations, as they are constantly evolving. This takes considerable amounts of resources to comply with consumer privacy changes (GDPR, CCPA, IAB TCF) and data protection.
  
  What happens when compliance isn’t met? Along with a bad reputation, hefty fines can also be issued. For instance, GDPR fines can total up to $20 million euros or four percent of a firm’s annual global turnover.
• Takes away from focusing on a company’s core business: Those looking to build an in-house affiliate software will often say we have the internal resources and “my technology is customized to my specific needs.” Instead of focusing on building software, they should be directing that time towards their core business strategy and long-term growth. Licensing third-party affiliate software automatically equips you with industry experts and fully staffed teams to monitor, enhance, and maintain the platform. This enables you to focus on vital business strategies while your third-party provider focuses on building features based on industry trends and client needs
• Runs the risk of missing out on industry trends and innovations: Matching technology to industry innovations requires business vision and technical skills specifically related to affiliate marketing to continuously innovate and stay ahead of the industry.
  
  Additionally, there’s the issue of obsolescence. Modern technologies come along and make older technologies obsolete and more expensive to maintain compared to newer, better, faster technology. It also becomes harder to find engineering talent familiar with knowledge about outdated tech codes.
  
  With the progression of digitization and an ever-growing arsenal of workplace software, it can be challenging to keep track of all the available products and identify the optimal solution for your organization.
• Entails a lengthy process to go-live: If you build your own software in-house, it can take months or even years before the platform is ready to go live. There are process models in software development that allow for generating working software modules quickly, but launching a fully loaded custom software solution takes time. So if you’re planning to go build in-house, make sure you understand not only the costs involved, but also a realistic timeline before taking the leap. With your reputation and revenues at stake, it can be risky to run an affiliate program on a software that isn’t fully developed and properly tested.
  
  On the other hand, licensed software programs enable rapid deployment. If an existing solution meets most of your needs, there may be little point to invest time and money in developing a similar version of something that is already available.
• Demands continual updates: Vast amounts of data are collected in the highly interdependent affiliate marketing world of advertisers, networks, and affiliates, and partners deploy various ways of handling consumer personally identifiable information (PII). This intricate network with huge amounts of data, plus recent advancements in consumer privacy laws, adds up to mean a serious commitment to consumer privacy is required.
  
  Additionally, bandwidth is necessary to ensure your affiliate network system remains compatible with all of the browsers, devices, and operating systems. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has resulted in a wave of changes with browsers that block both first- and third-party tracking cookies:
  • Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP)
  • Firefox Enhanced Tracking Prevention (ETP)
  • Google Chrome 80

With these restrictions, handling the measurement of consumer interactions with marketing and advertising is getting more challenging, especially for an in-house development team. Last but not least, systems that are not maintained over time can be riddled with bugs and other stale code-related issues.

So, if you’re considering to build (or are already using) your own affiliate network software, think again. A balanced, logical assessment of what’s a myth versus reality may sway you to reconsider.

To experience the benefits of licensing affiliate network software first hand, sign up for a free 30-days trial of CAKE’S affiliate marketing software.

Other content you might be interested in:

• Blog: 6 Signs to Know You’re Using the Right Affiliate Network Software
• Blog: How to Prepare For Growth By Relying on Stable Technology
• Blog: CAKE Affiliate Marketing Success Stories

The post Build vs Buy Software: Dispelling 3 Common Myths About Building Your Own Affiliate Network Solution appeared first on CAKE.

We are thrilled to join many of our EU customers and enterprise technology leaders in this trusted organization dedicated to consumer privacy and data protection. In addition to our GDPR efforts and Type 1 SOC 2 and Type 2 SOC 2 certifications, our voluntary membership to the Framework exemplifies our ongoing efforts to ensure the highest levels of consumer privacy.

CAKE’s membership with the Framework provides EU and international clients collecting EU consumer data with the assurance that we have taken the proper steps towards privacy protection. Additionally, it also expands the playing field for CAKE customers by providing access to more opportunities to work with new advertisers and publishers who are also IAB TCF members.

The Framework, which was launched in April 2018, is designed to help all parties in the digital advertising chain ensure that they comply with the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive when processing personal data or accessing and/or storing information. This information from a user’s device includes cookies, advertising identifiers, device identifiers, and other tracking technologies.

The Framework was developed by the IAB Europe in collaboration with organizations and professionals in the digital advertising industry. It provides transparency to consumers about how, and by whom, their personal data is processed. It also provides users the opportunity to select exact terms. Moreover, the Framework enables CAKE as a vendor engaged in programmatic advertising to highlight our transparency and consent status to our partners which allows us to lawfully process personal data for online advertising and related purposes. 

 To learn more about CAKE’s consumer privacy and data protection initiatives, visit the following resources:

• CAKE achieves TYPE 2 SOC 2 certification and completes CCPA compliance readiness
• Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0 (ITP) – how will this impact you?
• Google Chrome 80 update – Everything you need to know as a performance marketer
• CAKE best practices for accurate measurement (without cookie tracking)
• CAKE GDPR roadmap

The post CAKE joins the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework appeared first on CAKE.

From Constellation Software’s acquisition of TUNE, to our customers combining CAKE solutions to increase revenue opportunities, and the collective accomplishments of our customer base, we advanced forward together. 

Industry expansion: CAKE and TUNE joined forces

It was an exciting year for our team and customers as Constellation Software’s acquisition of former CAKE competitor, TUNE, brought together two long-time industry pillars in the performance marketing industry. The acquisition marked a new era of expansion that fuels our customer’s growth by opening up access to core benefits provided by both companies. 

In addition to leveraging CAKE’s affiliate marketing, lead distribution, and multichannel marketing solutions, our customers can also explore TUNE’s unique benefits, including their advanced knowledge in mobile tracking and a proprietary partner payment solution. 

Revenue expansion: Customers explored additional growth opportunities

Even in a year of change, one thing remained the same. Performance marketers excel at adapting. With the impact of COVID-19 causing a wave of global economic changes, CAKE customers were resilient and in many cases even expanded their revenue opportunities. 

For instance, the combined use of CAKE’s affiliate marketing and lead distribution solutions is up 50 percent from 2019. Integrating lead distribution and affiliate programs on a single platform just makes sense, as it enables customers to unlock new opportunities to monetize leads for additional revenue, plus provides access to greater opportunities for their partners.

Continued expansion: Customers drove progress through increased engagement

CAKE customers continue to be inspirations with the different, resourceful ways they pursued growth – such as launching fresh campaigns and offers, building new partnerships, plus exploring additional vertical markets and other ways of increasing revenue. 

The infographic below highlights the collective accomplishments of our incredible customer community in 2020.

The post CAKE 2020 Year In Review appeared first on CAKE.

To support your efforts to build an effective fraud management process, we look at several CAKE features that will help ensure your acquired sales are authentic, valid, and profitable. As you get serious about identifying and stopping fraud, you’ll not only protect revenue, but you’ll also build trust that leads to long-term, lucrative relationships with your advertisers and affiliates.

What is affiliate fraud?

Affiliate fraud can take many forms, but in all cases, you’re dealing with an affiliate stealing attribution on a conversion that wasn’t generated by them so they can receive payment. As the network or advertiser, you end up paying for what should have been an organic conversion or a conversion generated by a different source.

Because CAKE collects data on such a granular level and gives you ongoing transparency into that data, we’re able to arm you with powerful tools that expose fraudulent activity and notify you of suspicious traffic patterns and affiliate/campaign behavior.

(Note: all of the features we provide to help you combat fraud are native to the product and included for all CAKE users.)

Use CAKE to identify affiliate fraud in real-time

These features help you capture, monitor, and analyze granular data about clicks and conversions so you can identify fraudulent traffic in real-time.

Time-to-conversion thresholds

Time-to-conversion thresholds allow you to track and pay out on only the conversions that happen outside of the click-to-conversion time threshold. For example, you might not want to track conversions that happen within 30 seconds of the click because those are likely to indicate bot traffic and affiliate fraud.

Since the time it takes a consumer to complete the desired action varies for offers across various verticals and form types, you can set the time-to-conversion threshold on a per offer basis with CAKE.

Referrer reporting

There are two CAKE reporting features to help you identify questionable patterns in real-time: the Referrer Report and the Pixel Log.

CAKE’s Referrer Report allows you to see where click traffic is coming from and validate the traffic performance by each click referrer. This type of report can be leveraged to pinpoint spam traffic, uncover new or unknown traffic sources, and measure high-and low-performing referring websites. For example, it may reveal an abnormally high conversion rate from certain referrers that could indicate fraud. You can analyze the referrer report on multiple levels: by advertiser, offer, campaign, affiliate, and even sub-affiliate.

The Pixel Log shows all incoming CAKE conversion pixel requests from your advertisers across your offers and allows you to view the referrer URL and IP address of browser (HTML) conversion pixels, and the IP address of server pixels (Postback URLs). The Pixel Log can help detect affiliate fraud by showing potential patterns of IP addresses of bad actors. A Pixel Log can identify the threat of automated systems attempting to create conversions using fake information. Here’s what to look out for:

• All browser-based conversion pixels should display the Referrer URL—the thank-you page URL the pixel is placed on. If you’re seeing incoming browser pixel requests without a Referrer URL, this is likely an indication of fraud because the Referrer is either being masked by an affiliate or the affiliate is “force firing” (faking) the conversion pixel.
• All server requests (Postback URLs) should have the same IP as your advertiser’s server. (You’ll likely have one IP per advertiser but your advertiser can confirm their server IP(s) with you). If you’re seeing Postback URLs for the same advertiser or offer coming from multiple IP addresses, this is likely an indication of fraud as the requests might be coming from a browser or a server that does not belong to your advertiser.

It’s good practice to review these two reports on a monthly basis—when you’re doing your month-end closing/reconciliation, and before you pay out affiliates on commissions owed.

Conversions from whitelisted IP’s only

If you are using server-to-server tracking with Postback URLs, you can whitelist your Advertiser’s IP address(es) that will be sending the Postback URL to CAKE. This ensures that you track and pay out on only conversions from the whitelisted IP address(es). Any conversion requests coming from other IP addresses will be ignored, preventing fraudulent conversions.

Time-sensitive alerts

To help you quickly catch fraudulent activity and stop it at the source, CAKE enables you to set notifications for excessive clicks, conversions, duplicate click IPs, or click-to-conversion ratios within a selected time period.

Use CAKE to block affiliate fraud

Once you’ve identified affiliate fraud, for example, if you’ve identified fraudulent activity coming from a certain Referrer URL or IP address(es), you can set up Rules Targeting on the Referrer level or IP Blacklisting on your Offer to block this traffic from reaching the Offer’s landing page. This will ensure you do not send or pay for unwanted traffic to your Advertiser and that your campaign performance is clean and accurate.

Use third-party integrations with CAKE to prevent affiliate fraud

To further extend your fraud management practices, you can also integrate third-party fraud prevention tools like ForensiQ and Anura. These integration partners provide real-time click and conversion scoring based on their proprietary fraud detection algorithms to CAKE, ensuring you can take immediate action to control campaign traffic that appears to be fraudulent.

With the intelligence provided by third-party integrations coupled with CAKE’s traffic control capabilities like Rules Targeting and IP Blacklisting, you can create your own rules for blocking or redirecting traffic at the campaign level.

To learn more about affiliate fraud detection and prevention in CAKE, visit our Knowledge Base here.

The post Using CAKE Features to Find and Stop Affiliate Fraud appeared first on CAKE.

What happened

AWS is the largest cloud-computing services and infrastructure provider, holding 45 percent of the global market in 2019. The Nov. 25 outage left some businesses offline entirely and prevented consumers from accessing services. Roku, iRobot’s Roomba app, Amazon-owned Ring security service, Target-owned Shipt, transportation services like the New York City Subway, and online publications like The Washington Post were among the many AWS customers who suffered outages or encumbered services. 

As an AWS customer, CAKE was also directly impacted by the outage. AWS, having maintained reliable service for many years, clearly knows what it is doing. However, no company or technology platform is immune to problems. At CAKE we plan for this. Preparing for this type of catastrophic event is a key factor in our platform design and architecture decisions. As a result, a portion of our customers experienced only minimal disruption compared to many other companies that faced hours of inoperability.  

CAKE’s response – A proactive approach by design

CAKE’s regional-resiliency model protected our customers, despite the fact that AWS’ largest, most populous region (and likewise, CAKE’s most populous service region) was inoperable. This model hosts each customer’s data in disparate regions in an “active” state, that provides immediately available up-to-date hosting and access to the client system in multiple regions around the world. The extensive time and resources we’ve put into this powerful architectectural design goes beyond the hardware-redundancy model many businesses employ. Rather than simply protecting a single hardware failure, it also provides protection against the effects of regional disruptions such as natural disasters, war, power failures, and system outages of major internet backbones, plus other types of regional catastrophes. In practice, this design gives CAKE the ability to quickly mitigate regional problems and protect our customers’ business by shifting traffic and services for all clients to other global regions in near real-time.

In many cases, these protective actions, which include shifting traffic, happen automatically based on event-triggers and alarms. At CAKE we have hundreds of predetermined triggers to avoid any disruption to our customers’ business. Our extensive monitoring systems will automatically shift traffic or scale up infrastructure in response to errors, increases in latency, or system resource pressure. However, in some scenarios there are certain actions that require manual intervention, either because they have not yet been automated or due to the services, which our event-triggers rely on, being down. At CAKE, we have measures in place to proactively intercede in the event that manual intervention is required. Our clients benefit from the 24/7 team of Live Operations (LiveOps) engineers that actively monitor our platform and respond in real-time to any potential threats or issues that could interfere with our infrastructure.

This scenario played out on Wednesday, and due to the forward-thinking vision and design of our platform, and the effective action of our LiveOps team; only a portion of customers were impacted by the AWS outage and the resulting impact was minimal. Additionally, when the traffic was moved to other regions, the LiveOps team was able to respond to the new infrastructure demand in those regions quickly by scaling our system accordingly within minutes.

I’m extremely proud of our CAKE team. Their deep knowledge and technical vision consistently deliver revenue-driving benefits to our customers. This past week’s large scale outage is a prime example of our CAKE team’s efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation. While others flatlined, CAKE kept going by taking action to quickly mitigate the issue and maintain up-time for our clients’ businesses.

To learn more about CAKE’s business and technology stability, visit our blog “How to Prepare for Growth by Relying on Stable Technology,” here.

The post How CAKE was Put to the Test and Passed – The AWS Outage appeared first on CAKE.

If you’re questioning the limitations of your affiliate network software, it may be time to consider making a change. A different solution could help you generate additional revenue and hit other growth business goals. In this post, we share six positive signs to help you identify if you are using the right affiliate network software, as well as some of the benefits a modern affiliate network platform can deliver for stronger ROI and continued growth.

The right affiliate network solution provider should:

1. Commit to evolving privacy and security requirements

Consumer privacy and security requirements are more important than ever, and you should feel confident your provider has you covered. When these requirements are not managed well, the results can negatively impact a brand and lead to substantial fines. Both are convincing reasons to confirm your provider is up to date on the latest consumer privacy evolvements and has taken the appropriate steps towards compliance.

With affiliate marketing programs, another layer of complexity is added when it comes to data collection and privacy. Vast amounts of data are collected and shared among the highly interdependent affiliate marketing ecosystem of advertisers, networks, and affiliates. These partners can have varied approaches to handling personally identifiable information (PII) for consumers. This intricate network with lots of data, plus multiple updates in consumer privacy laws, requires a serious commitment to consumer privacy and privacy requirements.

Confirm with your provider what protocols they have in place to adhere to privacy advancements such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Also, confirm that they have the proper security protocols in place to protect consumer data such as Type 1 Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 compliance and Type 2 SOC 2.

2. Enable additional revenue opportunities for your business

Consider a platform that offers multiple marketing capabilities on a single platform.

For example, a natural extension to an existing affiliate marketing program that can provide a new revenue stream is lead distribution. With lead distribution, you can get more value out of campaign traffic by passing along qualified lead data to advertisers.

Lead distribution is a process that involves capturing, validating, and distributing leads to buyers that can be sold for a premium price across multiple verticals. Instead of sending just traffic to the advertiser, affiliate marketers can also send qualified leads to the advertiser at a higher selling price than a typical CPA. Lead distribution also expands the playing field for affiliate marketers by introducing them to more verticals. This allows them to grow their network of partners to also include lead buyers looking to purchase highly qualified leads.

Marketers who have extended their affiliate marketing program with lead distribution on a single platform have proven to unveil new opportunities to monetize leads beyond what’s possible with affiliate click traffic alone.

3. Ensure long-term viability

Technology performance is key. However, you also need a provider that will be around for the long run. With new affiliate technology providers recently entering the affiliate marketing space, the fact is that many have limited experience and the industry is evolving with consolidations.

If your provider were to suddenly be unavailable, consider the consequences. This could leave your company with a limited amount of time to salvage all data, processes, and other things from this particular provider. It could also mean a pause in your company’s own operations, which would be devastating for your business and reputation

To avert such a fallout, partner with a stable affiliate network technology provider. Ways to check on a provider’s viability for the long-term include researching the company’s history, including investments and other financial information.

4. Offer more than the lowest price

Just because a solution is cheaper than the competition, doesn’t equal quality or that the platform provides the opportunity to grow.

An affiliate marketing software technology is not a solution where each offering is identical.

If at first your affiliate marketing technology provider is considered to be a steal, consider what corners they might be cutting to reduce prices. Of course, you have a budget to keep in mind, but when you’re presented with a cheaper provider and a more expensive proactive provider, don’t immediately discount the later based on flat costs. If you’re looking to scale your affiliate marketing program remember to think about which technology will best support your growing business.

5. Deliver technology poised to help you scale

One of the most important questions to consider is if your affiliate network software supports incremental revenue growth. If the answer is no or you’re unsure, this might mean you’ve outgrown your current system.

Robust affiliate network technology empowers business growth by seamlessly handling increasing traffic volumes without compromising the accuracy of data. It also proactively procures additional hardware which automatically shifts with traffic loads. As a result, you can feel confident to scale a performance marketing program to include additional verticals, new regions, partner network growth, and the flexibility to experiment with different campaign types (campaigns that could quickly outgrow your current platform’s load volumes).

Furthermore, stable and reliable technology enables you to enhance performance marketing programs and focus your efforts on building long-term profitable relationships, which are the core of a healthy affiliate marketing ecosystem.

6. Equip you with superior levels of support

A software provider should deliver more than just a set of product features. Ideally, they are a partner that supports you on multiple levels — from day-to-day needs, to long-term company goals. They are there when things need to be fixed or optimized. They are there to explain how to leverage new features. They help you get onboarded and ultimately, help your business scale.

The level of customer service to expect from a top affiliate network software provider should also include:

1. • A customer-first approach with processes in place that facilitate a true partnership, such as quarterly business reviews and a feedback loop to help guide the product roadmap
   • Access to use cases on how others have successfully tackled issues. This allows you to take what others have learned and apply best practices
   • Strong ratings in customer satisfaction surveys, such as Net Promoter Scores, indicate an increased level of customer loyalty
   • Validation from customers in customer review sites such as G2 Crowd and Capterra
   • 24/7 phone, email, and ticket support, plus a robust Knowledge Base and community forum for customers to tap into

If you are missing anything on this list, it’s time to start thinking about what matters most to you with your affiliate network software. There are viable options available to upgrade your system for scalability, reliability, and ultimately increased revenue opportunities.

If you are looking to try out a new affiliate network software, get a free, 30-days trial of CAKE by signing up here.

The post 6 Signs to Know if You’re Using the Right Affiliate Network Software to Fuel Growth appeared first on CAKE.

CAKE lead statuses bridge this gap, delivering closed-loop reporting that helps you drive higher quality leads for buyers.

What is Closed-loop Reporting?

Closed-loop reporting enables your buyers to inform you of how the leads they’ve purchased from you are processing through their sales funnel.

It answers questions such as:

• Did the lead go dark?
• Could the buyer not get a hold of the consumer even though the contact info was valid?
• Was the consumer not as qualified as the form fill made it seem?
• Did they end up becoming a customer?

Closed-loop Reporting with CAKE

CAKE’s integrated performance marketing platform has the ability to handle both affiliate marketing and lead generation campaigns. Because it manages both supply and demand partners and combines all data points in one platform, it excels at closed-loop measurement.

CAKE delivers an end-to-end view into the lead acquisition funnel, including:

• Where/who the lead was acquired from
• Where the lead was sold to
• How much it was sold for
• If it was later returned for a certain reason
• If the lead buyer sent any additional information about the lead post-sale

All of these insights are essential in shaping and refining your lead acquisition strategy. When you know what’s happening at each step of the funnel, you can figure out what’s working well (and what’s not!), and optimize your acquisition strategy for increased ROI.

CAKE’s Lead Status Reporting

To take advantage of closed-loop reporting and get detailed insights into lead quality, you can use CAKE’s Lead Status feature to create custom lead statuses specific to the vertical you are generating leads for.

For example, let’s look at the mortgage sector of financial services. Once you sell a lead to a buyer, such as a first-time homebuyer to a mortgage lender, the buyer will be able to use CAKE’s Lead Update API to provide you with real-time updates on leads, such as the status of the loan application and when it’s in underwriting.

This information will help you assess the quality of your leads. Certain leads may not be qualified to buy based on the type of loan they were looking for. Others may move through the funnel more quickly and be more likely to fund, making them more profitable leads to focus on.

You may also learn that your high volume affiliate sources aren’t the ones generating the highest revenue for your lead buyers, maybe it’s the lower volume niche affiliates and publishers.

With closed-loop reporting and insight into the entire process—from traffic sources to campaign messaging to form fills—you’re in a better position to optimize the complete funnel.

CAKE also gives you the flexibility to create additional lead statuses so you can more easily work with whatever systems and processes your buyer has in place.

To learn more about how to enable lead status tracking and reporting in CAKE, check out the knowledge base article or reach out to your Account Manager.

The post Using Lead Statuses in CAKE for Closed-Loop Reporting appeared first on CAKE.

The following highlights companies, from a broad range of vertical industries across the globe, that continue to achieve growth while leveraging CAKE to meet their affiliate marketing and lead distribution needs.

So, if you’re looking to generate more revenue with your performance marketing programs, check out how these organizations leveraged CAKE to increase quality network traffic, strengthen partner relationships, streamline efficiencies, and more.

Revenue Ads

Online marketing agency and performance marketing network boosts traffic quality by 20 percent with CAKE

Revenue Ads is a specialized global media agency dedicated to their clients’ interests and the pursuit of their goals. Working on a global scale, Revenue Ads helps advertisers distribute their performance marketing campaigns and gives its networks of affiliates the tools and support they need to be successful.

“Since making the switch to CAKE, we have been able to eliminate traffic that is not backing out. As a result, our traffic quality has increased and our advertiser relations have grown even stronger.”

Matt Stowe, President

Business impact:

• Increased network traffic quality by 20 percent
• Improved network credibility
• Strengthened ROI for advertisers and increased profitability for affiliates
• Reduced cost and improved business success

Atlantic Coast Media Group

Marketer of premium beauty products manages, measures, and optimizes affiliate campaigns for multiple global brands on CAKE’s performance marketing platform

Atlantic Coast Media Group (ACMG) develops and markets a broad range of iconic beauty products that deliver results for more than 10 million customers worldwide. A pioneer in 360 degree marketing since 2005, ACMG uses a variety of approaches to engage with consumers and increase awareness and loyalty for its brands, which include Hydroxatone, Keranique, Luminique, and Miracle Skin Transformer.

“Leveraging CAKE has allowed us to get richer and more granular insight into the performance of our affiliate program,” “Our previous tracking solution lacked accuracy and wasn’t able to capture many of the precise metrics that we needed. With CAKE, we can drill down into each affiliate-driven transaction and see what device was used, which browser, the type of credit card, and more. This really helps us get a more complete picture of what works and what doesn’t, and better predict the lifetime value of the customers that our affiliates are funneling to our brands.”

Atlantic Coast Media Group

Business impact:

• Improved real-time decision-making
• More accurate insight into affiliate program performance
• Predictive intelligence on lifetime customer value

CashKaro

CashKaro uses CAKE to manage and measure performance of affiliate campaigns for a growing list of ecommerce partners

Based in India, CashKaro is India’s largest cashback and coupons site. With more than two million registered users, CashKaro is a one-stop destination for online savings, serving as an affiliate partner to 1,500+ ecommerce providers – including sites like Amazon.in, Flipkart, Paytm, etc. CashKaro earns commissions in exchange for promoting offers and products. A portion of the commissions is then shared with the site’s members in the form of cashback. CashKaro’s aim is to drive high-quality traffic to its partners’ ecommerce sites and to offer its millions of members coupons and savings on a wide range of products.

“CAKE gives us the insight and capabilities required to optimize each and every campaign we are running and ultimately drive maximum return on adspend for our clients and more savings for our members.”

Venera Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founder

Business impact:

• Improved tracking accuracy
• Insights that drive better decisions
• Easy management of multiple ecommerce partner relationships
• Improved traffic quality for advertiser clients and higher returns for site members

Surge Logics

Growing digital advertising agency boosts ROI by integrating its affiliate marketing and lead distribution on a centralized platform

Surge Logics is a full-service digital advertising agency, with a call center that specializes in lead generation, inbound and outbound call intake, e-retainer services, landing-page optimization, and the development of marketing strategies.

“By streamlining our affiliate and lead distribution programs on CAKE, we are armed with significantly better insights into campaign performance and the ability to maximize profitability. This empowers us to provide our clients with the best leads at the best prices, helping them drive and expand their businesses.”

Carter Matzinger, President

Business impact:

• Improved ROI
• Data-driven decision making
• Increased efficiencies, saving valuable resources and time
• Maximized profitability with intelligent lead monetization

To get the full scoop on our affiliate marketing success stories visit our resource center here. Ready to get started with CAKE? Reach out to our team.

The post CAKE – Affiliate Marketing Success Stories appeared first on CAKE.

To maintain a competitive advantage as a network, you need to keep your affiliate partners happy. And one way to do that is to incentivize them with increased affiliate commissions for high-quality, high-volume traffic.

However, when you’re managing a large number of affiliates and campaigns, it can be difficult to keep up with all the commission changes. And if the change doesn’t go into effect, your affiliate won’t be pleased. You’ll be playing catch-up with end-of-month reconciliations or trying to make good on the error.

To help you stay ahead of changes and optimize your profit margins, CAKE provides three commission management features.

Affiliate Commission Tiers

This feature enables you to create custom tiers —bronze, silver, and gold— and assign each affiliate to a tier and associated commission. When an admin user of CAKE assigns a campaign to an affiliate or the affiliate applies for a campaign in the Affiliate Portal, CAKE ensures they receive the appropriate commission for the offer based on their designated affiliate tier.

For example, if you have a new affiliate for a holiday shopping offer, you may assign them to the bronze affiliate (1 percent revenue share), then move them up to silver (3 percent rev share) or eventually gold (5 percent rev share) as they demonstrate improved performance over time.

Volume-Based Tiers

This feature enables you to create different commission tiers based on the quantity of traffic an affiliate sends to an offer.

For example, if you are trying to incentivize affiliates to send in a large volume of clicks or conversions to their campaign, you can set up one commission amount for conversions 1-100 (paid at $1.00 Cost per Acquisition/CPA), another for conversions 101-250 (paid out at $1.50 CPA), and another for conversions 251-500 (paid out at $2.00 CPA.)

Future-Dated Commissions

This feature enables you to easily manage commission changes owed to your affiliate(s) by setting a date for a commission change to occur.

For example, if you have negotiated a commission increase on your offer that will go into effect on the first of the month, you can configure that future-dated commission change within CAKE. This is especially helpful when the first of the month falls on a weekend; instead of having to remember to make the change on a Saturday or Sunday, or go back and update commissions for those conversions that came in after the agreed-upon date, you can be confident the change will go into effect on the date you set.

For more information about how CAKE’s advanced features will help fuel your competitive advantage as a network, check out:

• Using Volume-Based Tiers to Manage Campaign Payouts

• Using CAKE’s Voucher Codes for Clickless Tracking

• How to Customize Sub ID Payouts to Reward Partners  

If you’re a CAKE customer looking for more information on managing affiliate commissions, please visit our Knowledge Base or reach out to our Support Team.

If you’re interested in learning more about CAKE, please contact us.

The post 3 CAKE Features to Easily Manage Affiliate Commissions appeared first on CAKE.

With verticals such as healthcare, auto, legal, finance, and more, lead buyers across multiple industries are looking to purchase high-quality leads that result in new customers. For lead sellers, this presents the opportunity to drive qualified traffic that results in top-tier leads that can be sold for a premium. 

From generating and validating leads to sourcing buyers and selling leads, lead distribution involves a lot of moving parts, however, that’s where automation comes in. With lead distribution, it ultimately boils down to –  how to sell leads for the highest possible prices – while ensuring you make a profit and your buyers are satisfied.  

This blog answers the most frequently asked questions our team receives from both prospects and customers when determining how to sell leads and optimize their lead distribution program to maximize profit.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How do I sell leads to multiple buyers? 
• How do I find lead buyers?
• How do I generate leads?
• What is ping post and how do I leverage it to sell leads for the highest price?
• What are best practices for managing leads?
• How do I track lead status after the lead has been sold?
• How do I avoid selling duplicate leads to my buyers?
• How do I control and improve lead quality?

How do I sell leads to multiple buyers? 

Of course, you want to sell your leads for the highest possible price, while simultaneously keeping your lead buyers happy. Fortunately, you can accomplish both. First, you must identify how to sell leads based on buyer demand. Below are the three main lead selling approaches:

• Exclusive – If a buyer contract indicates they want exclusive rights to a lead, then leads that go to this buyer cannot be sold to any other buyers. 
• Multi-sell – In this model, leads selling to one buyer, also must sell to another buyer as well. If there is not an additional buyer, then the lead will not sell. 
• Hybrid – This approach allows a buyer to participate in both multi-sell and exclusive (if no multi-sell partner(s) are available). This furthers the likelihood that a lead will be sold if it’s the only eligible buyer or if it can also be added in a multi-sell situation, which will earn the client even more money.

Below is an example of bidding in action. In this scenario, the lead seller would likely sell the lead to both buyer 2 and buyer 3, because combined the final sale price would be $11, versus an exclusive sale of $10 to buyer 1. Keep in mind that buyers are typically willing to pay more for exclusive deals. However, for a multi-sell approach, bidding should go to the highest paying buyers so you are maximizing your profit. 

• Buyer 1 (Exclusive) – $10
• Buyer 2 (Multi-sell) – $5
• Buyer 3 (Multi-sell) – $6

A robust lead distribution software should allow you to monetize lead traffic through advanced selling tools such as dynamic lead prices and the setup of a ping tree in the order you want. A ping tree is a clients list of eligible buyers on each lead sale attempt. A ping tree allows lead sellers to set up a workflow based on buyer rank, round-robin functionality, weighted prices, pre-defined buyer volumes, and more.

For instance, this is how to sell leads with a ping tree based on buyer rank as the main criteria. Typically you leverage buyer rank when you favor one buyer over the other, or perhaps when you are trying to grow that relationship and are willing to make less money on the initial sale for a long-term partnership. In this example, buyer 1 would receive the lead sale because the seller has prioritized a rank over price within their ping tree.

• Buyer 1 (Exclusive and 1st rank) – $10
• Buyer 2 (Exclusive and 2nd rank) – $11
• Buyer 3 (Exclusive and 3rd rank) – $12

How do I find lead buyers?

Establishing and maintaining relationships are key for success with lead distribution. Here are a few recommended approaches for finding lead buyers.

• Attend trade shows – A great way to meet potential partners is for you to attend industry trade shows such as LeadsCon and Lead Generation World, premiere events with opportunities to network and learn from top experts in performance marketing. Also, consider attending events specific to your target vertical industries. 
• Ask for referrals – If you are already using a lead distribution software, don’t hesitate to work with your contact to get introductions. They are already working with a large base of both lead generators/sellers and buyers and are invested in helping their customers succeed. At the core, lead distribution is built on nurturing partnerships that benefit both sellers and buyers.
• Get creative – Conduct searches that look for vertical-specific lead buyers and connect with them directly. For example, perhaps you have generated qualified leads looking for help with debt settlement. Reach out to debt settlement companies directly by calling or filling out their form and letting them know you have qualified leads available for purchase. 
• Use your own network – To start forming connections search for “lead buyer and seller” groups directly on professional platforms like LinkedIn. Consider adding in vertical language or using longer-tail terms to the searches as well. For example, “lead buyers and sellers debt,” and the results will return groups specific to the finance vertical.

How do I generate leads?

• Leverage social media – Lead generation companies fill their lead funnel using social media platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Youtube. Through paid social media, lead generators can launch segmented campaigns that target the right type of potential customer that fit the purchase criteria of their buyers.
• Engage affiliate partners – Forward-thinking lead generation networks drive traffic to landing pages through affiliate marketing. Typically, affiliate marketing campaigns set commissions based on a pay-for-performance model, thus eliminating the need to invest marketing dollars without guaranteeing returns. The affiliate channel continues to grow in popularity, in fact 90 percent of advertisers consider it essential to their marketing strategy. 

Quick tip – If you are hosting the landing page, ensure your form is well optimized to capture the most conversions. Include a powerful call-to-action (CTA) that is complemented by an aesthetically pleasing design. Additionally, only include the form fields you actually need. The more optimized your landing page and forms are the more fruitful your lead generation efforts will be. Companies like FlipForms take the guesswork out of landing pages and forms by combining conditional logic with tailored landing pages to drive more conversions.

What is ping post and how do I leverage it to sell leads for the highest price?

To sell leads for the highest price, ping post provides a mutually beneficial situation. You make the desired profit margin, while your buyer is satisfied because they set the price. Here’s how it works. The ping post functionality is ideally set up to give buyers a preview of the lead details from a form submission (e.g. lead’s zip code, salary range, case notes, etc.) without providing contact information. This allows buyers to indicate the amount they’re willing to pay for each lead depending on its content and quality. If you decide to sell it to the buyer for their proposed amount, you can then post the full lead to the buyer. 

For example, on the ping, your lead distribution software will gather the dynamic bid prices from each eligible buyer after viewing the lead preview. On the post, it will attempt to sell the lead to the buyer who responded with the highest ping bid first.

• Buyer 1 (Exclusive) – $7 ping
• Buyer 2 (Exclusive) – $8 ping
• Buyer 3 (Exclusive) – $5 ping
• Buyer 4 (Exclusive) – Rejected the initial ping as the lead preview did not meet their criteria.

What are best practices for managing leads?

Here are four best practices for both you and your buyers to follow:

• Ensure data security and privacy – With lead distribution, both you and your lead buyers are dealing with consumers personally identifiable information (PII). With an ongoing commitment to consumer privacy, most notably with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), all partners must comply with regulations to avoid fines and ensure the integrity of data collection and distribution protocols. You can implement tools like Jornaya and Trusted Form to further enhance your compliance efforts.
• Work in real-time – On average, prospects are filling out three to five lead forms a day during their online searches. This translates into multiple buyers vying for the opportunity to win each lead over as a customer. As the lead generator, using automated lead distribution software to capture, validate, and distribute leads to the right buyer results in an 87 percent higher conversion rate. On the flip side, once the lead is routed to the buyer, they need to work fast. 27.5 percent of leads will go with the company that responds first, plus if you wait to call a lead more than five minutes after the lead submission, there is a 46 percent lower qualification rate. 
• Qualify leads – With many verticals like legal for example, where buyers are paying a premium for leads, quality is key. High-quality leads result in more sales for your buyers and fewer lead returns to you. To properly qualify leads, utilize call centers that can verify the identity of the lead submission.  
• Measure lead sources – Gather a holistic snapshot of the lead acquisition funnel by gathering campaign tracking parameters so that you and your partners can collectively identify the best performing lead sources. Combining tracking parameters with anecdotal buyer feedback, you can piece together the original lead acquisition source, how much it sold for, and lead quality to determine the true effectiveness of your spend. Equipped with these insights, you can spend more on high-performing lead sources to fill your buyers’ buckets.

How do I track lead status after the lead has been sold?

This is a two-part answer that focuses on two audiences – you and your buyers – and the lead distribution technologies leveraged by both parties. Your technology should be able to label leads and have manual or automated capabilities to update those labels (For example, with CAKE there is an Admin API if the network wants to do it or the buyer API if the buyer wants to do it). On the other side, a buyer’s system should be able to report a lead sale in real-time. If not, their responses should include some sort of status. At a minimum, they should have a portal where you can see leads progress through different statuses. For those tech savvy buyers, they should have an API that pushes out lead status updates, which you can then connect via API to get those updates back into your lead distribution system.

How do I avoid selling duplicate leads to my buyers?

A lead distribution software should have the option to identify a duplicate email address or phone number within a specific time-frame. This will ensure that the leads you are selling to buyers are not duplicates and will maintain the integrity of the quality you deliver to your buyers. 

How do I control and improve lead quality?

To control and improve lead quality there are two steps you can take:

• Lead Validation – This is a vital step that takes place before selling leads to your buyer to mitigate returned leads and ensures they are not coming from fraudulent traffic sources. Your lead distribution software should have built-in validation leveraging third-party tools like Xverify, Neustar, or eHawk that focus purely on lead validation.
• Lead Enrichment – This ensures you have the quality leads to drive the highest revenue per lead to maximize probability. For most forms a maximum of three-five fields is ideal to avoid deterring individuals from providing their information. In some scenarios, you may not receive all of the information you need regarding the individual from the fields, so you can use third-party enrichment tools or a lead-enrichment process such as a call center, that provides additional information about the lead. When it comes to lead enrichment, it really depends on what information you are not collecting on the form that you actually require to guarantee the highest sale price. In some scenarios, you may need to leverage lead enrichment to provide additional criteria such as a credit score or driver’s license. 

Let’s look at the lending vertical where prospective leads are asked for their credit ratings in terms of poor, fair, good, and excellent. On the backend, the lead seller might choose to run credit checks to secure the actual credit score numbers to improve the overall lead credibility and make them more desirable for buyers to purchase.

This video covers best practices for validating and enriching leads.

To learn more about launching and growing a lead distribution program, download our latest guide here. 

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