Optimizing campaign performance depends on properly identifying which campaigns and partners are performing well. CAKE enables affiliate marketers to track and measure granular data points about partner performance using Sub ID click tracking parameters. With this knowledge, you’ll be in a position to do more of what is working best, reward your partners with higher payouts for better campaign performance, and increase profits.

Let’s look at how to do this.
 

Use Sub IDs to track affiliate and sub-affiliate performance

In campaign analytics, it’s possible to measure the source (such as your affiliate or media source), the campaign, and other information about the ad — but typically, measurement stops there. CAKE provides another level of transparency, enabling advertisers and affiliate networks to track and measure five additional parameters through “Sub IDs.” The most common use of a Sub ID is for a sub-affiliate.

Advertisers and affiliate networks work with affiliates, and those affiliates have partners of their own, called sub-affiliates.

It’s not enough to only know how the affiliates are performing. Advertisers and networks need insight into sub-affiliate traffic quality and quantity.

When advertisers have greater transparency into the performance of affiliates and sub-affiliates, they are better able to increase campaign budgets and in turn, provide more revenue opportunities for their partners.

Optimizing performance and rewarding partners

Once you have insight into the different layers, then you can incentivize partners — affiliate networks or sub-affiliates — to do more of what’s working well.

The quality and quantity of campaign traffic (clicks and conversions) can vary greatly depending on the affiliate and sub-affiliate traffic source. With this in mind, it doesn’t make sense to pay all affiliates the same amount. Instead, the advertiser and network need to be able to determine payouts specific to the traffic source. For example:

• Affiliate Joe might get a $3.00 CPA because he sends a lot of high-quality traffic (conversions) with low return rates and zero fraud.
• Affiliate Rob might get a lower CPA of $2.00 because he sends an average amount of traffic with a higher fraud or return rate than top-tier affiliate partners.

Drilling down further, you can use CAKE Sub IDs to customize different payout amounts for sub-affiliates. This incentivizes affiliate partners to push for higher quality traffic and motivates sub-affiliates to want to work with a particular advertiser or network. It’s a win-win.

For instance, both Affiliate Joe and Affiliate Rob might work with a handful of sub-affiliate partners that drive exceptional traffic to the advertiser. To incentivize those sub-affiliates to drive even more traffic, the advertiser and/or network can increase the payout to those specific sub-affiliates. In this case, Affiliate Joe may now get a $3.50 CPA when the traffic comes from Sub-Affiliate Lisa, which means he can afford to pay Sub-Affiliate Lisa a higher CPA as well.

Using Directed Campaigns in CAKE to manage Sub ID payouts

CAKE enables advertisers and networks to customize Sub ID payouts through our Directed Campaigns feature. Directed Campaigns in CAKE allow you to uniquely manage commissions, caps, and affiliate pixels specific to your Sub ID, without having to distribute additional tracking links to your affiliate. The rules to manage these payouts are handled within CAKE, making it fast and easy to optimize campaigns and increase revenues.

To learn more about how to pay out an affiliate based on Sub ID traffic in CAKE leveraging Directed Campaigns, watch our video tutorial.

Other content you might be interested in:

• Vlog: How to Control and Improve Lead Quality
• Blog: How to Run a Successful Lead Generation Program on CAKE
• Blog: How to Attribute Conversions Using CAKE’s Fingerprint Tracking