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What exactly is DirectTrack®
DirectTrack is a software platform and network reach solution that allows merchants online to track affiliate relationships. DirectTrack® puts you directly in control of your affiliate/partner relationships, and gives you market reach. If you buy DirectTrack, you get a sound partner tracking platform and you get the reach of our
+ partners all in one.
partners all in one. You approve the partners that you want to approve and you pay your partners the way you want to pay them — No minimums, no restrictions, it's all completely up to YOU. DirectTrack is the product of over
years of work and it is used as the foundation of one of the leading Internet partner networks - DirectLeads®. DirectLeads® has been in operation since 1997 and has served hundreds of clients.
How much work is involved and how much control do I have over my DirectTrack system.
1. Setup your account
During the account setup process you use your DirectTrack® management interface to customize the email messages sent by the system to your partners; the look and feel of your signup page; your partner agreement; and other customizable parameters to operate your new private label copy of DirectTrack®.
2. Enroll and approve Partners
Potential partners enroll within your network by completing the signup form that will be located at: http://YOURDOMAIN.directtrack.com/affiliate_signup.html. Once they complete the form, their information is stored within your individual copy of the DirectTrack database. You then use the management interface to review and either approve or reject partner applicants. It's your network - you set the rules. You can also chose to publish your campaigns to the CrossPublication™ Advertising Network, and you will have the reach of our + partners, at no additional cost to you.
3. Create an advertising campaign
To create and launch a new campaign, the steps are:
- Complete the Add a Campaign Form
- Upload your banners and or text creative
- For lead and cost-per-sale campaigns, you will need to implement the lead tracking.
- Test the tracking
- Activate the campaign
- Notify your partners
- Chose to publish your campain to the DirectResponse Advertising Network for immediate reach.
It's really that easy! You have complete control. Not happy with the performance of one of your banners? No problem, simply login to the management interface and modify it. Getting more leads than you can handle? Again, no problem, simply login to the management interface and deactivate the campaign.
4. Track Your Results
DirectTrack keeps statistical information up-to-date in real-time so that you can monitor the performance of your campaigns and quickly make adjustments to those campaigns.
5. Pay your partners
The system keeps detailed records of the clicks, leads and sales generated by your partners. Periodically, you login to the management interface and process your payments for partners. The system computes how much they are owed based upon the choices you made when establishing the campaign and then tracks their payment status.
How are clicks tracked?
When a visitor to one of your partners sites or newsletters, clicks on one of your banner, text or html ads, the visitor is first redirected to your DirectTrack system, where the click is recorded within the database and assigned to the referring partner. DirectTrack also generates a cookie and sends it to the visitors browser. If the same visitor again clicks on one of your campaign links within the next 24 hours, no additional clicks are recorded. This assures you that the clicks you are receiving and therefore paying your partners for are reasonably unique visitors. You have complete control over the duration of the cookies, and you can set your own parameters.
How are leads tracked?
DirectTrack enables you to track leads by using a cookie/pixel system - where you can set the time length of the cookie to sit on the users computer, and thus track the lead, or you can use a 'Hosted Tracking' system, where we host the thank you page and 100% of the leads are tracked and given proper credit. Remember, if you use 'cookie' tracking, that users delete their cookies and this does cause lose of leads tracking. We provide to you the BEST of both worlds to give you the choice as to what works best for you!
Does your system support commissions based on sales?
Absolutely! You can setup a campaign as a cost-per-sale campaign and assign a commission percentage. You then add some simple code to your shopping cart to pass the gross amount of the sale to DirectTrack and the system takes care of crediting the partner with their commission.
Who owns the data collected by the system?
The data is YOUR data and owned by you!
How do my partners track their stats and get the code they need to promote my campaigns?
Each of your partners can login to your DirectTrack system by using their email address and their password. From this interface they can see your campaigns AND only YOUR campaigns! They can easily pull down the code they need to place within their websites to promote your campaigns, view their click, lead and sales statistics and track their earnings.
How safe is my data??
Your data is backed up each evening. We keep seven days of backups and you are free to download your data at any time. We recommend that you download your data at least weekly just to be extra cautious.
How reliable is your system?
The system powering DirectTrack is identical to the system used to power the DirectLeads® network! This system has supported the delivery of billions upon billions of ad impressions and millions upon millions of clicks since 1997. It is the result of over years of effort in building a reliable tracking system. Your DirectTrack system will be housed within the same data-center and use the same high availability Sun™ and EMC™ hardware that supports DirectLeads®.
Can we host DirectTrack on our servers?
We do not currently offer the ability to host DirectTrack outside of our own data center. The reason for this is it would cause us to drastically change our business model and the way we support our technology. Because we regularly update our software on a monthly basis, we have determined the support for systems outside of our environment would be very difficult to do.
How do we monitor for Fraud?
We take fraud very seriously. Since we have run our own affiliate network, we know first hand how to handle fraud and we’ve built tools into DirectTrack that we use to monitor and prevent fraud. There is a section called Fraud Management to help you define and search for fraud. We also have a handful of tips in the interface to help such as what to look for in affiliate applications.
Can you help promote my offers?
We have a couple options to assist. First, we can broker your campaign to our DirectLeads Affiliate Network where we would act as your Super affiliate and control our own smaller affiliates to promote your offers. We also power over 100 other advertising networks around the world, and through the CrossPublication interface you can build relationships with these other networks to become your Super affiliate.
What about technical support?
Every DirectTrack License includes 10 business days of installation/setup support and 72 hour response email support. Support for high priority issues is provided on a per incident basis for $120 per incident.
Do your offer training?
Yes. During your first month as a client, your Account Executive will educate you on setting your account and leaning how to use the system. Detailed users guides are also provided throughout the system. We also hold regular online training sessions where a DirectTrack profession will walk all clients through new features or basic training topics that have been requested. We use a web application to control what you are seeing on your browser.
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