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Where is a token tutorial? (19)

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Hi guys, i'm trying to learn how to use Voluum and its slowly starting to make sense to me.
One aspect i just can't get my head around is tokens.
subID1=C1={aff_id}, etc

https://help.trackrevenue.com/hc/en-...isers-#hitpath

They're all different for various networks and tracking software? WTF?

I'm sure there is a decent thread here on STM about this, although i'm having trouble sorting through all the noise.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

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Hey @tacoloco!

Don't worry, tokens were the most confusing part of AM/tracking for all of us when we started.

What I recommend is to start slowly, add 1 network and traffic source first, test if it works and try to make yourself comfortable.

After that, most of it is just about duplicating your existing sources/networks in the tracker and changing those small different parts.

One recent material that you can check out is the The 40-Day Newbie Tutorial - Intro and Index from @vortex and especially its Day 3: Setting Up Tracking

Tip: Useful website that contains lot of tokens in one place: https://trackingtokens.com/

If you have any concrete question feel free to ask, so we can point you in the right direction.

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Awesome - thanks so much Erik. I'll check out those links right now!

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Thanks Erik! And here are a couple more that should help:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Read-This-Now

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...by-Step-Voluum



Amy

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Thanks again for all the help guys. Each day Its slowly starting to make more sense than the previous day. Slowly.
The Voluum manual reads like a foreign language sometimes, but i'm getting there.

I'm following this tutorial: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...by-Step-Voluum

I can follow it alright and get a campaign up and running OK using Hitpath and Voluum, but i still don't understand everything 100%.

I'm OK up until step 4:

I don't understand where we get the values {campaign.id} & {clickid} from.

I think i understand the postback URL tokens, but don't understand how these apply to the affiliate link.

I'm trying to set up a campaign on Hitpath and Voluum and i'm stuck at this step - see a screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/PDLRQ

What am i missing out on here?

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There are some tokens that Voluum generates automatically on it's own, these are things that it can detect or they relate to something that is created in Voluum directly ... so when you create a campaign in voluum, it get's assigned an ID by voluum, same for landing page or offer. Every click that goes through voluum also get's labeled with an ID, that's the clickid ... etc

So by making these tokens part of an url, you're basically telling voluum to replace them with the IDs that it generated for those tokens.

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Matuloo has already explained about Voluum's tokens.

Regarding the screenshot: You don't need to put anything in the subid fields - you can just copy the affiliate link and manually append the tokens yourself. It's the same thing as filling out the subid fields before copying it.



Amy

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Thanks guys,
I'm slowly getting there... I understand what Matuloo explained above.
I understand that i don't have to use the interface from my screenshot and that i can just add this on myself.

What i don't understand is where i get these tokens from - {campaign.id} & {clickid}

Are they specific to the affiliate network? to the traffic source? Do i make them up myself?

What happens if i don't add any tokens on this step? Voluum won't collect data properly?

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Tracking is not an easy topic - all the links we've linked to above contain all the info you need to know, but you may need to read them multiple times before it will "click" for you. It took me over a year to truly understand how basic tracking works. I'll try to give you a really simple explanation below.

Simply put, there are 2 parts to each token: The token name, and the token value.

For example (using token names from your screenshot): In SubID1={campaign.id}, "SubID1" is the token name, and "{campaign.id}" is the token value.

Second thing you need to understand: Every time a link is triggered, there are 2 parties involved.

For example, when you take an affiliate link and add it to Voluum as a new offer along with tracking tokens - and then create a voluum campaign and run it - Voluum will trigger the offer link every time it sends a visitor to it. In this particular case, Voluum is the party triggering the link, and the affiliate network is the party whose link is being triggered.

Relevance? The token values need to be understood by the party triggering the link - i.e. Voluum in this case - because when the offer link is triggered Voluum needs to replace the token values with actual values. The token names, on the other hand, need to be understood by the party whole link is being triggered - i.e. the affiliate network in this case - because it will need to know which variable to store the token values under.

So - to emphasize: In the case of affiliate links / offer links, you need to get the token names from the affiliate network, and the token values from the tracker. You can't make them up, or neither party would be able to recognize them.

To further clarify: If you append SubID1={campaign.ID}&SubID2={clickid} to your affiliate link and save it into Voluum as an offer, every time Voluum triggers the link (by sending a visitor to the offer), Voluum would replace the token values with actual values. Let's say it triggers the offer link http://www.affiliate-offer.com?SubID1={campaign.ID}&SubID2={clickid}, it would replace the token values with for example as follows:

http://www.affiliate-offer.com?SubID...SubID2=1234567

Effectively, this is a way for Voluum to "tell" the affiliate network: "Hey! This visitor I'm sending to you, I'm assigning the clickid of 1234567 to him, and this campaign's ID is ABCDEFG".

The affiliate network would then store these values into its database: Imagine an excel spreadsheet with column names "SubID1" and "SubID2". The aff network would store "ABCDEFG" in the "SubID1" column and "1234567" in the SubID2 column.

So you may want to ask, why would we want to send these 2 values to the affiliate network for them to store in their database?

Campaign ID - If you're running multiple campaigns for the same offer - for example you're promoting the offer on multiple traffic sources - and your affiliate manager all of a sudden tells you that your lead quality isn't good enough. If you're not keeping track of which campaign or traffic source each visitor is from, then the aff network would have no choice but tell you to stop sending traffic, period. However, if you've been sending the campaign ID with each visitor, the aff network would have the option of reviewing your stats, to see whether traffic from a specific campaign is giving bad lead quality that's dragging down the quality of your traffic overall. If that's indeed the case, then you can potentially just turn off that campaign and leave the rest running, instead of having to stop all campaigns.

(You can use {trafficsource.id} instead of {campaign.id} to achieve a similar purpose.)

Click ID - The clickID is what Voluum assigns to the visitor (specifically, to that particular click/view by the visitor). Why does Voluum need to put an identifier to a click in this way? This is because, when a visitor/click ends up converting, the affiliate network will need to "tell" Voluum "hey - visitor 1234567 has converted!" so that Voluum can display this conversion in its stats.

(The above is only the first half of what happens between Voluum and the affiliate network. They need to communicate again when a conversion takes place, via the postback url. Please post a screenshot of your affiliate network's postback url area, showing all of the tokens, and I'll finish telling the love story between Voluum and your aff network. )

Hopefully my explanation helps you to further your understanding of how tracking works, even if by a little bit.



Amy

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Thank you so much for the detailed response Amy!
I really appreciate you taking the time to hold my hand like this!

I'll reread your response and the links provided above - it really is making more sense, but i'm still waiting for it to click.

My affiliate network uses hitpath

Here is a screenshot - https://imgur.com/a/mh9ba
(i don't know why, but the STM pic upload function never works for me?!


This is what i have my postback URL as so far:
http://approute-injusing.com/postbac...out=xxpayoutxx

Thanks again!!

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Thanks for using imgur - and please stick with it! The forum attachment upload is screwy and can be hit-and-miss. I always use imgur (or tinypic if imgur is temporarily unavailable).

Next time though, try to copy the "BBCode" version of the imgur link and paste it into the post. The image will appear nice and big directly within the post.


One question for your AM before I launch into the second part of that love story: Is SubID2 the same variable as C2? it's strange that SubID2 isn't among the list of postback tokens.




Amy

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Thanks Amy, i'll get confirmation from my rep there and update you once i know

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Hey Amy

Yes, this is the same variable - confirmed by my rep

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Fantastic!

What you would need to do, is give your affiliate manager the following postback, or save it into your aff network account settings yourself:

http://approute-injusing.com/postbac...out=xxpayoutxx


Then here's the second part of that love story...continued from above:

It's strange that your aff network is using 2 names for the same variable.

So before we continue, I'll need to append one thing to the 1st half of the story: Remember when the aff network stores "1234567" in the SubID2 column? Well, that same column now has 2 names - SUBID2, and C2. They refer to the same data

Next: If this visitor 1234567 signs up to our offer, i.e. a conversion happens, the aff network would know right away, because they're the ones tracking the offer.

What the aff network needs to do next, is "tell" Voluum about the conversion. It does that by triggering the postback url http://approute-injusing.com/postbac...out=xxpayoutxx.

Remember what I said in the last post about the "triggering party" and the "party being triggered"? When the aff network triggers the postback url, the aff network is the triggering party, so it will replace the token values - "xxc2xx" and "xxpayoutxx" - with actual values. And where would it get the values from? "xxc2xx" would come from the "SUBID2" (aka "C2") column of the database described previously. "xxpayoutxx" would also come from their database somewhere - because obviously the aff network would know what the offer payout is.

So, the aff network would replace the values and trigger the postback url as: http://approute-injusing.com/postbac...67&payout=1.20 (let's say the offer payout is 1.20)

Effectively, by triggering this postback, the aff network is "telling" Voluum: "Hey! Visitor/click 1234567 has converted with a payout of 1.20!"

Voluum would then display the conversion in its stats.

So you may be wondering, if the affiliate network only tells it the clickid and the payout, how would Voluum know information such as browser, device brand and model, country, OS, etc. etc.?

You see - Voluum has a lot of detection in place. When the visitor was first sent to the campaign url by the traffic source, and when Voluum assigns a custom cid to the visitor/click ("1234567" in our example), it also detects all that other information associated with this visitor/click.

So, when the aff network tells Voluum that a visitor/click has converted, it will show the conversion under the correct country, OS, browser, etc. etc.


And that's the end of that love story! Hope that wasn't overly complicated! Tracking isn't the easiest thing to understand, but you only need to learn it once.

Please feel free to ask further questions!




Amy

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Thanks again Amy - i can't begin to explain how helpful you've been so far!

I think i have a pretty decent grasp on what you've explained above, i think actually doing it a few times will cement it in place!

Where i'm still confused in step 4 on your original tutorial - https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...by-Step-Voluum

After i have created my postback URL and submitted it to my affiliate network, i then have to get a URL from the affiliate network to use in Voluum - right?

This is what mine looks like on my affiliate network:

{campaign.id}&s2={clickid} - How do these tokens work with what we added to the postback URL?
Do we have to define them again?

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You will need to grab the affiliate link for the offer from your aff network and put that into Voluum - that was covered in the 1st part of the "love story" above.

It looks like the url in the "Redirect links" field in your screenshot is it!

You will need to take that link and append the {clickid} token to it (and optionally the {campaign.id} token or {traffic.id} token to it - reasons why were explained in previously posts above), before putting the whole link into Voluum when you're creating an offer in Voluum.

This post may help you:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...pbystep-voluum


As mentioned above, you'd need to append them to your aff offer link when creating an offer in Voluum.

The postback url you put into the aff network needs to contain TOKEN VALUES defined by your aff network, not Voluum (referring the "triggering party" and the "party being triggered" explanation). So the postback in your case would be in this format: http://approute-injusing.com/postbac...out=xxpayoutxx.

Set it all up and ask your AM to trigger a test conversion to see if the conversion shows up in Voluum. If not, please take screenshots of and explain every step and we'll troubleshoot!



Amy

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Hey Amy,
Looking back at my postback URL: http://approute-injusing.com/postbac...out=xxpayoutxx

I got my token values from this URL: https://help.trackrevenue.com/hc/en-...isers-#hitpath

It says here “xxc1xx | Sub-ID 1(You MUST use at least this token)”
Should I include xxc1xx in my postback?

There are lots of other possible values there: campaign ID, Creative ID, etc – if I don’t include these in my postback, does that mean I won’t have access to that data in Voluum?

Sam question for Voluum. When I’m configuring my affiliate URL:



There are a tonne of available tokens – is there any reason why I don’t include anything that looks semi-useful?

Thanks again!!

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Ah OK! I've never worked with hitpath so wasn't aware of the fact that we must at least use the c1 token.

In this case, you would append that token to your offer links instead of c2. And likewise, the postback url would have to use the same value.



So the offer link you put into Voluum would need to be in this format:

http://www.affiliate-offer.com/?SubID1={clickid}&SubID2={campaign.id}

To make sure you get the correct link, go to your aff offer:



In the "SubID1" field put "{clickid}" and in the "SubID2" field put "{campaign.id}" (without the quotes). Then copy the resulting link (now with the tokens added) and paste that into voluum as the offer link.



And your postback url that you paste into hitpath would have to be in this format:

http://approute-injusing.com/postbac...out=xxpayoutxx


Hope that's clear! Let me know if you have any further questions.




Amy

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Thanks again Amy - you're the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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