Home > Technical & Creative Skills > Tracking Campaigns

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FunnelFlux vs Voluum or Thrive (14)

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I'm trying to decide on a tracker.

To start with, I will be tracking for Push and Native ads.

I am already paying for a dedicated server (a cloud server) with very good specs, so self-hosted is an option.

I'm currently leaning toward self-hosted because I already have the sunk cost of the server, plus I'd have control over my data. (The only drawback I can see there is that *maybe* a hosted tracker might perform better due to more worldwide server availability... but maybe for a redirect it doesn't matter as much as with content delivery?)

And for self-hosted, I'm liking what I see with FunnelFlux.

Any experience or opinions on the route to take?

Thanks.

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If you want to go towards self-hosted, then Voluum is out of the game as it's cloud based (though very good tracker!)

Did you check Binom out?

It's also a solid player in the self-hosted game.

FunnelFlux takes a bit different philosophy, but never honestly messed with it so cannot say whether it's good or bad.

Fast redirects are always good to have, but unless you run pops it's not as critical with other sources.

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I wouldn't worry too much about the speed of a self hosted solution because of the lack of worldwide server availability.

I have split tested in numerous time and I noticed no considerable effect on CR and ROI.

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Thanks for mentioning Binom.

I am not sold on any particular solution for self-hosted - just seemed like FunnelFlux was the "go to" solution for it. What do you mean whey you say "FunnelFlux takes a bit different philosophy"?

Also, do you know, with these trackers (self-hosted in particular), is it standard practice to install on one domain and use that same domain for all redirects, no matter the final destination?

Or, do you somehow enable the tracker for each domain that you are hosting landing pages on? Seems like I had heard somewhere that Facebook (or was it Google) doesn't like redirects through a different domain name than the final destination.

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+1 for Binom, its been super smooth to use very happy so far. Customer support has been the best of any tracker we've had

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All the good trackers have landing page JavaScript so that no redirects are needed.

However the new best practice is to make sure the tracker JavaScript code is served from the same domain as the landing page.

With ITP on Safari any cross domain scripts on your page will only have a cookie life of 1 day at worst or 7 days at best. This can throw of your conversion tracking if you are using pixels.

You will also want to make sure the offers you are running are not affected by ITP. Because that means you’re not going to get paid for all your sales and leads.

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I can confirm this, I've done a fair share of various speed related tests and the redirect speed of a tracker had VERY low impact on the final campaign performance. Since you already have a server at your disposal, I wouldn't worry about going with self hosted.

As for the different philosophy of funnelflux that Erik mentioned: FF is more "visual" than the rest of the trackers, and it's better suitable for more complicated funnels. The visual part is hard to explain, you need to check some of the screenshots or a video to see it with your own eyes

Here is a video for you, move to about 2:30 min to see the visual campaign setup in action:

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Good info everyone, thanks.

Another factor: I plan to do email marketing so I will need to track clicks in emails as well and ideally still attribute actions to ads. This can make for a longer more complicated funnel:

Ad -> Landing Page -> Opt In -> Email msg -> Offer

... among other scenarios.

Are FunnelFlux and/or Binom suitable for that?

Also, I still am not clear about redirects.
- Are redirects compliant with Facebook or Google?
- And, do you redirect all campaign tracking through a single tracking domain?
- Or is Javascript the way to go, and is it supported by FF and Binom?

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Both FB and Google are known for banning campaigns that use tracker redirects. It's not 100% sure that they will ban you because of this, but chances are very high. Because of this, it's the best to use trackers that can support "on-LP" tracking, which doesn't require a redirect through the tracking domain.

That's the standard setup with a redirect-based tracker. You have a tracking domain that you send traffic to and the tracker will redirect it to the right LP/offer, based on the campaign setup. Some trackers support multiple tracking domains, but still, the number is limited and you can't really use a new tracking domain for every campaign.

I'm personally using the standard redirect setup because I don't run FB or Google, so can't really comment on what tracker supports on-page tracking. Let's wait for someone who has experience with this.

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Voluum recently released “Listicle Tracking” that should support your use case of opt in tracking very well.

https://doc.Voluum.com/en/listicle_tracking.html

I think given the low initial price point even on monthly, voluum is the best value - plus most sophisticated tracker.

I have a lot of love for binom also, but believe the install needs to be on a new, clean server - so you’d need to mess about a bit to host landing pages etc on it also.

Depending what you are running, I don’t think you’ll even need a server if you use voluum - just upload your html landers to a cdn with static file storage like bunnycdn or netlify


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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I use funnelflux and used Voluum many years back.

Main difference I feel is:
- Funnelflux has a different structure as it uses campaigns/funnel grouping i.e. you can have different funnels in 1 campaign (which can make things a bit neater) but means it doesn't work as well with things like theOptimizer.
- Lots of flexibility to add javascript/php within your funnel as funnelflux come with the feature to allow you to put code snippets via funnel flux. e.g. it can be lander -> custom php code snippet -> offer

Overall I'm happy with funnelflux though I have uncovered quite a few bugs and if you are doing a simple funnel then I have heard Binom being good for it as it comes with certain ready made features that isn't available (or its a bit more complicated to do) on funnelflux.

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Whatever gets you setup and going fastest at this point. Voluum still the gold standard imo in getting things setup quickly, campaign management, and reporting.

Have tried to switch to others but found them frustrating to use and deal with for those above things. Binom would be my second choice, and first right now for a self-hosted option.

All trackers should be capable of tracking opt-ins, it's just a matter of firing a seperate event or conversion.

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Tracking URL on the traffic source side redirects to your landing page -> visitor provides an email.
After that, they receive the link on email which redirects to an offer -> they convert.

This is your funnel, right?

Listicle setup (or any other 1-campaign setup) will work here only if there's a continuity. In a flow where a user receives an email in between, continuity can be easily broken - a user might open it in a different browser, on another device, or after some time (he can clear cookies too). If that's the case, there's no guaranty the funnel will work (it won't if the click id isn't passed, not even in cookies).

A safer option is to split the funnel between two campaigns. The first campaign will have a direct linking to the offer (whereas it will be a landing page). User will provide his info, and you will send him an email with the second campaign's URL. And the second campaign will have one offer or more added. If you're able to inject the e-mails as parameter values to the 2nd campaign URL, they can be set in Voluum as custom variables, and you will see them later on in reports. If you store the click id and emails on your side you will be able to match the click id from the 1st campaign with users mail and his click id from the 2nd campaign.

Thanks for the support you show for Voluum @erikgyepes @nickpeplow @sushiparlour @thedudeabides
It's a huge motivator to do even better. And I'm not 100% satisfied with how we support a funnel like this right now, so I will talk to the team about it.

EDIT: Another solution came to my mind - if you have an opt-in form for collecting e-mails, you can use it to collect cep parameter from the lander url (Voluum adds this parameter to the original lander url), then add that cep parameter to the click url in your e-mail (link redirecting to the offer page). It'll be a fairly simple setup (1-campaign) and you'll bypass the continuity issue I mentioned before.

I think direct tracking method (= direct tracking pixel implemented on a landing page to avoid an initial redirect) has become an industry standard and most trackers support it by now. In Voluum, it's called Direct Tracking Pixel.


Karolina

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Thanks for all the love, guys!

So, @summitview, which tracker did you end up with?

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