Use clickbank instant notification service to fire POFs conversion tracking pixel??? (7)
Use clickbank instant notification service to fire POFs conversion tracking pixel???
Hey guys,
Just wondering if it would be possible to use clickbank's instant notification service to fire POF's conversion tracking pixel:
http://www.clickbank.com/help/affili...ation-service/
For example, have the POF conversion tracking pixel on a page of your tracking domain that the notification service posts to.
Whenever you get a sale and clickbank posts the form parameters to the URL have the pixel fire.
Would the POF conversion pixel be able to accurately determine which click caused the sale using this method?
Would love to hear any and all thoughts on this.
Thanks,
Thomas
I think you might be able to use the cvendthru parameter for the click unique id.
"Extra information passed to order form with duplicated information removed" "0-1024 Characters"
You have to watch out for this:
"It is also possible for the Instant Notification service to deliver more than one POST on a single receipt."
Q: Is it possible for the Instant Notification service to deliver more than one POST on a single receipt?
A: Yes. There are many scenarios where this is true. For instance, you will receive multiple POSTs for a single transaction if a refund is given and then reversed. This would result in delivery of a RFND action POST and then a SALE action post. The first action is a result of the original sale being refunded. The second action is a result of the sale being reinstated.
So you would need to check the action and only fire the POF pixel for a SALE action and not for other actions such a FRND.
Sean K.
why would clickbank fire someone else pixel ?
Originally Posted by hd2010
Clickbank provides vendors the opportunity to receive email notifications when they make sales. Their instant notification service is a way for affiliates to know that they made sales without having to login to clickbank. Whenever a sale is made they post FORM parameters to an URL I specify.
A lot of clickbank vendors don't like to place any sort of tracking script or pixel's on their thank you pages. When I learned about the instant notification service it kind of made me wonder if I could use it to fire POF's conversion pixel with a little bit of programming.
@seank
Thanks for the responses. I think I'll give it a shot and see if I can make it work. Will keep you posted.
So I did some research on this and basically found out that it wouldn't work.
After researching how conversion pixel's work I found some flaws with my idea. This is how I assume POF's conversion pixel works:
-pof user clicks on ad
-pof server cookies, pof users browser
-user clicks on to offer
-user buys offer gets redirected to thank you page
-if your pof conversion pixel has been placed on thank you page, it gets fired
-pof's server reads the cookie in the user's browser to associate that user with the sale and updates conversions stats accordingly.
With most CPA networks they have places where you can put POF's conversion pixel. With clickbank not so much. You have to approach each vendor individually, if they say no you're out of luck.
Where my original idea breaks down is that I would be using clickbank's instant notification service in conjunction with a php script running on my domain's server to fire the conversion pixel. The conversion pixel would probably fire, but there would be no cookie to associate the conversion pixel firing to, since the cookie is stored in the user's browser.
I think the conversion pixel has to be fired from the same browser the cookie is located in order for the conversion tracking to work.
My next thought was well maybe I could write some sort of script to read POF's cookie when the user gets directed to my tracking domain. Then have the original cookie's value stored in a database associate with a subid. That way when the instant notification service posted back you could take the subid and then make a new "cookie" and then fire the conversion pixel. Then POF's server's could see that cookie's information and update the conversion reports. That's a no go as well. You can only read cookies that your domain has set. You can't read cookies that another domain has set. Also, you can't set the domain of a cookie that you're not in.
The only way I can see to get this working was if POF made it to where you could pass a session id in your tracking link like you can pass the {state:}, {age:}, {gender:} and {creativeid:} values. You could then append that session id to your clickbank hoplink as a TID. From there you could get the sessionid back to your server using the clickbank instant notification service.
I guess that still wouldn't do much when the conversion pixel fired though, cause there still wouldn't be a cookie. POF would have to allow you to postback the sessionid to their servers and they'd have to have some sort of script to update the conversions.
In summary to make POF's conversion pixel tracking work with clickbank you have to:
have the conversion pixel placed on the vendor's thank you page
or
POF has to pass some sort of session id in your links and then allow you to post back the session id to their server's to update the conversions.
Oh well. I guess I got my mental exercise for the week!!!
So after having a couple of things happen to me today, I think I figured this bad boy out.
I was reading this post made by parthenon:
Originally Posted by parthenon
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...on-soon)/page2
which inspired a thought. Join me on my thought process:
The issue is you have to have the user's browser arrive at the page where the conversion pixel is located at.
Now the question becomes if the user clicks on the ad, goes through your landing page(if you have one), buys the product you are promoting, how do you get the user to come back to a webpage that you control, so your POF conversion pixel gets fired and POF server's can grab the info out of the cookie in the user's browser and update your reports with the conversion info?
Answer: Offer a bonus. A bonus that they absolutely can't resist and are dying to get their hands on, so they make damn sure that they return to claim it.
Tell them you have a really great bonus for them, but they can only get it if they buy through your affiliate link.
You may be thinking:
"How are you going to automatically give a bonus so only the people who purchased the product will have access to it so you don't skew conversion reports with false data?"
Glad you asked. I think this can be accomplished with the clickbank instant notification service as well.
There is a parameter:
ctransreceipt
that the instant notification service will pass. This is the clickbank receipt number.
You can have clickbank pass that parameter to your website. There you have a program that parses the information out.
You then have a form where the user submit their receipt number on your website after they purchase the product you are promoting. Inspiration of this was from a purchase I made through one of Andre Chaperone's websites today where he automatically checks and make sure you made the purchase through his affiliate link before he gives you access to the bonus:
http://microbrandmethod.com/bonus/
A program then compares the receipt number they submit to the receipt numbers that clickbank has passed and makes sure there is a match. If there is a match the user is then passed to the download page where the bonus is located at. This is also the page where your POF conversion tracking pixel is located.
Once the user lands on the download page conversion pixel is fired, POF server's grab the info from the cookie and update conversion reports accordingly.
Potential issues:
-probably have to make each receipt number usable only once that away receipt numbers don't get passed around. Not so the report doesn't get out to people who didn't purchase it, but to maintain the integrity of the conversion data. I know it's an extreme case but it might happen.
-user visits download page in a different browser than the one they made the purchase in. Can't really avoid this but I don't think that's not going to happen too often.
-user doesn't claim bonus for some reason. Yes, this can happen again nothing you can do about it.
-You don't want to create a bonus. I guess this a matter of if you think the conversion data will be useful enough to you.
Final thoughts:
It would take some extra work to create a bonus and work it into your normal landing page flow. However, it might actually help your conversion rate and give prospects the extra nudge to buy the product you are promoting.
There is the potential to have incomplete conversion data due to the issues I outlined above. However, I think the conversion data from POF is already a little skewed. I'm basing this entire thing off that a little conversion data that you get is better than no conversion data.
@parthenon-If you could integrate this into a future version of CB-Trax, I think you would have a really awesome product.
Finally clickbank affiliates may have a way to fire traffic source conversion pixels without getting the vendor to put them on the thank you pages!
Damn.. you are thorough lol.
I can't possibly understand why you would go through that much trouble to get POF's pixel to fire. Plus, the whole system relies on the person actually doing a series of steps to get something they may or may not want to begin with. That would be horribly inaccurate.
You can get most of the information you need just by properly segmenting your campaigns and using a sensible naming schema. You can also pass the basic information like age, gender, location, etc through dynamically.
I mean the idea you came up with is great, but for not really for the reason you came up with it 
What exactly are you trying to accomplish with this? Even if there is a way to do it, I think you could make better use of your time and energy rather than trying to figure out how to make it work.
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