Affiliate marketing is always ever-changing and one of the most unique things as affiliates is we tend to want to try to make money off every click.
As an affiliate that buys media, I tend to always try to make revenue from each click as much as possible without trying to disrupt the main conversion goal.
One of the ways I do that is to try to monetize the loss click ratio. The strategy I use is to just utilize a SmartLink system.
I have talked about SmartLink systems in the past and it is one of the ways to easily take advantage of the click loss traffic.
Examples of click loss are unwanted geo-targeted traffic, off-page clicks, time on the landing page, back buttons, etc. Here are the scripts to use on your pages.
In order to take advantage of this, we need to get a smart link, and lately, I have been working with Clickdeaer a lot and I want to show you their SmartLink system.
Currently, I am utilizing their dating SmartLink system. You can see I have a balance left to be withdrawn for this month.
What is a SmartLink system? In its basic form, it looks at all the data points the server received from a click and then decides what offer to put in front of the potential user. With all the data an affiliate network as they can safely assume, THIS offer will work in this geo at this time frame with this phone device on this browser.
Essentially it is taking an educated guess on what offer to put in front of a potential consumer. No thinking on the type of landing pages, the offer, etc. The SmartLink system will decide base on the data it receives.
How to Utilize a Smartlink System?
There are 2 ways to use a SmartLink system, direct for offset clicks. I personally do offset clicks, meaning clicks that divert away from the main click or main offer click.
If you can get enough cheap traffic for the SmartLink conversion then do it. No need to really think about landing pages or offer, just need a generic creative if needed.
I think the best way to utilize a SmartLink is to use it to offset your spending. For example, I use it when the consumer focus is removed from the main goal of the campaign.
In the above example, I use dating Smartlinks because maybe the offer I have is not the right one. I do not rotate the main offer but I add in the SmartLink as a back button redirect, timed engagement redirects, background click redirects, certain links to redirect, etc.
The goal of a campaign is to get the focus to click on the main offer goal, if they veer off, then the Smartlink will help me recover some loss ad spend.
Each one of the above-mentioned redirect strategies will help recover a loss in ad spend sometimes even increase your ROI. I tend to utilize a Smartlink system to open the main offer and right behind that tab open a SmartLink offer. This allows me to potentially increase my ROI.
... but you shouldn't measure Smartlink as part of your campaign but as an extra source of revenue. Some affiliates tend to add in a Smartlink as part of their campaign.
I say let it be its own trackable general campaign and not part of an ad campaign. Yes, sure you want to track it but in my opinion, it should be by itself.
In your tracking platform, I just call the traffic source 'OFFSETCLICKS'. This tells me any extra conversions came from the SmartLink.
I also try not to measure it against a campaign, sure I can add a campaign ID so I can measure, which dating campaign I added it to and see if it helped with the conversions but the overall goal of a campaign is to get your main offer to work.
The SmartLink is there to help capture and try to monetize any click losses.
