Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing
Can’t keep up with your affiliate traffic and conversions? Let’s be honest: You can’t manage today’s affiliate marketing programs on an Excel Spreadsheet. And if you add hundreds of new affiliate applications and varying commissions to the mix? It’s time to invest in affiliate tracking software, stat.
RedTrack is an affiliate tracking software that serves ad agencies, ecommerce platforms, and other clients. It comprises both affiliate and ad-tracking mechanisms to help you manage a wide range of marketing campaigns. We’ll walk through RedTrack’s core features and present Tapfiliate as an alternative for your affiliate program management needs.
RedTrack is an affiliate and ad-tracking software that covers various tracking mechanisms and custom reports to help ecommerce brands and ad agencies manage their campaigns on platforms like Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, affiliate publisher channels, and more. Other features include customer journey insights, ad network integrations, custom payouts, and fraud prevention measures.
Let’s walk through some of RedTrack’s core features, including report customization, affiliate conversion tracking, and integrations.
RedTrack’s ad tracking and attribution covers clicks and conversions tracked in a single source-of-truth dashboard. Paid and organic traffic tracking offers insights into asset and affiliate performance, including over 20 conversion types, funnel tracking, and custom-server side tracking.
Affiliate attribution comprises both redirect and non-redirect links for an SEO boost and deep connections to cater to publishers’ desires for customization. Furthermore, brands can implement a customizable cookie window of their choice, though RedTrack recommends 30-90 days.
RedTrack offers sufficient flexibility in dashboards and reports. It features a central dashboard with all your crucial account data at a glance, but also provides many other customizable dashboards for you to dive deeper into your performance data.
Explore the Acquisition dashboard to understand partner versus direct traffic or the Conversion Path dashboard to understand the customer journey.
Reports allow for filtration based on:
The platform most notably allows for granular analysis of affiliate performance reports to help you see which affiliates and corresponding assets bring you traffic and conversions. You can share these reports with affiliates to help them improve their performance.
Furthermore, RedTrack helps brands keep eyes on all partner activity with its logs. You can generate logs based on clicks, conversions, S2S or API postback, and cost updates.
RedTrack offers partner recruitment via an automated process that you can customize with your own criteria. Once your affiliates are in, you can provide them with customizable content assets and descriptions to support their campaigns. This also rings true for partners that decide to use specific ad networks like Taboola or Meta Ads. While commissions are adjustable, they don’t include product-specific rates or performance incentives.
RedTrack automates a wide range of functions:
You can also use automation to pause and restart ad campaigns based on performance data, and, coming soon, schedule campaigns to operate at scheduled times throughout the day.
If you’re curious about your customer’s journey from first interaction to conversion, RedTrack stands out with its conversion path report. You can use it to view every customer interaction with your ads throughout the funnel and analyze that data to optimize conversion rate.
Remember that advanced conversion path reports are only included in the higher-tier subscriptions. Grow plan customers can access them for an additional monthly fee.
RedTrack helps you track affiliate conversions in many different ways, such as:
RedTrack offers a wide range of customization options for report viewing and filters. Here’s a quick list:
RedTrack has over 200 one-click integrations to both software tools and ad networks.
Ecommerce brands can link WooCommerce and Shopify. At the same time, anyone who works with ads can enjoy an integration with Bing Ads, Meta Ads and Google Ads via the platform’s API. And if you’re looking for conversions on ever more obscure networks, RedTrack also offers more niche integrations like Taboola Ads and Outbrain Ads.
All of RedTrack’s subscriptions include full access to their tracking capabilities, conversion path (customer journey) reports, click and conversion logs, ad network API integrations, and 30-minute cost updates. Here are a few more features for each tier:
Access to the partnership portal is available for an additional $99 per month on the Grow plan, while it’s included in the others.
However, the Reporting Portal costs an additional $199 per month, regardless of your subscription tier. It’s also worth noting that you can’t access many partnership (affiliate) management features on the Grow Plan, so any brand that wants to leverage, streamline, or scale its affiliate program would need to pay for the second-tier subscription.
RedTrack caters to businesses of all sizes that leverage affiliate and ad marketing in their strategies. Customer niches include ad agencies and ecommerce businesses. Here are some specs for RedTrack’s top clients:
RedTrack has solid reviews on Capterra, with a perfect 5/5 average rating. Typical positive notes include value for money, responsive customer support, and smooth API integrations with the most popular ad networks.
However, that’s not the case for all review sites. For example, Trustpilot shows an average 2.6/5-star rating for RedTrack. While positive notes applauded RedTrack’s customer support and reasonable price point, this review from Victor Sebastian stands out:
You want affiliate software to improve and scale your affiliate program for more traffic and revenue.
Consider your specific goals and objectives to get you on the path to more affiliate sales. These will help guide your product search as you look for options that offer specific features that meet your needs.
It’s time to create a list of contenders. You’ll want to leave yourself with a solid list of five affiliate management platforms to compare. As you research, pay special attention to the types of brands each software company services.
You can get an idea about the types of companies each software services by exploring customer ratings through testimonials and ratings on review sites.
What kind of features are you after? You might consider a list like:
So, let’s say you have a couple of software options, similarly priced, with the features you want. How do you narrow it down? A good rule of thumb is to see what users say about that specific feature.
An affiliate software with a poor user experience is often a wasted investment. Why? Because it’s not engaging to your affiliates nor accessible to your team. Signs of a robust user experience in affiliate software include:
Make sure to examine customer ratings and reviews for user experience elements as well. And if you notice any reviews about slow load times, clunky features, rigid data visualizations, high learning curves, and unresponsive customer support? Consider those significant red flags for user experience.
Affiliate software should streamline your affiliate program and save time in your day-to-day. One way to do that is through integrations to the tools in your tech stack.
For example, brands that sell courses might use Teachable. Ecommerce brands might depend on Shopify or BigCommerce. Look for your favorite tools in an affiliate software’s list of integrations.
Affiliate software subscription prices depend on each software, subscription tier, and your unique needs. It’s essential to ensure you pick a tier and platform that will help you generate enough ROI on your investment to be worth it.
Consider personal reviews about a software’s value. Do people find them expensive? Maybe there’s a cheaper option that can still fulfill your brand’s marketing needs.
And if the price is right?
You can read product and feature pages all you want — but you won’t have any idea how that software will mesh with your program until you actually try it. A free trial can show you any potential drawbacks of affiliate software before you pull the trigger on buying it.
Most platforms offer a one- or two-week trial to help you visualize all the benefits it will bring to your program. Pay special attention to ease of use and report customization features, along with settings for commission structures.
Look out for fraud prevention and privacy features as you assess different options. For example, software that’s compliant with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) scores points for security since this designation demonstrates a commitment to safeguarding your data. PS — Tapfiliate is GDPR compliant. Another important security feature to look for is fraudulent click notifications.
Notice a software’s customer service options – is there a variety, including a 24/7 live chat and the ability to schedule phone calls? Those are good signs. Remember to check reviews for any insights on a software’s customer support elements. Anyone left hanging for more than 48 hours? Steer clear of that software.
Your goal is to find an affiliate tracking software that meets your affiliate program’s needs within a reasonable budget. But RedTrack’s combined ad tracking and affiliate tracking place it in a much higher price point than the average small business can afford. Plus, its affiliate capabilities come at a higher price than competitors like Tapfiliate.
Looking for a dedicated affiliate management platform with multiple conversion tracking types, real-time reporting, and custom integrations at an affordable price? Tapfiliate is the ROI-generating answer to your affiliate needs!
You’ve got ten influencers bringing $1,000 a month in affiliate sales and impressive clicks coming from your new coupon partnerships. Quick question: How do you know which individual affiliates are performing best? For all you know, one influencer could bring in $9,000 in sales while the other nine add up to the remaining $1,000. And just like that, the tables can turn, and a once-strong affiliate could experience a massive dip.
Tapfiliate’s real-time reporting helps you keep tabs on all your affiliate revenue and immediately informs you about any hiccups or successes. Both types of info are vital to improving your affiliate program. Toggle through filters and segmentation options to visualize performance across multiple data points, from individual affiliates and adjustable time slots to geographical location and conversion type. Our custom reporting includes accessible data visualizations that you can easily use to convey information to your entire team, even those less versed in marketing.
Whether you’re a SaaS subscription business or an ecommerce king in your niche, Tapfiliate offers integrations to all your favorite software tools to make your affiliate program much more efficient.
Are you launching a course on Teachable? Easily integrate with a few clicks. Receive payments via Shopify or PayPal? We’ve got those, too in our list of 34 direct integrations. On top of that, we offer custom integrations to pretty much any software via the RestAPI — all you need is a developer to get you connected.
Tapfiliate recognizes the value of an existing customer — not only are they more cost-effective to nurture than new customers, but they’re also perfect candidates for new affiliates. They know your products better than anyone new since they’ve spent money on them to see their value and used them to see their functionality.
That’s why we introduced our automated Referral Program, which automates invitations to existing customers to your affiliate program.
Are you working with a roster of 1,000+ affiliates? Then you know better than any brand how much affiliate value varies. That publisher with over 300,000 monthly traffic hits to their blog might be worth a higher commission of sales than the beginner influencer with minimal traffic. This urged Tapfiliate to offer flexible commission structures, from fixed to percentage-based, with varying rates that brands can allocate to each individual affiliate.
You can also pick from recurring commissions (hello, SaaS subscriptions), product-specific commissions to sell off your overstock, and lifetime commissions to scratch your affiliates’ backs even more. We also offer performance incentives where you can automate a rate increase once an affiliate reaches a certain conversion threshold.
Conversions bring revenue, but so does operational efficiency. The latter helps our clients save thousands of dollars in labor hours per month, so we prioritized it in Tapfiliate’s makeup. We crafted a seamless integration with Zapier to help you include affiliate tasks within all your existing workflows, along with email triggers that you can adjust to your liking at any time.
We also offer the option to auto-approve affiliates — a fabulous option for brands with a well-oiled, established affiliate program. But if you’re still figuring out what criteria is most important to you and your customers, we still offer manual approvals.
Tapfiliate prides itself on the human element present in every software interaction, whether through a bespoke and user-friendly interface or 24/7 live chat to solve any issues promptly. We’re proud to share a 95% customer satisfaction rate powered through our skilled support team of technicians who make themselves available daily to serve our clients. On top of our 24/7 support, customers can access a rich knowledge base with how-tos that answer popular questions.
Tapfiliate’s subscriptions include unlimited affiliate programs, triggered notifications, flexible commission structures, lifetime and recurring commissions, product-specific commissions, customizable cookie windows, advanced social sharing, and multi-language support. Here are some additional pricing and feature information for each tier:
While RedTrack’s basic plan is comparable to Tapfiliate’s second-tier Essential plan, affiliate brand managers don’t experience the same functionality. After all, partnership management features aren’t even accessible on RedTrack unless you sign up for the middle-tier plan.
RedTrack might offer impressive value when you account for its ad-tracking features; however, if you’re only looking for an affiliate management platform, you get way more functionality for a lower price by signing up with Tapfiliate.
Both Tapfiliate and RedTrack provide many tracking functionalities to customers, with RedTrack providing slightly more options based on their platform’s ad-tracking component. Still, both software offers comparable conversion type tracking for affiliate programs, like:
Both Tapfiliate and RedTrack offer automated and manual affiliate approval, where brands can decide on automated triggers for acceptance or review each application on their own.
RedTrack offers visually appealing campaign descriptions to share with publishers, along with the ability to upload branded creatives to support their promotion. Additionally, they offer customizable rules for referral and affiliate payouts that you can automate based on custom tracking parameters or conversion type.
Tapfiliate takes program management a step further with more flexible commission options that include both fixed-fee and percentage-based commissions, along with lifetime and recurring commissions to treat high-performing affiliates accordingly. We also provide adjustable performance incentives that you can automate when affiliates reach a certain conversion goal.
Tapfiliate and RedTrack both offer a 24/7 live chat function, though reviews suggest ur skilled specialists at Tapfiliate tend to respond a little bit quicker. We also noticed a couple of dissatisfied reviews citing issues with receiving responses from RedTrack regarding refund requests and tracking errors.
Both platforms have a bustling blog sand resource/help center that supports customers in finding answers to common questions autonomously.
Both RedTrack and Tapfiliate have impressively high reviews on common review sites like Capterra, with RedTrack averaging slightly higher. Both platforms display positive comments about responsive support and effective integrations, though Tapfiliate shines with abundant comments about our dedicated customer support team, user-friendly interface, and great value for money.
Here’s an example from Anna, a UK Marketing Director:
RedTrack has notably positive comments on its complex funnel management for ad traffic and conversion data for Facebook and Google Ads — it’s not realistic to compare these to Tapfiliate since we don’t focus on ad campaigns, and our affordable price reflects our focus on affiliate tracking.
RedTrack is an ad and affiliate tracking solution that offers ad agencies and ecommerce businesses (or anyone investing in media-buying campaigns) a wide range of tracking features, from S2S tracking to coupon codes (cookieless tracking). The platform also includes features like conversion and click logs, a partnership portal, publisher management, and automation features to streamline your marketing efforts.
RedTrack is relatively unaffordable for newer businesses that are only interested in affiliate tracking functions, since its subscription tiers don’t allow full affiliate tracking or partnership management functionality below the second tier. Furthermore, the features included aren’t as valuable to customers who aren’t engaged in ad campaigns or media buying.
RedTrack is both an ad tracking and affiliate tracking software that caters to performance marketing and ad agencies, as well as ecommerce businesses. Here are some of their industry competitors:
Looking for other alternatives to RedTrack? Check out our list.
Start your 👉 free 14-day trial with Tapfiliate.
Chrissy Kapralos
Chrissy Kapralos runs a Toronto-based writing agency called No Worries Writing Co. She’s passionate about helping businesses communicate and share their stories. When she isn’t writing about the latest tech and marketing content, you’ll find her traveling, cooking, or watching horror movies.
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