How can StatsDrone help affiliates networks with data aggregation and optimizing your business?
StatsDrone is currently being used by a number of affiliate networks including affiliate agencies and I’ll share all the ways in which we can help.
I’ll start by sharing the 2 ways affiliate networks are making use of StatsDrone
- Affiliate stats aggregation
- Business Intelligence & CRM
Stats affiliate stats aggregation involves pulling data from all the affiliate programs within that network. We have some companies that build their own in-house affiliate network and we are alleviating the workload in maintaining the data feeds as we are specialists in this area.
The 2nd way in which affiliate networks are using us is to have a better visibility of their affiliates in their network and to help with CRM and Business Intelligence.
Affiliate Stats Aggregation
StatsDrone’s core product is a data aggregator that pulls data from a large number of affiliate programs and affiliate platforms.
StatsDrone collects data in the following ways:
- Scraping using credentials
- API
- CSV upload
In the most ideal situation, API is the preferred method for pulling data from any affiliate program. Scraping is a secondary method of obtaining the data and in the situations where scraping isn’t possible and the program hasn’t provided an API solution, CSV upload is the last resort.
Standardizing affiliate data
StatsDrone
Affiliate stats accuracy
You might be thinking, I’m pulling data from an API, why on earth would the data not be accurate?
There are many situations in which data won’t be accurate if you happen to be trying to test your APIs if you’re looking to build your own in-house affiliate data aggregator.
Here are some of the reasons we encounter data inaccuracies.
- Improper configuration of the platform by the operator
- Exceptions made to one affiliate account
- Adding or removing data fields on individual accounts
- API reports haven’t been updated when the platform has made changes or improvements
- Reports and API not being fully in sync
At StatsDrone, we have integrations for over 40 enterprise affiliate program platforms that also include affiliate networks. We have also integrated over 80 proprietary affiliate programs.
Every day, we are adding programs, closing some and making updates to our app when changes happen with any affiliate program.
CRM for affiliate networks
What is a CRM for affiliates or rather a CRM for affiliate networks?
It seems that most affiliate network platforms don’t quite have the full CRM capabilities you’d want.
For starters, when affiliate managers think about CRM, they immediately think about CRM tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Monday and other leading sales CRM platforms.
A few things that StatsDrone can help for an affiliate network is the ability to manage and assign deals.
In StatsDrone, this is called the Deal CRM where you can create a deal assigned to a single affiliate.
Not all affiliate network platforms have deal management and this is especially true for affiliate networks that operate more like master affiliates.
Business Intelligence
An affiliate network is should always be focused on data and performance. Business Intelligence, aka BI tools, are usually not part of the affiliate platform.
Here are a few examples of what BI tools can help with.
- Isolating top performing affiliates
- Isolating worst performing affiliates
- Trends in conversion rates
- Monitoring EPC values over time
- Knowing top converting pages or channels of your affiliates
Many affiliate managers have a sales mandate to get as many affiliates signed up to their affiliate program and get as many sales out of every affiliate. Although this sounds like good advice, it misses out on low hanging fruit that could be the most impactful work on generating revenue and profits.
For example, it is likely easier to achieve an increase in conversion rate that is double compared with doubling the number of sales by doubling the number of affiliate partners.
One of the popular features of StatsDrone are the data alerts for affiliates.
S2S Tracking with post backs and dynamic variables
Most affiliate networks can give you your tracking links in a backend or they are send to the affiliate to use. Some networks have smart links that can be issued to affiliates.
Not all affiliate networks make use of tools like postbacks or dynamic variables.
S2S stands for server to server and essentially allows for click ID tracking. When deployed properly, the affiliate and the affiliate program can learn not just how many sales an affiliate is generating but from which pages, channels and GEOs are driving the best results.
One reason why you don’t see these tools everywhere is not all affiliate networks are configured for this setup and many affiliates don’t know where to start when it comes to setting up a click ID link tracking system.
At StatsDrone, we pull dynamic variables data and are able to integrate this with link tracking tools like Voluum and Keitaro for example. We have also tested deploying click ID level tracking as an add-on to WordPress plugins like Pretty Links.
Accounting & payments reconciliation
Almost all affiliate networks have a setup that is meant to take the pain away from payments. That is, they collect all the payments from an affiliate program and what you get is one payment and to work with a single affiliate manager.
StatsDrone can help with payments for an affiliate network by using the invoice generator inside the app. You can mark when payments have been made.
