A successful affiliate marketing campaign relies on the ability to optimise strategies based on accurate data and valuable insights.

Phonexa COO Jeffrey Schaffer recently joined Merged Media co-founder and CMO Jason Hunt on the Merged Marketing Podcast to share his expertise on A/B testing in affiliate marketing and highlight the importance of identifying and leveraging original lead sources.

The Merged Media Podcast delivers valuable insights from industry leaders to help listeners make informed decisions and grow their businesses online.

Let’s dive into Schaffer’s expert input and explore some key takeaways he shared regarding A/B testing, original lead sources, and more.

Understanding the True Origin Source

“Standard metrics that most marketers look at when it comes to A/B testing would be things like open rate, click-through rate, and, for those that can then measure the result, the conversions that those yield,” said Schaffer. “But the way in which A/B testing is done rarely, especially in a world where brands are sourcing traffic from multiple affiliates, takes into account the true origin source of that given lead — specifically the publisher Sub ID.”

The Shift to High Intent Response

“We’ll use email specifically to really cover two things. One is really bifurcating the audience that you’re putting into a given test to separate it as much as possible and be able to identify which publisher source that came from,” said Schaffer. “Depending on what your tech stack looks like, you may or may not be able to do that, particularly if you’re dealing with aged data that ends up in the ‘non-converting’ bucket.”

Schaffer further discussed A/B testing by focusing on another approach to A/B testing that is less about measuring CTR and more about generating the highest intent response: a phone call.

“Many marketers, including major brands, have been very slow to adopt appropriate call tracking mechanisms. And when they do, what we see is that email is commonly left out of the mix.”

Schaffer suggested that marketers should get granular about the original source of their traffic, especially when it comes to Sub IDs, to gain a clearer understanding of the customer journey.

Revealing the Impact of Original Traffic Sources

“We recently had a client who was A/B testing a non-engaged audience at our recommendation. They had two different creatives, and we tested it two ways,” Schaffer shared. “One was the old way — they changed up the creatives and used the same subject line for both so we could strictly measure click-through rate. The first way we noticed a blended click-through rate variance of only 10%. These are leads that came from six different publishers over the last eight months.”

“In the second case, we broke down the audience by Sub ID for these six publishers, and what we found was that the click-through rate variance was over 40% for two of those publishers,” Schaffer explained. “By actually breaking down the audience into where the real traffic source came from — even if you don’t know the whole journey the consumer went through — we’re able to get much better insights into how to get portions of that audience to engage.”

Tailoring Creatives and Call Tracking

“In an ideal world, if you’re a brand controlling the entire consumer experience, then you can really tailor everything in an email — the creatives — because you know where it originated,” Schaffer stated. “When it comes to the call tracking component of things, very often marketers are scared to make the primary call-to-action a call because the thought process is that you’re going to have a higher amount of people that are going to click through an email at some given time than those that are going to call.”

“Calls tend to be very disconnected and even those entities that are using call tracking to measure call duration and things like that very commonly will find that there is a big disconnect between their customer management system, their CRM, and having information about conversions trickle back up the funnel in a ping-back disposition to the original lead source,” Scheffer explained. “So they’re mixing and matching reports from multiple data sources to be able to see what converted, and what didn’t. Whether it’s a click, a call, an email, or another form fill — a re-engagement of some sort or first engagement if we’re talking about cold emailing — you want that to be attributed back to the original source.”

The Challenge of Lead Generation Marketing

“One of the biggest challenges has to do with getting different technologies to talk to each other and to be able to have clean and seamless reporting that can truly show you what the consumer journey is,” said Schaffer. “That’s one of the challenges we solved at Phonexa. We have a singular, all-in-one platform for all things performance marketing that can allow you to optimise your campaigns whether you’re in the affiliate space and you’re dealing with a thousand publishers and hundreds of buyers, or whether you’re a network or a brand that’s sourcing traffic.”

Schaffer’s insights on A/B testing in affiliate marketing shed light on the importance of leveraging original lead sources and adopting a more strategic approach. By understanding the true origin source of leads, segmenting audiences, and incorporating call tracking, marketers can optimise their A/B testing efforts and drive higher engagement.

Furthermore, utilising an all-in-one platform like Phonexa provides a competitive edge by streamlining the process and facilitating seamless reporting.

As Schaffer stated, “Anything you can do, especially as a network, to give yourself a competitive edge, is crucial.”

To continue the conversation with Schaffer, connect with him on LinkedIn.

Important: this article is a part of our affiliate martech stack series, where we shed light on the most effective tools for affiliate marketing.

Knowing where your website visitors came from, how they interacted with your website, and what triggered the conversion is paramount to maximising your sales potential. A killer suite of tools for web analytics can optimise the customer journey and draw more revenues from your marketing campaigns.

If your customers are a mystery to you, you are in trouble. You don’t even know why they buy from you, let alone where they started and how they ended up on your affiliate marketing website or blog. Without the right suite of web analytics tools in digital marketing, you are in the dark, helpless against informed competitors converting leads into paying customers left and right.

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On the other hand, with the right web analytics tools, you can leave the dark forest to be on par with the most informed market players. The best tools for web analytics can put you in the driver’s seat of your campaigns with on-site data like engagement, demographics, and behaviour.

So why not compile a winning suite of paid and free web analytics tools right now?

Your killer web analytics tools list is just below, comprised of time-tested web analytics software that has delivered insane value to hundreds and thousands of marketers like you.

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When It Comes to Web Analytics, What Insights Can You Gather Using Analytics Tools?

Web analytics tools can unlock on-site and off-site data like demographics, psychographics, traffic source data, interactions across touchpoints, and conversion insights.

In other words, web-based analytics tools can dissect the journey of a particular customer through and through from the very beginning to the end, making you aware of why and how every step was made and what the journey eventually led to – a conversion or a bounce.

Naturally, not all web analytics tools are the same. From enterprise web analytics tools to off-site web analytics tools to on-site web analytics tools, different tools are good for different types of analysis, but rarely for all tasks at once. As a marketer, you should spot these discrepancies to compile a winning analytics toolkit for your specific business goals.

Web Analytics Tools vs. Web Analytics Software – What’s the Difference?

For practical purposes, there’s little to no difference between popular web analytics tools and web analytics software, as both refer to a system that analyses an on-site and off-site user journey.

That said, web analytics software is almost always a comprehensive solution that unites multiple web analytics tools, each one with a narrow focus. For example, Google Analytics software includes web analytics tools for traffic analysis, user behaviour analysis, and conversion tracking.

But then again, splitting the hair might not give you any advantage. It’s much more important to clearly understand your marketing objectives and how to solve them with the available web analytics tools and/or web analytics software.

With that, it’s time for our list of top web analytics tools.

Your Best Web Analytics Tools List: Top 10 Web Analytics Tools

Google Marketing Platform – a Top-Tier Web Analytics Reporting Tool

Google Marketing Platform is the most popular suite of advertising and web analytics tools for data-driven marketing decisions, spearheaded by its Analytics 360 product, a premium version of standard Google Analytics.

Analytics 360 can unlock user demographics, location, device, operating system, and interests and integrate with other Google products and Salesforce. It is an enterprise-level paid suite of web analytics tools, with prices varying depending on the business scale and required services.

However, if you need free web analytics software, you can use standard Google Analytics, which also provides substantial web performance insights, enough for most small and medium businesses.

Google Analytics vs. Analytics 360 – Web Analytics Tools Comparison

Even though Google Analytics is missing many features that Analytics 360 provides (data-driven attribution, customer funnels, Big Query integration, unsampled reports, etc.), it still might be the best free web analytics software up your sleeve.

Matomo – the Second-Best Free Web Analytics Tool

Matomo is web analytics software focused on data ownership and privacy, allowing you to host analytics on your server for free. This unique feature alone makes the tool worth a shot, on par with the widest range of user metrics you can dig into.

The on-premise web analytics software suite is free, while the cloud-based suite costs €19 for 50,000 hits, with a hit being an instance of even tracking, viewing, downloading, making a content tracking request, or conducting an on-site search.

Mixpanel – a Suite of Free Web Analytics Tools for Event Tracking

Mixpanel is a suite of web analytics tools for tracking session-based data like sharing, downloading, uploading, and purchasing. Mixpanel doubles down on specific on-site actions, giving you an understanding of how to convert more website visitors.

Mixpanel is one of the freemium web analytics tools that includes all core user journey reports, templates, and integrations within its free version. The paid subscription plans start at $20 monthly and include advanced features like no-code data transformations, data governance control, and group analytics.

Hotjar – Free Web Analytics Software Suite

Hotjar is one of the best freemium web analytics software suites for collecting and interpreting data on how users interact with a particular website element or feature and why they interact the way they do.

Heatmaps and session recordings help you understand the mechanics of interactions better while surveys, interviews, and feedback make you aware of what users feel when they perform a specific target action.

The free subscription plan unlocks access to 35 daily sessions, automatic data capture, unlimited heatmaps, and HubSpot integration. The paid plans – €39, €99, or €213 monthly or 20% less if paid annually – unlock features like data segmentation, events API, and customer frustration signals.

Woopra – Customer Journey Web Analytics Tool

Woopra is a web analytics tool suite that measures on-site and off-site user interactions while tapping into user engagement and data unification through integrations. You can visualise the customer journey and develop an optimal reaction to every interaction at every touchpoint, whether a download, click, view, subscription, or purchase.

Here are some of the insights the web analytics tools at Woopra unlock:

• Advertising channels and on-site content that drive conversions
• How customers react after purchasing the core product
• How different traffic channels, touchpoints, and retargeting impact conversions

Woopra offers a free subscription plan so that you can get the hang of its core web analytics tools without overcommitment. The paid subscription plan costs $999 monthly, and there’s a custom enterprise-level plan for big companies.

Adobe Analytics – Web Analytics Tool from Adobe Suite

Part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Analytics offers tools for collecting and interpreting website performance and online behaviour data. The creativity software giant may not be the most logical choice for web analytics alone. Still, its synergy with other Adobe products might unlock a holistic view of the customer journey.

Adobe Analytics is a paid tool providing around a dozen software packages for different marketing goals, including sheer web analytics.

Chartbeat – a Web Analytics Tool for Content Marketing

Chartbeat provides web analytics tools for content marketing, helping you understand what content draws attention and why. You can test the performance of headlines, storeys, and other content pieces across devices and operating systems, eventually hitting the right reader with the right content.

The software integrates with Facebook CrowdTangle, Facebook Instant Alerts, and Google AMP to gather valuable off-site data, a puzzle oftentimes missing when recreating a comprehensive customer journey.

The only fly in the ointment is the subscription price. Geared towards medium and large-size enterprises, Chartbeat costs from $7,000 annually alongside a free trial.

Kissmetrics – Top Web Analytics Software

Kissmetrics is a suite of online web analytics tools revolving around user behaviour. The software analyses customer interactions in real-time, enabling on-the-fly adjustments before the user in question reaches the climax of the journey.

Kisssmetrics does what Google Analytics does, but to a greater depth and width, effectively converting leads into sales prospects into customers while reducing churn. You can see all the friction points and understand how to improve user experiences across touchpoints.

There’s a pay-as-you-go plan starting at $0.00025 per event, a monthly plan starting at $25.99 for 10,000 events, and a free trial. Paying annually saves you 25%.

Open Web Analytics – Open-Source Web Analytics Software

Open Web Analytics (OWA) is a web analytics software framework for tracking and analysing user web and app interactions. Like Matomo (reviewed above), OWA allows you to store the collected data on your own server, which grants you full data ownership and privacy.

Besides that, OWA is quite similar to Google Analytics, enabling on-page tracking, click heatmaps, geo-tracking, session recording, and more. The software is free, and you are not burdened with data storage limitations.

Crazy Egg – Web Analytics Tool for Heatmapping

Crazy Egg is a web analytics tool co-founded by Neil Patel and known for advanced heatmapping besides the standard web tracking capabilities. With heatmaps from Crazy Egg, you can find out exactly how users scrolled your webpage, where they focused attention, where they clicked, and why some decided to leave without taking action.

Unlike other web analytics software, Crazy Egg provides five heatmap reports, each one for tracking a specific user activity:

• Heatmap Report – identifying areas of activity
• Scrollmap Report – interpreting on-page movements
• Confetti Report – analysing on-site clicks
• Overlay Report – calculating the clicks on a particular page element
• List Report – calculating the total of clicks on the chosen webpages

Crazy Egg runs four paid subscription plans at $29 to $249 monthly, a custom enterprise-level plan, and a free trial.

Track Every Step of the User Journey With HitMetrix

Taking the guessing game out of your customer acquisition strategy is real – and it’s much easier than you think. Leverage Phonexa’s proprietary behaviour recording & analytics software HitMetrix, to tap into hidden web analytics and website form performance.

For a comprehensive marketing picture, you can connect HitMetrix to Phonexa’s marketing performance ecosystem within a single software package. Choose your subscription plan now, or schedule a  free consultation to learn more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are web analytics tools?
Web analytics tools, sometimes called web analytic software, track and interpret on-site and off-site user behaviour. Web analytics tools work most effectively when you’ve set a specific goal and can quantify and qualify the incoming data.

Here’s an example: you want to measure which traffic sources – organic, paid, or referral – bring more users to your product page traffic. For this, you (a) use heatmaps like HitMetrix to determine where users click and spend most of their time and (b) visualise their journey in Google Analytics to understand where these users came from.

In general, when using web analytics tools, you can find customer behaviour insights that will help you improve your sales funnel from start to finish, especially on your website.

What information can most web analytics tools tell you about a user?
Web analytics tools can tell you where users came from and how they interacted with your website before converting or leaving. More specifically, web analytics tools can unlock user demographics, psychographics, on-site behaviour, conversion insights, content performance insights, and other marketable data.

What is web analytics software?
Web analytics software is almost the same as web analytics tools, except that web analytics software is a higher-level system encompassing various web analytics tools. In practise, though, there’s almost no difference between web analytics software and tools.

If a web page visitor clears the Analytics cookie from their browser, what will occur?
Deleting the Google Analytics cookie from a browser breaks the connection: Google Analytics cannot connect the user’s current behaviour to their previous behaviour. In this case, Google Analytics will set a new ID and cookie for a new browser session.

How do I do web analytics software comparison?
Here are the parameters to compare different web-based analytics tools and software:

• Data collection type, depth (on-site data only; on-site and off-site data, etc.), and representations (reports, visualisation, etc.)
• Integrations with CRM, lead management, and marketing software
• Ease of use and the ability to store data on your server
• Data freshness: real-time or with a delay
• Scalability-price ratio

If you search for free web analytics software, you will likely have to use a freemium version or store analytics data on your server. Among the best web analytics software suites that allow you to store data on your own server are Matomo and Open Web Analytics.

Making money from a small business blog may seem like a straightforward process, but there’s more to it than just writing about a product or service and waiting for customers.

To start earning money from web content like affiliate marketing blogs, choosing the right niche and growing your audience is absolutely essential.

But wait…aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? What is a blog, and how do you blog in the first place?

In the vast digital landscape, blogs are the beating heart of online communication, the core around which proper customer relationships can be built. Blogs are gateways to knowledge, creativity, and – for aspiring bloggers – livelihoods.

Technically, blogging involves creating and maintaining a website where you publish written content, multimedia, or a combination of both. In reality, though, it’s much more than that. For devoted bloggers, blogging is all about passion, dedication, inventiveness, and a full comprehension of their target audience.

Fortunately, you’ve come across this blog monetising guide. Whether your blog is a platform for your hobbies, expertise, or creative expressions, you will learn how to unlock its full potential with this comprehensive read.

Meanwhile, let’s explore the dynamic landscape of bloggers in the United States, spanning the years from 2014 to 2020:

The first and foremost advantage of working as a blogger is…blog monetising. Affiliate marketing blog monetising can earn you huge profits, whether you’re writing how-to articles, guides, or other popular blogs.

Blog monetising involves a good niche selection, affiliate programmes, and promotional strategies. If you already have a fine free blog website, a few adjustments may transform it into an effective affiliate marketing platform.

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Whether you’re a blogger with years of experience or a beginner, welcome to the art and science of blog monetising.

How To Start a Blog and Make Money

Do you know how to create a blog for free without a plan? Spill the beans if you do, because we don’t. Any blog monetising attempt, big or small, starts with a plan.

Now, the gist of the plan is to provide clear step-by-step guidance into creating evergreen content that stands the test of time and generates new customers without or with only little tweaks. Such content may include:

• A blog post
• White papers
• Case studies

Best blogs serve as a platform for sharing information, opinions, and experiences while promoting products and services. Whether you are an aspiring actress, a serious scientist, or an athlete, you can write blogs if you feel you have value to share.

Affiliate marketing stands out as one of the most profitable blog monetising avenues, with countless affiliate marketing programmes allowing you to generate revenue by promoting products or services.

Affiliate marketing bloggers can make money writing by collaborating with famous brands and earning commissions for every successful sale or lead. Likewise, they may leverage their expertise and build trust with their audience, increasing the likelihood of purchase.

Long storey short, there are three main steps to kick things off with affiliate blogging:

1. Selecting a niche and product you are knowledgeable about
2. Choosing an affiliate programme that satisfies your expectations
3. Applying theory to practise while analysing results and adjusting down the road

Effective blog monetising needs a strategic approach, but the main ingredient to creating a free blog or affiliate blog website is your passion. The niche isn’t as important as your desire to share experience, value, and joy with the world.

That said, many affiliate blogs tap into the vast world of e-commerce for the unmatched profits the latter offers. Here are the top high-ticket affiliate marketing niches you might want to explore:

Among other affiliate marketing niches are:

• Insurance
• Finance
• Renewable energy solutions
• Online gaming
• Accessories
• Pet products
• Eco-friendly products and organic foods
• DIY guides

As a blogger, the very least you must do to start a blog for free is pinpoint a niche market and find high-value products to promote. It is key to remember that niche popularity may shift as market trends and user preferences change.

Here are some preferred blog content formats:

The next step in starting a blog is to comprehend the needs of your target audience. You need to build authority, so it’s important to create high-quality content that directly connects with people, like how-to-articles or posts about news and trends.

Bloggers also need a solid SEO strategy to attract potential customers. Professional bloggers prioritise keyword research and on-page content optimisation to drive website traffic.

When Is the Best Time To Start Making Money from Your Blog?

You need to wait until your traffic is consistent before considering blog monetising. Common sense is key — when you see a steady flow of customers, it’s a good time to begin. On a similar note, some advertisers and affiliate networks may reject your application if your audience is not big enough.

For a speedy overview of creating a blog for affiliate marketing, take a look at this video:

Six Ways to Efficient Blog Monetising

So, what is blog monetising besides moneymaking? It is a great opportunity to turn your passion for writing into a revenue stream, monetising your natural talent, unique experiences, expertise, and command over the subject.

You can’t monetise your blog overnight, but with the right methods and dedication, you have every chance to create a consistent income from your blog.

Speaking of the blog monetising methods, you may need six of them.

Let’s discover them in detail.

1. Affiliate Marketing Programmes

Affiliate marketing is a common way to generate income with blogs, a deal between businesses and individuals, where the company pays a commission to those who generate customers or sales through their marketing efforts.

Explore the average income for all affiliate marketing niches combined:

Affiliate marketing is quite a profitable and popular example of blog monetising, but you must work hard to succeed. One thing that may help you is social media, especially social media influencers. Famous bloggers bring in traffic and enhance brand awareness, often using social networks or email marketing.

How To Launch an Affiliate Marketing Blog To Earn Money From It

Here are the three steps to launch or upgrade affiliate marketers’ blogs:

1. Explore relevant offers to select the best-matching niche and product.
2. Select one or a few affiliate programmes that resonate with you.
3. Incorporate marketing strategies to improve your business: blogger SEO optimisation, affiliate link tracking, user behaviour tools, artificial intelligence, and social media ads.

The good news is that bloggers have the opportunity to work through established affiliate networks like Amazon Associates, so you don’t even have to do much to convert your blog into a money-making machine. Any popular affiliate marketing programme includes customisable creatives, software, and other things to help you generate and convert more leads.

Here’s how Amazon grew over the decades:

How To Launch an Affiliate Marketing Website To Earn Money From It

Albeit more complex than a blog, an affiliate marketing website is a great choice for aspiring and professional bloggers alike.

Cheque out the steps for creating affiliate blogger websites:

1. Pick a niche: The most profitable niches nowadays are finance, insurance, and home services.
2. Select website design: Common versions include personal blogs, business blogs, review sites, and price comparison web pages.
3. Choose hosting and a domain: Whether a traditional or cloud hosting, the most well-known and memorable domain is “com.”
4. Choose a website builder and plugins: You build a fully-fledged WordPress blog or a lightweight blog with a drag-and-drop affiliate website builder.
5. Optimise and control: When a blog website is ready, you are responsible for ongoing content creation, affiliate link tracking, and partner management. Consider using affiliate management software to streamline your efforts and maximise your results.

2. Email Marketing Lists

Email marketing is indispensable for bloggers looking to boost their blogs with monetisation. Well-thought-out email campaigns delivered to the right recipients at the right time can increase your traffic, conversions, and revenue.

The Major Benefits of Email Marketing for Blogging Sites

To tap into the full spectrum of email marketing advantages, explore Phonexa’s E-Delivery, a powerful tool to enhance the performance of your email marketing campaigns through:

• Multi-channel distribution
• Behavioural segmentation
• A/B email marketing automation
• ESP integration
• SMTP support
• Efficient list-building, and more.

With E-Delivery, you can get insights into how different email delivery services affect your performance and reach audiences through email and SMS, adding personalisation for better engagement.

But that’s not all. To keep your email list relevant at all times — a crucial component of your mail marketing success — you quality suppression list management and email cleansing, which are both incorporated into a unique Opt-Intel solution.

Among other things, Opt-Intel offers:

• List sharing
• Automated data transfers
• Opt-out domain white labelling

Opt-Intel helps you extract more value from your emails, enable efficient opt-out processing, and achieve robust data security.

3. Online Courses

The e-learning industry is becoming more popular among blogs for affiliate marketing as more people seek new skills in the ever-globalising world.

The e-learning avenue of blog monetising includes:

• Webinars
• Seminars
• Workshops
• Advisory services
• Coaching

Begin with creating a landing page on your affiliate marketing blog to offer coaching or consulting services and expand depending on what your audiences need. However, keep in mind that you must demonstrate significant expertise in your field for your practises to be considered ethical and, in some cases, legal.

4. Advertisements

Online advertising is an extremely popular blog monetising method, with Google AdSense allowing an affiliate marketing blogger to earn money through on-site or social media promotions.

That said, paid ads require substantial organic traffic to be profitable, including providing newsworthy and viral content, implementing SEO optimisation, and other rules. Alternatively, a blog creator can partner up with advertisers directly, charging a flat fee for running ads on their blog.

5. Sponsored Posts

It’s no secret that businesses pay famous blogs to create sponsored content. Sponsored posts can be effective when the blogger has a huge audience and at least some credibility. At the same time, smaller blogs might struggle to find decent offers.

If your affiliate blog is small, scrutinise all partnership offers you get. Remember, an instant buck is not worth risking your reputation. On the other hand, established affiliate blogs usually don’t have problems with affiliate marketing offers.

6. Selling Physical or Digital Products

Here are some of the physical products you can sell to online retailers:

• Ebooks
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Templates
• Checklists
• Subscriptions

Affiliate marketing bloggers must select products that align with their business goals and audience’s needs. Likewise, you can explore marketplaces like Amazon Kindle, Etsy, or dedicated platforms like Sellfy and Podia.

Core Principles of Successful Blogging for Money

Whether you’re just starting or have been blogging for a while, there are five principles every blogger should follow when writing for money.

Here’s a quick instruction on how to start blogging and perform well:

1. Focus: Choose a specific industry, niche, or topic you can consistently write about and get as much knowledge about it as possible. People return to a blog when it offers unique value and meets their needs.
2. Quality: Your content must be well-written and supported by credible sources. Don’t compromise on quality if you’re serious about turning your blog into a profitable venture.
3. Value: Invest the time to create comprehensive tutorials and informative posts with various media formats to help readers solve their problems. Value is the foundation of success in blogging for business, and it sets the stage for income generation.
4. Engagement: Evaluate how interactive your content is. The more engagement you generate, the higher the likelihood of turning visitors into customers, your main blog monetising objective.
5. Authority: If you’re already an expert, a best-selling author, or have a substantial social media following, launching a blog can quickly drive traffic.

Start Making More Money with Your Blog Now

Blog monetising is achievable with the right strategies and dedication. Explore options that align with your niche, audience, and expertise.

Whether you choose to sell digital products, physical products, or online courses, make sure to provide value to your readers while generating income for yourself. Explore all available blog monetising options, ensuring they align with your business case.

Here’s what blog affiliate marketing can grant you:

• Stable passive income
• Scalability
• Global reach
• Low entry barrier
• Diverse income sources

Remember, though, your blogging success hinges on a delicate balance of serving your audience’s needs while generating income for your business.

Increase Your Affiliate Marketing Blogging Potential With Phonexa

Affiliate marketing is trendy for promoting products and services. Phonexa offers effective automated affiliate marketing software to achieve impressive growth for businesses in various industries.

For only $100 per month, you can unlock access to:

• LMS Sync — empowering lead management system
• Call Logic — streamlined call tracking and analytics platform
• Cloud PBX — trustworthy virtual phone system
• Lynx — professional-grade click-tracking software
• E-Delivery — potent email marketing tool
• HitMetrix — uniquely insightful user behaviour analytics and CRO software
• Opt-Intel — effective email suppression list management solution
• Books360 — versatile accounting software with integrated invoice generation

Improve your performance marketing and affiliate blog monetising efforts with Phonexa’s comprehensive marketing software suite, or schedule a free online consultation to learn more about how Phonexa can elevate your blogging career.

Frequently Asked Questions

Embarking on the journey to excel in the affiliate industry can be a challenging path. Statistics reveal that only a fraction of affiliates – around one in six – manage to earn over £50,000 from their efforts, with a mere four percent surpassing £150,000. However, despite the obstacles, success is attainable, particularly if you have mastered the essential tool of affiliate marketing – affiliate link tracking.

Source: Influencermarketinghub

Your adeptness at affiliate tracking distinguishes you as a significant player in the market, whether you’re an advertiser or an affiliate network proprietor. Why is this the case? Primarily because affiliate tracking provides access to comprehensive data concerning your affiliates and marketing initiatives, placing you in full control of your enterprise. From monitoring affiliate performance to refining marketing campaigns, advanced affiliate tracking has the potential to enhance every aspect of your business. Continue reading to explore how affiliate link tracking can elevate your affiliate enterprise.

Affiliate Link Tracking: An Overview

Tracking affiliate links holds immense significance for advertisers across various industries, ranging from real estate to insurance to fashion. Link clicks represent the primary marketing metric for 83% of marketers, with 59% of them using clicks as the principal metric for monitoring affiliate programmes. Simultaneously, affiliate tracking is relatively straightforward:

An affiliate is assigned a unique affiliate link containing the advertiser’s ID, facilitating the connection between the affiliate and the purchases made by customers who follow the affiliate link.

Source: Moneymakingcrew

The mechanism of affiliate link tracking may vary depending on the tracking method and affiliate tracking software used. Nonetheless, the fundamental purpose remains consistent – to link customers with their traffic source, enabling timely affiliate payments, affiliate analytics, and more.

Source: Influencermarketinghub

The deeper your understanding of your affiliates, the more effectively you can execute your affiliate marketing strategies, whether you collaborate directly with affiliates or operate through an affiliate network.

Cookie vs. Pixel-based vs. Cookieless Affiliate Tracking

Cookie Tracking

Upon visiting a website for the first time, you are typically prompted to agree to a cookie policy. This policy collects your data to provide tailored services based on this information, including affiliate tracking.

Cookies won’t remain prevalent for much longer, as Google appears determined to phase out third-party cookies altogether. However, the extinction of cookies has been postponed multiple times already, with the latest deadline set for 2024. Cookie-based affiliate tracking operates as follows:

• When a customer clicks on an affiliate link, the affiliate tracking software deposits a cookie in the clicker’s browser. This cookie may expire – a standard cookie lasts up to 60 days – or endure for as long as necessary to fulfil the campaign’s objectives.
• Upon making a purchase on the merchant’s website, customers are assigned a unique ID tracked by the cookie. The affiliate tracking system records this ID, along with product details and associated commission amounts.
• The final connection between the customer and the affiliate is established by comparing the merchant and affiliate datasets.

As informative as cookie tracking may be, it will soon be outdated. The technology has been viewed unfavourably by the public for too long to escape Google’s decisive blow.

Pixel-based Tracking

Pixel-based affiliate tracking entails placing a tracking pixel – an invisible 1×1 pixel image – on the merchant site. This pixel gathers data, such as IP addresses, referral URLs, browser versions, and more, to gauge the website’s conversion rate. Pixel-based affiliate tracking is more precise than cookie tracking, as the pixel cannot expire or be disabled (which many customers do, having become wary of cookies), unequivocally linking the customer to the affiliate. However, pixel-based affiliate tracking can only monitor certain types of interactions – clicks, page views, purchases – while disregarding demographics and purchase history.

Cookie-Free Tracking

True to its name, cookieless affiliate tracking (also known as server-to-server tracking or postback URL tracking) enables the monitoring of conversions without relying on cookies, a significant advantage given the current cookie landscape. Here’s how cookie-free affiliate tracking operates:

1. When a customer clicks on an affiliate link – one embedded with a click ID key – they are directed through a sequence of redirects that gather customer data and transmit it to the following entities:

• The advertisment tracker
• The affiliate network or affiliate tracking platform
• The advertiser
• The landing page itself: the click is allocated to a unique ID in the landing page URL

2. Upon completing a purchase, the conversion is attributed to the appropriate affiliate or affiliate network, with the customer ID relayed back to the tracker and the affiliate.

3. The affiliate dispatches a postback, and the ad tracker validates the conversion.

Source: Offerslook

Postback URL tracking empowers you to monitor your affiliates’ performance, encompassing clicks, leads, and sales generated by each affiliate. This insight enables you to identify top performers and areas requiring support while also safeguarding against affiliate fraud.

How Affiliate Networks Acquire Generated Links

Assessing affiliate marketing efficacy is only one facet of the equation – the other is remunerating what is owed. As an affiliate network – an intermediary linking affiliates and merchants – you are responsible for receiving and disbursing payments for various measurable actions, encompassing clicks, impressions, sales, and leads.

Popular Affiliate Payment Methods

Did you miss our recent blog on pay-per-lead marketing? Cheque it out here to discover how it can enhance your business’s success and boost ROI.

The key to selecting the optimal payment model is to blend various payment methods based on the strengths and weaknesses of your affiliate network.

Source: Influencermarketinghub

Essential Link Tracking Features for Affiliate Campaigns

Whether an advertiser or affiliate, you require an affiliate link tracker – or, more accurately, an affiliate tracking system – that enables you to gather and analyse click-and-clicker data for marketing insights and integrates seamlessly with your CRM or lead management system.

Below are the four fundamental link-tracking tools you might wish to find in your affiliate link tracker, illustrated using Phonexa’s link tracking software for business:

• Deep link generator: Steering customers directly to the landing page instead of the homepage optimises the customer journey, boosting leads and conversions over time. Included in your affiliate link tracking software, a deep link generator automatically creates deep links that smoothly guide customers towards conversion.
• Tracking URL parameters: Automated URL tracking allows prompt revenue distribution and data-driven marketing decisions for advertisers and affiliate networks. The typical URL parameters to monitor include affiliate ID, campaign ID, traffic source, and keywords that triggered the purchase.
• Direct link tracking: Direct link tracking – via a tracking code embedded in a link – promptly attributes conversions and sales to the correct affiliate, ensuring the effectiveness of affiliate marketing where space for promotional content is limited.
• Redirect links: Redirect link tracking is employed when a marketing campaign incorporates an intermediary landing page or website from which the user is redirected to the offer. A common use scenario for redirect links is pre-sale campaigns, where customers are primed before reaching the product page.

In Phonexa’s affiliate link tracker, these and other features facilitate real-time affiliate tracking and analysis, bolstering your bottom line, whether as an advertiser or affiliate network.

Key Features of Affiliate Link Tracking Software

1. Holistic Campaign Overview

Advanced affiliate link tracking methods – detailed in the table below – consolidate all crucial data in one place, streamlining control over the process and freeing up resources for any tasks you cannot automate.

Advanced Methods for Affiliate Link Tracking

Comprehensive insight into your campaigns from a unified dashboard allows you to tweak automated affiliate management with minimal effort. While setting up your click-tracking software may require time, the system will quickly yield returns, saving substantial resources daily.

2. Accuracy

An affiliate marketing tracker functions adeptly, irrespective of the number of affiliates involved. The impartiality of data collection and analysis, even with an extensive affiliate base, ensures seamless scalability without concerns of software congestion.

3. Immediate Updates

Real-time reporting, an integral component of affiliate software, empowers you to respond promptly to significant shifts in the global affiliate market and within your specific affiliate network. For instance, you can quickly address the performance of underperforming affiliates, bolster successful campaigns, and incentivise your most lucrative partners.

4. Equitable and Prompt Payouts

The ability to track clicks, leads, and sales in real time – an essential feature of your affiliate marketing tracking software – facilitates accurate commission calculations. It identifies affiliates who have surpassed the payout threshold and adjusts commission rates in accordance with custom payout regulations.

5. Fraud Prevention

More than two-thirds of affiliate marketing participants have encountered affiliate fraud, from cookie stuffing to fabricated leads to deceitful transactions. Affiliate tracking software combats this through transaction monitoring, fraud score computation, validation cheques, and other anti-fraud measures.

Source: Influencermarketinghub

Phonexa’s Lynx: Safeguarding Your Affiliate Campaigns

While affiliate networks remain popular, they confront substantial competition from SaaS platforms, and for good reason.

Firstly, proprietary software can cater to your entire spectrum of marketing requirements by seamlessly integrating with a CRM or lead management platform. For instance, Phonexa’s Lynx seamlessly incorporates LMS Sync into a comprehensive lead management system that encompasses marketing from A to Z.

Secondly, affiliate networks sometimes offer limited incentives to maximise advertisers’ revenue, compelling the latter to focus on their top affiliates while deriving minimal benefits from the broader pool of affiliates within a specific network.

Source: Influencermarketinghub

In-house management of affiliate programmes is gaining traction, but this does not diminish the value of solutions like Phonexa for affiliate networks. On the contrary, affiliate networks can harness SaaS affiliate marketing solutions to enhance their overall performance, empowering their affiliates with greater marketing capabilities and ultimately enhancing their ROI.

Tips for Scaling Your Affiliate Campaigns

1. Maintain Continuous Market Research, Regardless of Your Achievements

With affiliate marketing spending witnessing a steady annual increase of 10%, it’s evident that the affiliate marketing landscape is becoming more competitive by the day. Therefore, it’s imperative to persistently conduct market research. Even if you’re an experienced marketer, staying updated with the affiliate market is vital for identifying potential gaps and opportunities for growth.

2. Strategically Grow Your Affiliate Network

While it might be tempting to establish an affiliate network and let it run its course, it’s crucial to take a proactive approach: nurture your affiliates as you would your leads. You’re likely to encounter familiar challenges, such as understanding your affiliates’ motivations and re-engaging inactive affiliates.

• Discover affiliate marketing tools for your business.

Here’s how you can maximise the value of your affiliates:

• Define your ideal affiliate: Clearly defining or redefining your ideal affiliate groups is essential for understanding how to expand and scale. Imagine your affiliates underperforming due to mismatched creative materials without your awareness. Defining your ideal affiliates is crucial for recruiting the right affiliates and providing them with appropriate marketing support.
• Continuously attract new affiliates: Utilise your online presence, such as your website, blog, social media platforms, and forums, to promote your affiliate network while offering incentives like competitive commissions, exclusive marketing materials, and comprehensive data analytics.
• Provide ongoing support to your affiliates: Maintain regular communication, offer data-driven feedback, and promptly address any queries or concerns. With 83% of customers prioritising good customer service, your affiliates will be more inclined to stay if you demonstrate responsiveness and insightfulness in addressing their needs.
• Conduct split-testing of campaigns: A/B testing your advertising campaigns enables you to assess your efforts and determine which ad copies, CTAs, and landing pages yield the best results.

3. Promote Your Unique Selling Proposition

While you may possess several advantages within your offer, it’s essential to identify your unique speciality — the irresistible incentive that sets you apart from competitors. This could be anything your rivals lack, such as a two-tier affiliate programme or exceptionally low commissions. Offering an additional tier in your affiliate programme can yield various benefits, from attracting more new affiliates to boosting sales volume and motivating both existing and new affiliates.

Grow Your Affiliate Network With Phonexa

Phonexa offers a comprehensive solution to enhance affiliate click tracking alongside lead management, email marketing, and click and call tracking, all integrated within a single software suite. This synergy is designed to expand your affiliate network effortlessly, leading to continuous profits.

Schedule a consultation to explore how Phonexa’s click-tracking software seamlessly integrates with other Phonexa solutions to elevate your affiliate business. Secure your tailored marketing software suite today and boost your profits in affiliate marketing.

Frequently Asked Questions

What qualifies as a favourable affiliate commission?

The suitability of an affiliate commission varies depending on whether one is an advertiser, an affiliate network owner, or an affiliate.

• Advertisers aim to pay minimal commissions while receiving high-quality traffic.
• Affiliate network owners strive to secure maximum commissions from advertiser-affiliate agreements.
• Affiliates aspire to receive substantial commissions for the traffic they generate.

What is link cloaking in affiliate marketing?

Link cloaking involves transforming random letters and numbers into meaningful words representing the link’s content. Despite the potentially negative connotations, link cloaking is a legitimate practice aimed at making affiliate links more appealing to potential customers. The prohibition of link cloaking by certain affiliate programmes, such as Amazon Associates, does not render this practice malicious.

What is click fraud?

Click fraud involves deliberately clicking on an affiliate link to generate income within a pay-per-click affiliate payment model. This fraudulent activity encompasses creating fake accounts, employing automated scripts, and utilising third-party platforms to mimic genuine website visitors.

To combat click fraud:

• Establish protocols for affiliates to report suspicious activities.
• Monitor for excessive clicks originating from the same IP address.
• Implement click filtering to eliminate irrelevant clicks on affiliate links.

Additionally, consider diversifying your affiliate partners, as relying solely on one partner is not advisable, or setting limits on the amount of money per click/day/etc.

Software automation is what most businesses need to optimise such sales processes as tracking leads and routing them.

It is no secret that lead generation is all about numbers. And that is why process automation is a surefire way to manage lead distribution effectively. Lead gen tools can help enterprises boost their revenues and expand reach with powerful analytics like ping tree technology and predictive insights.

This article will guide you through the fundamentals of the ping post process and explain how lead sellers, customers, and buyers can make the most of it.

Ping Tree Technology Explained

Let’s start with the terminology first. So what is a lead? And what does it have to do with a ping tree?

A lead can be generated through an online form, a landing page, and any ad campaign. Simply put, leads are prospective customers. Once they fill out a form or call a number displayed on an ad, leads are validated and sent to the lead management platforms.

Ping tree can also be called a marketplace that strategically connects prospective consumers looking for specific services with businesses offering such services.

Utilising this technology implies getting access to lead distribution software. In a nutshell, it allows finding a perfect match. It means that a potential lead buyer can choose to purchase a lead based on particular criteria or pass. This process is ongoing up to a point when a business decides to acquire the lead.

Ultimately, ping trees help enterprises simplify the process of selling data in real-time and maximise the value of leads for sellers and buyers.

Key Advantages

#1. Breathing new life into your leads

With this technology, enterprises can distribute leads to multiple buyers and set their price points. That is an excellent way to add value to the declined organic leads and find numerous buyers.

#2. Increasing revenue

Apart from providing the opportunity to set the price, this technology enhances the likelihood of finding specific buyers and choosing from several options when selling leads. This way, the marketplace becomes even more competitive.

#3. Improved purchasing power

Lead buyers gain more authority when it comes to optimizing their acquisition costs. They also get access to the network of buyers, which implies sustained demand.

#4. Numerous opportunities for consumers

Lead routing is as crucial for customers as it is for businesses. It offers them countless opportunities to connect with specific companies where their needs are more likely to be met.

#5. Shorter wait times

Ping trees help enterprises reduce response time and connect them with businesses in a more efficient way.

What Is a Ping Post Software?

Ping post allows sending partial information about the leads, a.k.a. a ping, to the buyers.

Pings can include a geographic location, answers to specific questions, or personal information like a mobile number or email. Once buyers receive the ping, they evaluate the information received and decide whether these leads are worth buying.

Phonexa offers its clients an opportunity to optimise their buying processes, manage multiple lead sellers, and minimise the time required for setup through its ping post lead distribution software. Phonexa ping post software allows gaining control over both buying and selling.

Here is how it works:

• Buyers receive fragmentary lead information
• They choose to accept the offer or pass
• Sellers send partial lead information to multiple buyers
• The auto-optimising algorithm finds the best fit for every lead
• Both parties benefit from maximised profitability and lead value
• Consumers get to enjoy the most suitable services

A user-friendly design of the software removes the typical barriers associated with complex algorithms and technologies. It means that features and commands are intuitive, which, in turn, allows clients to make fast adjustments, automatically accept or reject any offers, and scale their business.

Make data-driven decisions a priority and schedule a consultation with Phonexa’s experts to find out more about the ping post software features.

If you’re using Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or any other pay-per-click platform to drive traffic to your webpage, you know how expensive traffic can be and how little room there is for marketing errors that result in financial loss.

But imagine what would happen if you had a tool integrated with the rest of your marketing tech stack that provides you insights into conversion rate optimisation (CRO) by leveraging real-time user behaviour data and web analytics that help you with the actionable insights you need to improve conversions.

Finding a wholesome tool that supplies all those demands is challenging, but with Phonexa’s HitMetrix, you can now grow your business with an improved CRO, eliminate fraud, identify friction points, and take necessary action to improve your campaign outcomes.

Actionable Analytics: No More Digging Into Extensive Screen Recordings & Heatmaps to Identify Friction

With HitMetrix, the days of watching hours of screen recordings and manually vetting issues and friction points are far gone. While still offering heatmaps and session recordings as additional tools to look deeper into web page performance, HitMetrix approaches conversions with strategies to support publishers, leadgen professionals, and conversion rate optimisation specialists.

This behaviour recording and analytics tool also gives website owners access to a simply navigated yet extensive data set that can be overlaid with other marketing metrics to improve conversion performance.

Here’s what supplies this 360-degree view:

• Friction Insights & Evaluation: Track any action that causes friction, including click rate, click-error, bounce, speed-browsing, mouse-out, and mobility.
• Session Replay Software: Videos are archived for review, allowing you to track behaviour analytics, tendencies, and frequencies to identify frustrating sessions for fixing.
• Usability Testing: Understand when visitors get stuck and drop out during the conversion journey.
• Click Tracking: Discover which components of your marketing funnel capture attention that translates into clicks.
• Activity-Tracking: Leverage the real-time changes to the data that analyses your conversions and tracks every step of how leads turned into conversions.
• Screen Recording & Session Replay: Archived videos that back your data and review them later to track behaviour, tendencies, and frequencies in visitor behaviour.

The value proposition here is simple — maximising conversions with a tool that gives complete visibility into fraud, friction, and other measurable data and making your site compelling to visitors and beneficial to your conversion rate optimisation efforts.

Use web analytics through HitMetrix like a pro to grow your lead generation with a powerful yet easy-to-use tool that is native to your current lead management system. Learn more here. 

A CRO Tool as Part of Your Marketing Tech Stack

HitMetrix sets itself apart from competing products on the market with its ability to pair and be fully integrated with seven core marketing automation tools within the Phonexa platform.

And you’d be missing a key piece of the puzzle if you didn’t wonder where HitMetrix sits with the rest of your automation stack.

While powerful alone, HitMetrix is most effective when used with other Phonexa products to optimise conversions resulting from calls, leads, clicks, email, SMS, and more.

The benefits are unmatched. Here’s how HitMetrix works with other key players within the Phonexa platform:

HitMetrix & LMS Sync

What if you knew just about everything about your lead traffic? When you pair HitMetrix with LMS Sync, you can activate an all-encompassing view into fraudulent lead traits, insights on user behaviour, and more.

HitMetrix & Call Logic

Do you have a business that’s more call-focused? Add HitMetrix to your website that drives call traffic to unpack what exactly causes call conversion.

HitMetrix & Lynx 

Gain campaign clarity when you track the clicks on your paid campaigns with direct links to landing pages within your website. Add HitMetrix to the equation to measure conversion rates and evaluate the return on your ad spend (ROAS).

These solutions embody a marketing powerhouse that fully supports your website’s conversion rate optimisation and lead generation efforts when working together.

HitMetrix for the Win

Current Phonexa customers already know the value of running all of their leadgen efforts through one comprehensive solution. HitMetrix has been that missing piece in the puzzle, the cherry on top, for those wanting to optimise conversion rates as an added layer of certainty to the rest of their marketing.

With HitMetrix, these desires are a mere reality as the product is driven by a fully-integrated and self-sufficient automation platform that does the job of eight separate ones. HitMetrix is a part of that bundle, so you never have to worry about lengthy integrations and inactivity caused by singular third-party tools.

Power your leadgen and conversion rates with one centralised platform that converges your data, insights, and campaign ROI to shape winning strategies for your overall business.

Are you a current Phonexa user unsure of where HitMetrix can jump in with the rest of your marketing efforts? Click here to learn more about the tool that can help you gain a 360-degree view of your conversion rate optimisation. 

New to Phonexa but curious about HitMetrix?  Schedule a consultation to learn more about how HitMetrix and the rest of the Phonexa suite can help you centralise your efforts in one place.

Today, the central tasks for any marketing or sales team are to drive quality website traffic, convert visitors into qualified leads, move these leads down the conversion funnel, and persuade them to complete the desired actions. But that’s just part of the effort required to ensure sustainable business growth. 

Many businesses are looking to make the most of their existing website traffic and inbound leads instead of focusing exclusively on bringing in new visitors. That’s where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) comes into play. 

Companies that focus their marketing efforts on CRO strategy development and behavioural targeting can uncover information that lies beneath cold statistics, like how visitors interact with a given website, what events precede the completion of conversion goals, and what impacts user activity and overall conversions.

In this short guide, you’ll learn about the importance of developing a CRO strategy and why your company needs to concentrate on improving its conversion rate (CR).

What Is CRO, and Why Is It Significant?

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is a process that involves tweaking the elements of your web resources — your website, its product pages, landing page optimisation, etc. — to boost conversion rate and increase sales.

Conversion is an analytics metric that shows the proportion of visitors who took the desired action following a marketing campaign or effort. The targeted actions may differ depending on the industry and your business’ marketing goals. Any valuable action like a phone call, sign-up, purchase, form fill, or app download can be reported as a conversion. 

The frequency of such actions reflects how well your website, landing page, or app performs and gets your target audience to complete these actions.

The CRO process improves the probability of visitors completing the desired action by utilising user behaviour analytics (UBA) and a conversion rate optimisation tool. Such tools and solutions help companies determine the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives, highlight areas that require improvement, and deliver the best user experience (UX).

Let’s take a closer look at the four essential CRO elements that help businesses increase their chances of converting more visitors, leads, and customers and boost their sales.

Source: Slideteam

Companies equipped with a CRO analyser, like Phonexa’s HitMetrix, can leverage advanced web and user behaviour analytics tools that offer complete visibility and actionable insights in real-time on conversions, friction events, fraudulent activities, and more.

Utilising HitMetrix and other products from Phonexa’s suite of marketing automation solutions — such as the all-encompassing lead management system, LMS Sync — can be a game-changer for those looking to streamline the user journey, improve conversion outcomes, and leverage user behaviour analytics tools.

When used in tandem, HitMetrics and LMS Sync arm product managers, CRO experts, and UX designers with customer satisfaction scores, usability testing, visualised heatmaps, and friction insights. Ultimately, these solutions help businesses activate a comprehensive view of their leadgen tactics, user behaviour, lead traits, the conversion funnel, and other extensive data sets.

Mastering Conversion Rate Research and Analysis

The purpose of conversion rate analysis is to help marketers reveal the most effective copy and web resources used for promotion, tap into insights from heatmaps and user recordings, and assess the impact of the hypothesis on conversion during the A/B testing process. 

But businesses must remember that a lot happens before conversions take place. Therefore, companies must also assess and identify specific marketing drivers, obstacles, and hooks that precede the final and most valuable action and outcome.

Here are the steps you need to take and questions you must ask to optimise your conversion-driven web assets effectively:

• Identify marketing drivers: What compels your target audience to visit your website? Understand what drives users to your app, landing or product pages, and website to ensure that they stop at specific touchpoints and successfully proceed to make a purchase.
• Outline the obstacles: What prevents your product or service from gaining traction among users? Tap into user behaviour analytics, statistics, and lead tracking data to discover why users leave.
• Determine marketing hooks: How can you grab the attention of prospective customers and convert them? Pay attention to how your brand communication works. Examine how you build customer relationships, leverage hard data, and discover why your target audience behaves the way it does.

Conversion research also entails watching exactly what visitors do on your website. This way, you can identify the blind spots in your efforts, like page elements that visitors find hard to use.

The CRO tools can come in handy at this stage as well. In addition to user behaviour recording, utilising HitMetrix heatmaps and click tracking solutions, like Phonexa’s Lynx, can help you get clarity on paid campaigns and landing pages within your website and uncover content, images, or CTAs that can drive more clicks.

Those equipped with such solutions can rest assured that their website’s conversion rate optimisation and lead generation efforts work together seamlessly to drive the best results. 

Nonetheless, marketers also have to do the work and look for ways to keep the business running. One of the ways to achieve this mission is CRO strategy development.

How CRO Marketing Programs Work

A CRO marketing program — otherwise known as a CRO plan or strategy — analyses all potential obstacles that precede targeted actions. The plan’s ultimate goal is to optimise web assets and increase conversions.

As mentioned before, companies need to understand the principal drivers that prompt and convince visitors to go to their website and help them convert website traffic. If you base your marketing efforts on assumptions instead of identifying specific drivers, that might be the reason behind declining conversion rates.

Let’s examine in more detail what marketing and sales teams should focus on when developing a CRO marketing plan.

Concentrate on UX & Personalization

Regardless of the source — whether a Google search or a simple recommendation — that brought visitors to your website, you must implement link tracking solutions like Lynx, make an effort, and focus on carefully mapping user experiences and prioritising the personalisation of your brand messages.

Build a Conversion Funnel

Building and analysing a conversion funnel is one of the finest ways you can develop a comprehensive CRO strategy and program. It allows for identifying users who end up on the final conversion point, as well as those who bounce and at which stage they left.

It’s crucial to ensure that a prospective client’s engagement or experience with your brands is detailed and carefully plotted. As a marketer, you must set goals for the top, middle, and bottom stages of the sales funnel, and carefully track user behaviour to optimise and generate more interest and traction.

Here are a couple of examples of the customer flow through the conversion funnel:

• eCommerce website homepage → product page → shopping cart → checkout → success page
• Lead magnet → valuable guides, assets, offers, or entertainment → landing page with a gated form → thank you page

Get Customer Feeback

Obtaining a clear picture of what efforts require more of your time and resources and what you should stop doing is the most efficient way to convert more of your website traffic and future visitors.

Building feedback loops and launching post-purchase surveys and re-engagement flows can help businesses identify the top issues, fears, objections, and marketing hooks. 

Here are some examples of questions you can ask your customers in a post-purchase survey:

• Did you find all the items you were looking for?
• What stopped you from purchasing today?
• How would you rate your overall experience with (the name of your brand)?
• Was the checkout process simple for you?
• What is the one thing you would improve about the shopping experience with (the name of your brand)?

Leverage Split Testing

After building a case and determining the changes and adjustments you need to apply, the most impactful ideas, hypotheses, and solutions should be tested. This way, you can understand if tested changes can affect user behaviour and have a short or long-term impact on future conversions.

Check this short guide on running A/B tests and increasing conversion rates.

Naturally, the optimisations and changes you implement in pursuit of conversion rate optimisation can positively or negatively impact user behaviour, UI, and UX. Therefore, expanding on the thought that user behaviour data matters in the CRO process is essential.

The Importance of User Behaviour Analytics (UBA)

Since the central goal of conversion rate optimisation is to convince existing and new users to visit a website, open an email, sign up for company news, or download an app, businesses need to find ways to understand how they can transform visitors into paying customers.

User behaviour analysis and customer behaviour modelling (CBM) help brands systematically accomplish this goal.

Source: Cooladata

Analysing and predicting customer behaviour are equally important. These processes offer tangible advantages to marketing teams, including a streamlined conversion process, the opportunity to discover and capitalise on specific user behaviour patterns, essential information to develop models that work, and insights that help avoid mistakes and pitfalls in the future.

Many businesses also use behaviour data to segment and target customers based on their behavioural patterns. After all, behavioural marketing is the key to higher engagement, increased conversions, and positive customer experiences.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the role of conversion rate optimisation in digital marketing?

CRO is the process of increasing the number and percentage of website visitors who take targeted actions like making a phone call or signing up for newsletters.

Why is conversion rate optimisation important for sales and marketing teams?

CRO is important for several reasons. It helps companies save money and bring in more high-quality website traffic, increase conversions, and boost sales. Ultimately, CRO optimises the user experience, fosters business growth, and improves revenue per visitor through actionable data. 

Where can I get data on user behaviour?

Depending on the industry your company operates in and your business goals, you can use Google Analytics if you’re looking to get a better understanding of what happens on your website. Additionally, companies often use tracking, distribution, and CRO solutions like Phonexa’s suite of marketing automation products featuring singular solutions like HitMetrix, LMS Sync, and Lynx.

When used together, the three provide a 360-degree view of any conversion flow, from the moment a prospect clicks on a link on the search engine, to the moments they’re exploring your website, all the way to the second they click and become converted customers or more interested prospects. 

What kind of tools are used for conversion rate optimisation?

Businesses use multiple CRO tools like heatmaps, customer satisfaction scores, form builders, friction insights, split testing, and many more unique tactics to gain actionable data and visualised reports into the consumer journey.

Schedule a consultation with one of Phonexa’s experts to learn how our marketing automation solutions like HitMetrix, Lynx, and LMS Sync can help you build a CRO strategy, track user behaviour, and convert more leads into paying customers.