We feel that the best way to be successful in marketing is to have a quick feedback loop where actionable data is at your fingertips. With this in mind, we have held top-notch reporting as one of the cornerstones of the Genius Link service.
Curious where your clicks are coming from? Which link is earning you the most, or what types of devices are best at converting a click to a sale? With raw data streaming in from three different sources we've sliced, diced, and polished it into four data points on seven different metrics across three levels of granularity so that we've got you covered to answer the important questions to keep you moving forward and earning more.
Metrics
Raw data is useless until it's formatted and presented in a way that allows you to gain insight and leads to actionable steps. We feel the type of metrics we provide do that, and we are continually building and refining them to make them even better. So far we have:
Geography - Where in the world does your traffic come from? Use this information to focus your efforts in the places that make the most sense.
Tracking Tags - Adding a tag to a link allows you to view things such as marketing campaigns, link placement, or the creative assets used. Using tracking tags in conjunction with geni.us links and groups gives you multiple ways to organize your marketing efforts.
Referrer - The Referrer metric lets you know where on the web your traffic is coming from so you can learn which sites/referrers are worth the effort.
Browser, Device, Operating System - With a combination of these three metrics you can learn what types of systems are clicking your links and optimize your products accordingly.
Product Type - Since there are different types of products inside the iTunes and Amazon ecosystems, this metric helps keep you on top of which ones are getting attention.
Destination - If you have advanced rules configured, use this report to see which destinations your users are actually ending up in.
Language - You can view your customers' preferred languages, in order to learn more about your audience and better target them in the future.
Data Points
Digging even deeper for each of the above-mentioned metrics, Genius Link provides insight with these four data points:
Clicks - Total clicks show how interested and engaged your audience is. Although it may not result in a commission, a click means the person wanted to at least learn more.
Commissions (iTunes Only) - A total of how many commissions you've earned shows how profitable your links are.
Earnings Per Click (EPC - iTunes Only) - This ratio of commissions divided by clicks measures how efficient your marketing is at creating sales.
Relative Conversion (RCS - iTunes Only) - A conversion score, is a measure of how effective your marketing is at promoting a specific item. This is incredibly useful for clients marketing their own content and is described in more detail below.
Granularity:
Each of the above metrics, and data points, can be viewed in three different levels of granularity, from the general overview, all the way down to the specific performance of an individual link.
Account-level - A heads-up overview of your account as a whole. Get a snapshot of your entire set of links.
Groups level - Links can be organized into “groups” so that you can keep track of specific campaigns (I.E. All links in a campaign for a single album, app, or from a team), and the metrics associated with them.
Links level - Find out how an individual link is performing. See where geographically the link is getting clicked, individual EPC, or a graph of how many clicks per time period that item is seeing.
Conversion Tracking
Matching a click to the sale of a specific product has long been a challenge with affiliate marketing for iTunes and Amazon for a few different reasons. Each of the affiliate programs lacks a key component to easily have 100% confidence and currently, there is no easy fix for either program.
To help our clients combat this challenge, we have launched our iTunes conversion tracking that uses a variety of data points from a click, the link, and the info reported from the affiliate network. We use a healthy dose of statistics to analyze the likelihood of a conversion for you.
Please note that this measurement is not an absolute value, and is best used to compare metrics, but does provide significantly better insight. More details can be found here.
Knowledge is Power
Geniuslink is fully committed to turning data into information and each day brings us closer to the goal of providing truly actionable reporting. Giving you the best platform to make informed decisions is just good for business and we aim to offer some of the best insight you'll find anywhere.
Check out the reports for yourself. If you run into any snags along the way or have any suggestions on how we can make your life easier, please let us know!
A few additional notes about sales/commission reporting:
This is currently only available for the iTunes affiliate program. To enable commission reporting, please follow these steps.
Once you've input your security token for your affiliate program(s) it may take up to an hour for the data to start populating. Depending on how much data you have, it may take a full day to grab everything. If you don't start to see information after that time, please let us know.