In the first article, we explored the fundamental aspects of Keitaro and its significance in modern digital marketing, focusing on its innovative tracking features. In this second part, I will delve deeper into the practical implementation and detailed benefits of using Keitaro as a unified performance tracking solution for all your paid marketing campaigns.
1. The Role of a Unified Performance Tracking Solution
1.1 Ability to Control/Monitor Performance of All Traffic Sources in One Place
A unified performance tracking solution like Keitaro allows marketers to centralize the monitoring of multiple traffic sources. This consolidation is crucial for efficiency and clarity, enabling you to oversee your entire digital marketing landscape from a single dashboard. Whether it’s PPC, social media, or native ads, you can track and compare their performance seamlessly.
1.2 Ability to Evaluate Technical Quality of the Traffic
Keitaro’s robust tracking capabilities extend beyond just counting clicks and conversions. It helps you differentiate between real users and bots and identify the geographical authenticity of your traffic. This ensures that your marketing budget is spent on genuine, high-quality traffic that is more likely to convert.
1.3 Ability to See the Gross Revenue Right Away
With properly configured postbacks, Keitaro enables immediate visibility into the gross revenue generated by your campaigns. This real-time revenue tracking is vital for making quick, informed decisions to optimize your campaigns on the fly, ensuring you maximize your return on investment.
2. Preparations for Campaign Setup
2.1 Setting Up a Domain for the Tracker and Why You Need It
Setting up a dedicated domain for Keitaro is crucial for maintaining brand consistency and ensuring seamless redirections. A custom domain enhances user trust and provides better tracking accuracy since all campaign-related activities are linked to a domain that represents your brand. Below, we’ll walk through the steps to set up your domain, including DNS configuration.
Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Your Domain:
- Configure DNS Settings:
- Log in to your domain registrar’s dashboard.
- Locate the DNS management section.
- Create an A record pointing to the IP address of your Keitaro server. This connects your domain to Keitaro’s server.
- Type: A
- Name: @ (or leave it blank to denote the root domain)
- Value: [Your Keitaro Server IP]
- Optionally, set up a CNAME record for subdomains if needed:
- Type: CNAME
- Name: [subdomain]
- Value: @ (or your domain name)
- Verify Domain Propagation:
- Use a tool like “WhatsMyDNS” to check if your DNS records have propagated. This might take up to 48 hours.
- Configure Keitaro with Your Domain:
- Log in to your Keitaro dashboard.
- Navigate to the settings and find the domain configuration section.
- Enter your new domain and save the settings.
- Test Your Setup:
- Once the DNS changes have propagated, visit your domain to ensure it correctly redirects to your Keitaro tracker.
- Check the SSL certificate (if using HTTPS) to confirm it is properly configured.
By following these steps, you will have a dedicated domain for your Keitaro tracker, enhancing your brand’s credibility and ensuring accurate tracking of your campaigns.
2.2 Adding Traffic Source Template: How and Why
Keitaro simplifies the process of managing multiple traffic sources by allowing you to create templates for each source. These templates standardize settings like parameters and postback URLs, reducing setup time and minimizing errors.
Step-by-step guide (Taboola example):
Open Traffic Sources tab, then press Create.
Traffic source settings
- Template. Check if the tracker already has a traffic source as a template (there are many templates ready, in the example, Taboola was used)
- Name. Traffic source name.
- S2S postback. In the case of the Taboola template, the S2S postback is already populated. You will need to update it with your ID and parameters such as Event Names. (For more information about postbacks, read the official Keitaro documentation here).
- Send only statuses. Select the conversion statuses you want to send to the traffic source (not every template has this option; a specific example explains Taboola’s set-up).
- Parameters. More info about Campaign Parameters here
2.3 Adding Landing Pages on the Site of Keitaro
Keitaro offers multiple ways to integrate landing pages, catering to different campaign needs:
- Local: Hosting landing pages locally on Keitaro’s server for faster load times and better control.
- Redirect: Using redirects for situations where hosting is done externally but tracking is managed by Keitaro.
- Preload: Preloading landing pages to enhance user experience and reduce bounce rates.
For detailed setup instructions, refer to Keitaro’s documentation.
2.4 Using Flows for Split-Testing
Keitaro’s flow settings allow for advanced split testing (A/B testing). You can create multiple paths for your traffic to determine which combination of landing pages and offers yields the best results. This is crucial for optimizing conversion rates and maximizing ROI. Additionally, flows can be configured to pass subids to destination URLs, ensuring accurate tracking of user journeys and conversions.
Example:
After creating a campaign, navigate to flows to set up your final destination
Add your URL which you want to test
Then, repeat this same setup with the other URL that you want to A/B test.
Now, we will have two URLs, allowing us to perform A/B testing.
3. Setting Up the Campaign
Setting up a campaign in Keitaro involves creating a new campaign entry, configuring traffic sources, landing pages, and offers. Detailed steps can be found in Keitaro’s campaign setup guide.
For a quick guide, see below.
Campaign Creation Steps:
- Domain Selection:
- While creating the campaign, choose the domain from the list of domains you added previously.
- Alias:
- The alias will be created automatically; no need to modify it.
- Adgroup:
- Set up the adgroup as you would for any advertising platform. Ensure it reflects your hierarchy setup to allow for quick access to statistics.
- Source:
- If you have created a source before, you can select it from the list. If not, simply create a new one.
- Flows:
- Set up flows that represent your final URLs.
I am not using the rest of the setup, just keeping those as default.
Save your campaign settings, and finally go to the “Integration” section. Here, you can find your campaign URL, which you can now use across advertising platforms.
4. Setting Up the Postbacks
4.1 Why Postbacks are Needed
Postbacks are essential for tracking conversions accurately. They notify the tracker about user actions like leads, sales, or rebills, enabling real-time revenue and performance analysis.
4.2 Implementation for Leads, Sales, and Rebills
Tracking Use Case #1 – Lead
- User clicks the link in the ad ( example: https://start.example.com/mpRQ72Js )
- After the click platform marks user with specific tracking id (‘subid’) and redirects to the destination url (example: https://www.example.com/advertising-landing/?subid=18pmudr4s3rr&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=trials )
- If ‘subid’ parameter is kept during the user journey on the side of the destination website – upon successful conversion (lead) website should do a postback call to the following url – example: https://start.example.com/02da311/postback/?subid=18pmudr4s3rr&status=lead
- After postback is triggered – on the tracker side record associated with specific subid is marked as a ‘lead’.
Tracking Use Case #2 – Sale
- User clicks the link in the ad ( example: https://start.example.com/rQSx2nNn )
- After the click platform marks user with specific tracking id (‘subid’) and redirects to the destination url on the store side (example: https://store.example.com/checkout/product1?subid=355r0pp5i01f )
- If ‘subid’ parameter is kept during the user journey – upon successful conversion (sale) store should do a postback call to the following url – example: https://start.example.com/02da331/postback/?subid=18pmudr4s3rr&status=sale&payout=15.73¤cy=EUR
- After postback is triggered – on the tracker side record associated with specific subid is marked as ‘sale’ with the financial value.
Tracking Use Case #3 – Upsell
- If ‘subid’ parameter is kept during the user journey and the same customer decided to make 2nd extra purchase – upon successful conversion (upsell) store should do a postback call to the following url – example: https://start.example.com/02da331/postback/?subid=18pmudr4s3rr&status=sale&tid=1&payout=10.52¤cy=EUR
- After postback is triggered – on the tracker side record associated with specific subid is marked as ‘upsell’ with the financial value.
Requirements
- ‘subid’ should be carried through the whole funnel till the moment the postback is fired ( e.g. session / as GET parameter in the url )
- postback call can be made via frontend ( e.g. js call triggered by ‘thank you’ page load) OR via backend ( on background, without dependency on customer actions, e.g. conversion fact from the biller triggers postback call)
- Format of postback url:
Postback Parameters
- subid (required) – tracker click identificator. Used by the tracker to understand which click to record the conversion.
- tid – Transaction ID. The identifier of the serial number of the target action. For example tid=2 means a second deposit from one player or the purchase of additional training course materials by a person who has already purchased the main material. This is an indication of an additional sale.
- payout – Amount of conversion payment.
- cost – Conversion cost for CPA and RevShare cost models.
- status – Conversion status ( see Conversion Statuses for details)
- currency – Payout currency (usd, eur, etc.).
- return – Return custom success message. For example, with &return=OK Keitaro will show ‘OK’.
Conversion Statuses
‘status’ parameter values and definitions:
- lead – Payout is not confirmed. The income on such conversions is displayed in the Revenue (hold) metric.
- sale – Payout is confirmed. The income on such conversions is displayed in the Revenue (confirmed) metric.
- rejected – Payout is cancelled. The income on such conversions is displayed in the Revenue (rejected) metric.
- rebill – Tracker has received a new transaction on subid, already recorded as Sale conversion in the tracker. For example, a repeated deposit. When receiving a unique transaction identifier in the &tid= placeholder in the postback, the tracker reports such conversion as a Rebill. Income from such conversions is summed up in the Revenue (confirmed) metric, in case Rebill is turned on in the offer settings.
Hostnames to use for postback calls
| Hostname | Brand |
| start.example.com | example |
5. Reporting
5.1 Capabilities
Keitaro offers a robust suite of reporting tools designed to provide in-depth insights into your campaigns. These tools help you monitor traffic quality, conversion rates, and other key metrics, enabling data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing efforts.
Types of Reports:
- Traffic Reports: Analyze traffic quality and sources to optimize performance.
- Conversion Reports: Track conversion rates to identify successful campaigns.
- Financial Reports: Monitor revenue, costs, and ROI.
Keitaro provides extensive filtering capabilities to refine traffic flows. Filters can be combined using “AND” and “OR” operators, allowing for granular control. You can apply filters based on attributes such as date, time, geolocation, device type, browser, operating system, and more. Additionally, filters can be set to include (“IS”) or exclude (“IS NOT”) specific criteria, ensuring precise targeting and optimal campaign performance.
Example Filtering Options:
- Traffic Source: Direct traffic based on the source (e.g., Source IS Google OR Source IS Facebook).
- Keyword: Target specific keywords used in campaigns (e.g., Keyword IS “summer sale” AND Keyword IS NOT “winter sale”).
- Referrer: Include or exclude traffic based on the referrer URL (e.g., Referrer IS NOT spamwebsite).
- IP Address: Filter specific IP addresses or ranges (e.g., IP IS 192.168.1.1 OR IP IS NOT in 192.168.1.0/24).
- Connection Type: Target users based on their connection type (e.g., Connection Type IS Mobile Network).
- User Agent: Specify user agents to include or exclude (e.g., User Agent IS NOT “bot”).
- Click Limits: Set limits on the number of clicks (e.g., Limit clicks to 100 per hour).
- Campaign ID: Filter by specific campaign IDs (e.g., Campaign ID IS 12345).
These robust filtering options help in accurately segmenting and directing traffic to achieve the best conversion rates.
5.2 Conversions – Specifics Related to Delayed Conversions
Keitaro can handle delayed conversions by keeping track of subids over extended periods. This is particularly useful for campaigns where conversions don’t happen immediately, allowing you to accurately attribute sales or leads that occur days or even weeks after the initial click.
5.3 Ability to Add Costs Manually
To ensure your financial metrics are accurate, Keitaro allows you to manually add costs associated with different campaigns. This feature helps align your reported revenue with actual expenditures, providing a clear picture of your ROI.
By leveraging Keitaro’s unified performance tracking capabilities, marketers can gain a comprehensive understanding of their campaign performance, optimize their strategies in real time, and ensure every marketing dollar is spent effectively. Whether you are managing multiple traffic sources or conducting advanced split-tests, Keitaro provides the tools and insights needed to succeed in the competitive world of digital marketing
Conclusion
By leveraging Keitaro’s unified performance tracking capabilities, marketers can gain a comprehensive understanding of their campaign performance, optimize strategies in real time, and ensure every marketing dollar is spent effectively. Whether managing multiple traffic sources or conducting advanced split-tests, Keitaro provides the tools and insights needed to succeed in the competitive world of digital marketing.
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