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Syncing conversion data with email systems
Syncing conversion data with email systems
Zeno avatar
Written by Zeno
Updated over 6 years ago

Here's a simple situation many marketers encounter:

Traffic > FunnelFlux > Some landing page > User fills opt-in (email usually) > post-submit redirect to affiliate network or some offer you don't control

In this scenario it can be very useful to not only pass conversion information to FunnelFlux, but also to your email system so that contacts can be tagged as converted.

This is not readily doable with FunnelFlux alone as modifying contact information in the email platform usually requires an API, or their own goal tracking e.g. with Javascript.

There are thus two ways to do this:

  1. Place goal tracking from the email system at your affiliate network or offer conversion page as well. This is possible if such tracking exists, you can place it, the offer allows for client-side tracking, and so on

  2. Figure out a way to have a single postback URL fire conversions to FunnelFlux and tag people in your email system.

Here I want to cover an example of both.


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Approach 1: Use Native Email Conversion Tracking

Some email systems will have their own tracking systems, usually javascript based, for tracking conversions of visitors.

These can be useful, however keep in mind that the email system will only be able to connect the dots if the user has been tracked before and identified in their system.

For example:

  • You may have used an opt-in form from the provider, they submitted their email/name, and so the javascript tracking can identify this person as that specific contact when they convert (i.e. cookies available)

  • Alternatively, they may have clicked a link in an email to go to some page which has your javascript tracking on it, and the referral from the email allows the JS to know which contact has been sent to the page.

  • Lastly, you may be able to populate email in the JS code directly, e.g. by passing it in the URL and retrieving/using it in the page code

In each case the expectation is that you have already interacted with and tracked the user, thus this method may not be ideal for situations where you redirect someone straight after a custom opt-in and onward to a page you do not have much control over.

Example: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has site and event tracking. Site tracking is a basic JS code embedded on your website that will track user page views provided ActiveCampaign knows who they are -- i.e. they have been added as a contact and have clicked a link in an email, submitted some form, etc.

Provided these conditions are satisfied, their site visits will be logged. Because of this, you could add the tracking JS to your offer conversion page, then use a URL filter in an ActiveCampaign automation to trigger some action.

To do this you would need to add your tracking JS:

<script>
var trackcmp_email = '';
var trackcmp = document.createElement("script");
trackcmp.async = true;
trackcmp.type = 'text/javascript';
trackcmp.src = '//trackcmp.net/visit?actid=25269080&e='+encodeURIComponent(trackcmp_email)+'&r='+encodeURIComponent(document.referrer)+'&u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
var trackcmp_s = document.getElementsByTagName("script");
if (trackcmp_s.length) {
trackcmp_s[0].parentNode.appendChild(trackcmp);
} else {
var trackcmp_h = document.getElementsByTagName("head");
trackcmp_h.length && trackcmp_h[0].appendChild(trackcmp);
}
</script>


In a situation where you pass the user's email in the URL to the affiliate network, you could also directly inject this to improve chances of tracking. E.g. if email was passed under an s5 parameter:

<script>
var trackcmp_email = '##s5##';
var trackcmp = document.createElement("script");
trackcmp.async = true;
trackcmp.type = 'text/javascript';
trackcmp.src = '//trackcmp.net/visit?actid=25269080&e='+encodeURIComponent(trackcmp_email)+'&r='+encodeURIComponent(document.referrer)+'&u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
var trackcmp_s = document.getElementsByTagName("script");
if (trackcmp_s.length) {
trackcmp_s[0].parentNode.appendChild(trackcmp);
} else {
var trackcmp_h = document.getElementsByTagName("head");
trackcmp_h.length && trackcmp_h[0].appendChild(trackcmp);
}
</script>


Once you have this tracking in place, you would need to do two things to perform actions in ActiveCampaign:

  1. Whitelist the offer conversion domain so that tracking will be allowed

  2. Create an automation that triggers based on the URL of the offer conversion page.

#1 can be done on the settings > tracking area where you retrieve the JS code.

#2 can be done by creating an automation, then adding a "Visits a Webpage" start action with details:

Once added, you could set any downstream actions such as adding a tag or setting a custom field to converted = YES, or any combination thereof:

This method is particularly useful and easy if you own and control the domains where conversions/tracking are happening, e.g. a Shopify store.


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Method 2: Postback URL Handling

The more reliable option that is less dependent on emails systems, but requires more specific development, is using server-to-server conversion tracking and passing data to multiple systems.

This is best achieved by passing Visitor ID, with the token {visitor-id}, from FunnelFlux and onward to your landing page, email system and network.

By logging the visitor ID with the opt-in form as a hidden field and also passing to the downstream affiliate network, you allow for cross-referencing of these ideas and changes to the email system based on conversions happening with the network.

Consider the following flow of information and events:


In this situation, you will need to create a PHP script (or similar) that receives information from the network, passes on to FunnelFlux as usual for postback tracking, then connects to the email system API.

When connecting to the email system API the goal is to look for users having some specific visitor ID in a custom field -- the data you previously set when the user submitted your form.

This is not possible with all systems and depends on the available APIs, and of course your developer and their approach to the matter.

As an extra layer to make this approach easier, during email opt-in submission you could log details to a local database. Then, when the postback happens, you could look up the visitor ID in this database, find the corresponding email and then use this email as your identifier when connecting to an email system's API for updating of the user details.

This approach is more robust and compatible but does require additional storage of information on your end, e.g. a local MySQL database. However, this should be quite straightforward for a developer regardless of programming language used.

Note: it is recommended to use Visitor ID for this as you cannot control the hit ID that is going to be sent from FunnelFlux to the network for conversion tracking -- remember these IDs are per node that the user is hitting, so the hit ID for the offer node does not exist prior to the opt-in/redirect happening, thus cannot be logged locally. The visitor ID is persistent to the visitor/session and thus should be used as your cross-reference point.

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