Marketing Cloud now enables ClickBank’s affiliate marketers to initiate their own native integration between their Marketing Cloud account and their ClickBank affiliate account.
Video: Maropost-ClickBank Integration for Affiliate Marketers
What’s the Need for a Separate Integration?
Previously, affiliate marketers didn’t have access to customer information due to data privacy rules and, thereby, were unable to use the ClickBank integration that passes the customer information in real-time when a purchase is made. Without access to the Marketing Cloud features that come with integration, they could only insert the ClickBank marketplace HopLinks into their email campaign and promote the products without knowing which customers have purchased the product or whether their campaign strategies are effective.
Considering this, Maropost and ClickBank took the initiative to build new tracking parameters with advanced tracking capabilities that can help affiliate marketers get insightful data on the orders and campaigns that are driving the purchases. The ClickBank integration for affiliates (known as "ContactPass") enables affiliate marketers to set up a connection between their ClickBank and Marketing Cloud accounts and receive the tracking information.
For more information on setting up and configuring a ClickBank integration for a seller and affiliate, refer to our Integration with ClickBank and Adding a ClickBank Integration articles.
How Does It Work in Marketing Cloud?
When sending an email to your contacts, insert Marketing Cloud’s Contact ID and Campaign ID tags in your ClickBank HopLink. These labels help you identify which email campaigns have driven the most commission revenue and which email lists are more valuable than others.
Next, you must append the tags as web analytics query parameters while drafting email content. Either insert these tracking parameters for all emails at once (globally) via Settings > Web Analytics Query Parameters or for specific emails (locally) by visiting the query parameters section in the Advanced tab while configuring an email campaign. To learn more about adding tracking parameters to your email content, read our Web Analytics Query Parameters article.
Ensure you copy the exact syntax of both the query parameter names and their values as shown in the following table:
Name | Value |
|---|
contact_id | {{contact.id}} |
campaign | {{campaign.id}} |
Whenever a contact visits a merchant's website and makes a purchase, ClickBank reads the contact and campaign ID and sends the order data payload to the affiliate’s Marketing Cloud account via an INS webhook. As the contact and campaign IDs are only used to identify the buyer and the email campaign, no sensitive data is passed to the ClickBank affiliate.
Note: The ClickBank affiliate integration must be set up and active for the feature to work.
Benefits of Integrating a ClickBank Affiliate Account
Since the affiliates have the contact information for every purchase, they don’t need to send bulk campaigns to every contact in the list. They’ll only need to identify contacts that have purchased certain products and send them personalized campaigns accordingly. This enables affiliate marketers to utilize various promotional tools that Marketing Cloud has to offer to help them reach their desired sales target.
- Segment-based campaigns: Allow affiliate marketers to use past purchase history to send more relevant and highly engaging promotional content to the correct audience, thereby increasing the chances of a sale conversion. Learn More.
- Journey-based campaigns: Affiliates can create multiple journey paths and determine end goals depending on the actions the contacts undertake during the campaign. The end goals can lead to an increase in subscriber count, an increase in website traffic, maintaining retention rates, and selling additional offers to keep contacts on the journey cycle for much longer. Learn More.
- Product recommendations: By acquiring such order-based information, affiliates can have a better understanding of what consumers want and can cater to their needs more effectively. For example, they can send curated lists of promotional campaigns containing similar product offerings that the contacts may be interested in buying. This keeps the audience engaged, and it could lead to a less popular product resonating well with the target group. Learn More.
- Efficient and goal-oriented marketing initiatives: No longer does the affiliate have to think about only one aspect of marketing, i.e., customer acquisition. Henceforth, affiliates can focus on customer retention and satisfaction, plus find ways to bolster their marketing outreach more cost-effectively, which can help decrease their contact list churn and significantly increase their revenue in the long term. Learn More.