Affiliate Tracking and Reporting

Share Results is a neutral third party, dedicated to providing accurate affiliate marketing solutions and personalized service. We do three things:

• Build comprehensive affiliate tracking software that lets merchants, outsourced program managers and agencies manage their own affiliate programs or networks.
• Offer affiliate program management services
• Run the Share Results affiliate network, which is home to retail, family, women and education affiliate programs.

The Share Results affiliate network runs on the same software that we develop for merchants who want to run their own independent affiliate programs or networks. For more information about how we maintain our transparency please visit Network Transparency.

How does Share Results Make Tracking Transparent?

The full breakdown of the system looks something like this:

• An affiliate generates their link code from the Share Results software and places it on their site.
• A customer visits the affiliate's site and sees the affiliate link. Share Results records this view of the affiliate link as "impression" in the affiliate's reports.
• While on the affiliate's site, the customer clicks on the affiliate link. The click on the link is recorded by Share Results and displays in the affiliate's reports.
• A cookie is placed on the customer's computer. This cookie contains the affiliate's unique identifier: the site ID.
• The customer arrives at the merchant's site and makes a transaction.
• Once the sale has been completed, the merchant uses a tracking pixel embedded in their webpage to transmit the sale information.
• The transaction data is paired with the data stored in the customer's cookie to verify that the customer was indeed referred by an affiliate.
• The transaction is then posted in pending status so the merchant can review its validity based on their own internal requirements.
• Once the merchant approves the transaction, the Share Results software calculates commission and the sale is reported to the affiliate in the various affiliate reports available through the Share Results affiliate software interface.

The Share Results software uses both the customer ID and order ID as safeguards to allow merchants to easily identify transactions in the system and reference them with the same transactions in their own sales database. The software lists each transaction with customer and order IDs and commissions are not calculated until the merchant has approved the transactions.

The Division of Tracking

When it comes to your affiliate tracking, some steps are taken care of by the merchant, and other steps are taken care of by Share Results. Below is a breakdown of who is responsible for what in this process.

What Share Results Tracks

Share Results is in charge of tracking the impressions and clicks for your affiliate links and the affiliate information that is stored in a Share Results cookie. We do this in real-time, because the technology we use lets us know immediately when an impression or a click for an affiliate link has been generated.

Share Results is also responsible for thoroughly testing that the tracking has been properly installed on a merchant's site before an affiliate program goes live in the network.

What Retail Merchants Track

Merchants working with Share Results need to make sure:

• That the Share Results tracking pixel is embedded in all relevant pages.
• That correct and relevant information and transaction data is posted to Share Results as the transaction is made.

Important Notes:

• If upgrades or changes are made to the merchant's site, the merchant is responsible for making sure the relevant tracking codes are correctly installed.
• It should be noted that merchants do have the option to send sales data in batch files instead of posting data using a pixel. For more information on this option, please see "Getting the Data" section.

Generally, transaction data is posted to Share Results by the merchant using a tracking pixel through a secure connection. This type of tracking allows Share Results to offer real-time transaction reporting to merchants and affiliates, and is perfect for tracking one-time purchases or recurring purchases.

Some merchants prefer to send transaction data to Share Results using batch files instead of posting data. The main difference would be that batches of transactions are sent at regular intervals instead of individual transactions in real-time. This type of transaction reporting is perfect for awarding recurring commission to affiliates or reporting large volumes of transactions.

A merchant who uses batched-transaction reporting sends this data to us regularly through a secure connection. Then, the data is imported and appears in the affiliate reports, allowing affiliates and merchants to see leads, sales, and any other transactions for the previous day.

Typically merchants can choose to send batch files hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly depending on the volume of transactions that need to be processed.

Because we are a third party, we put special emphasis on the testing process before a merchant goes live with a Share Results-powered affiliate program. After the merchant implements the tracking on their site, here are the steps that we follow:

• Create an affiliate link, click through it, and check to see that there is a relevant Share Results cookie on the computer, with relevant tracking information.
• Complete a transaction on the merchant's site
• Check that the sales data for this activity is reported
• Check that commission is calculated as expected.

The Share Results team reviews merchants' accounts on a daily basis and conducts random tests to ensure a merchant's pixel is still in place. As a general rule of thumb, we encourage our affiliates to test campaigns when they set up merchants for the first time.

If your affiliate links aren't tracking, there are a few likely reasons why. Share Results breaks them down here.

Affiliates Changing Their Tracking Code

One very common reason for tracking problems is that affiliates alter tracking links. It's important that as an affiliate, you use the tracking code exactly as it appears when you copy it from the Share Results system. If you make changes to the code, it may not track properly.

Merchant Data Issues

From time to time, merchants may experience difficulty sending us complete or accurate transaction data. When this happens, we work with the merchant as closely as possible to see if we can assist in solving the issue. Our primary aim is to ensure that affiliates using our software are getting the reporting they need to maximize their marketing efforts, so it's in our best interest to assist our merchant partners whenever we can. However, it is important to note that if upgrades or changes are made to the site, the merchant is responsible for making sure the relevant tracking codes are correctly integrated.

Delays in Transferring Data

Occasionally, a merchant will not be able to send us their latest batch transaction data on time. The Share Results team checks the stats daily for all the affiliate programs in the network, so we will contact the merchant as soon as we notice that we are missing stats for a particular affiliate program, in an attempt to get it and display it to affiliates as quickly as possible.

Being a transparent affiliate network and affiliate software provider is important to us, as it allows us to offer complete affiliate marketing solutions to both our affiliates and merchants. We're happy to answer any questions you may have about tracking and reporting in the Share Results affiliate software. Call us anytime at +1 514 849 8595 to speak to one of our affiliate managers, or send us an email at info@shareresults.com.