Merchants - 4 Ways to Implement Affiliate Phone Tracking

[Linda Buquet]

A few days ago I blogged about <a href="http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/3439/affiliate-leaks.html">affiliate leaks</a>. Well the biggest and most obvious "leak" is a big toll-free number on the merchant's site.

Many merchants feel the need for the phone number for customer support and order questions, but some don't think about the demotivating affect it can have on their affiliate sales channel. Many affiliates simply won't work with merchants that don't have phone tracking set up. They deserve to be paid for the traffic they refer that converts to a sale - even if it's done over the phone!

I often get calls from merchants who realize this and want to implement phone tracking for affiliates - they just aren't sure what options there are & how to do it. Here's a good post that explains 4 ways affiliate phone tracking can be done.

<strong><a href="http://christianaffiliatemarketers.com/how-to-deal-with-toll-free-numbers-on-merchant-sites/">How to deal with toll free numbers on merchant sites</a></strong>

One of the age old conflicts in affiliate marketing has pitted merchants who place phone numbers, especially toll free ones, on their sites. Affiliates see this as a source of potential ?leakage? or a means for the merchant to generate sales that can?t be associated with their referral.

Some networks and software solutions are proactive about this in one of 4 ways:

Story lead via Geno on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/eprussakov">@eprussakov</a>

 

[roxieerich]

I guess if we're going to implement the same phone tracking for business then we have to make it as concealed as possible from merchants.