A thorough insight into SubID Tracking for Affiliates

In Affiliate Marketing, the way you optimize your content to pave the wave for conversions play the most important role in your profits. So you should learn how to follow and test your affiliate content logically for timely adjusting. This is the time you need SubIDs for in-depth data tracking. Read this blog to understand what a SubID is and see how it can help you take your Affiliate marketing business to the next level!

1. What is a SubID?

A SubID exists as a query parameter you add to the end of an affiliate link that helps you track additional data. The purpose of SubID tracking is to allow you to add extra data to your affiliate link, which is then recorded alongside each commission that occurs as a result of a click on that link. Moreover,  a SubID attached to your affiliate link also helps you get more insight into what links/products convert best, as well as where your visitors are coming from.

2. What does a SubID look like?

A SubID is a part of the URL that’s placed at the very end of the string. In most cases, a SubID will look like this:

You can use SubIDs for the following content:

• Segment leads
• Optimize campaigns
• Improve conversions
• Cashback
• Location on a page (top, article, bottom, etc...)
• Calls to action
• Type of page (reviews, overview, price listing, etc...)
• Keywords / Ads
• Sources (Organic, PPC, Email, etc.)
• Sub-Affiliates
• etc...

The SubID will also allow you to improve your knowledge of the performance of a page or an affiliate link by calculating its EPC for example. Affiliate EPC is one of the most important metrics in affiliate marketing. It determines the output of your marketing efforts or, in other words, the amount of money you’re capable of earning with every single affiliate link.

Calculating your EPC will allow you to decide with more confidence whether a product is worth the effort, that is, whether it can generate the desired amount of profit. 

3. How to use SubID?

To use SubID, you will have to add a parameter to your link: https://example.com/product?parameter=value

parameter: you will find this parameter for each network on this page

value: your personalized value, for most affiliate networks you have characters restriction.

“Awin (Affiliate Window)”

You can use 6 SubId per link with 50 characters maximum: clickref, clickref2, clickref3, clickref4, clickref5, clickref6

Here is an example with Awin: http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?

awinmid=111&awinaffid=222&clickref=myheader

“Effiliation”

You can use 2 SubId per link with 255 characters maximum: effi_id, effi_id2

Here is an example: http://track.effiliation.com/servlet/effi.redir?

id_compteur=111&effi_id=myheader

“eBay Partner Network”

You can use 1 SubId per link: customid

Here is an example:

https://www.ebay.com/?

mkcid=1&mkrid=1111&siteid=71&campid=1234566&customid=myheader&toolid=10001&mkevt=1

“Performance Horizon”

You can use 1 SubId per link: pubref

Here is an example:

http://prf.hn/click/camref:11111/pubref:myheader

“ShareASale”

You can use 1 SubId per link with 255 characters maximum: afftrack

Here is an example:

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?

b=111&u=222&m=333&urllink=&afftrack=myheader

“Impact Radius”

You can use 3 SubId per link and 1 SharedId:

subId1: alphanumeric, 64 characters

subId2: alphanumeric, 64 characters

subId3: alphanumeric, 32 characters sharedid: string, 32 characters

Here is an example:

https://trackingdomain.net/c/mpid/adid/campaignid?subId1=myheader&u=url

“Daisycon”

You can use 3 SubId per link: ws

Here is an example:

https://ds1.nl/c/?si=xxx&li=zzz&wi=eee&ws=myheader&dl=url

“Rakuten (Linkshare)”

You can use 1 SubId per link with 72 characters maximum: u1

“Commission Junction”

You can use 1 SubId per link: sid

Here is an example: https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/1234546/type/dlg/sid/myheader/https://www.website.uk

“Webgains”

You can use 1 SubId per link: clickref

Here is an example:

https://track.webgains.com/click.html?wgcampaignid=123456&wgprogramid=1233456&clickref=myheader&wgtarget=https://www.website.com/

“Affiliate Future”

You can use 1 SubId per link: tracking

“TradeDoubler”

You can use 2 SubId per link with 64 characters maximum: epi and epi2

Here is an example:

https://clk.tradedoubler.com/click?

p=46&a=123456&epi=myheader&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwebsite.xom%2F

“Adtraction”

You can use 1 SubId per link: epi

Here is an example:

https://track.adtraction.com/t/t?

a=123&as=123&t=2&tk=1&epi=myheader&url=https://www.website.com/

“Flexoffers”

You can use 1 SubId per link: fobs

Here is an example:

https://track.flexlinkspro.com/a.ashx?

foid=&&&&foc=1&fot=22&fos=1&fobs=myheader&url=ur

“Netaffiliation”

You can use 1 SubId per link: argsite

Here is an example:

http://action.metaffiliation.com/trk.php?

mclic=AAA&redir=url&argsite=myheader

“Partnerize”

You can use 1 SubId per link with 100 characters maximum: pubref

Here is an example:

https://prf.hn/click/camref:123456/pubref:myheader/destination:https%3A%2F%2Fwebsite.com%2F

“Tradetracker”

You can use 1 SubId per link with 255 characters maximum: tt

Here is an example:

http://www.wwww.nl/tradetracker/?tt=11_11_111111_myheader&r=url

“Amazon”

There is no possibility to add SubID to an Amazon URL anymore

4. How affiliate SubIds work

Now that you have created an affiliate link and set the desired SubID parameter, it’s time to embed this link on your website or share it across your social networks (or the places you market your product). Every new click on the affiliate link is reported to the advertiser by the SubID parameter and directed to the advertiser’s website where they can make a purchase.

The affiliate network you’re using will show the corresponding SubIDs in your reports, along with the conversion data. From this, you can know which content type or link led to conversion. You can analyze this data to determine the most effective strategies and thus optimize your affiliate offers for better conversions.

Conclusion

The base of any good marketing campaign is strong tracking capabilities and sub-campaign tracking is one of the strongest tools in the affiliate industry for upping your tracking game! Although it is quite technical to implement this procedure, affiliates shouldn’t ignore it. You could get an IT expert to assist you or automate the tracking with typical software such as Affilimate.com, Strackr.com, or LinkTrackr.com,...