How to add a new campaign
To add a new campaign, navigate to Campaigns>Maintenance. Click on "Add New Campaign" and then click the plus sign for "Create Standard Campaign". Follow the menu bar starting with "1. General Info".
1. General Info
Start by entering the basic campaign information. A red star indicates information required to be able to move to the next screen.
Internal Name: Campaign name seen by internal network - in Campaign Maintenance, Reports, etc.
External Name: Campaign name seen externally - in Affiliate Portal, etc.
Abbreviation: Optional field for WAP Interface.
Advertiser Name: Advertiser that campaign will be grouped under for billing/accounting & reporting purposes; add new advertisers under Advertisers>Maintenance if needed.
Campaign Manager: Assign a campaign manager to include campaign in manager's groups and reports.
Description: Shown in Affiliate Portal to provide affiliates campaign information; use plain text or add HTML for special formatting.
Extra Notice: Provide affiliates additional campaign details, or anything else to make their job and yours easier!
Marketing Channels: Designate traffic accepted - email, search, display, mobile, pop, or all.
Campaign Visibility: Determines affiliate's ability to see and/or request approval for campaign. After creating the campaign, easily manage the Campaign Visibility details by adding or removing individuals or affiliate groups under Campaigns > Maintenance with the "Affiliate Approval" icon
Check out the gear icon!
Located in the menu bar, where custom groups for campaign organization and traffic management can be created.
Campaign Visibility Types:
Auto Approve: All affiliates can see and are automatically approved for campaign, but can be removed with the "Affiliate Approval" icon.
Private: Only affiliates you select will be able to see campaign; they are automatically approved to run.
Request: Select which affiliates can see the campaign - all or specific groups and individuals. Affiliates that see it can request approval. Approve them if they're a good match!
2. Commission & Reporting
Currency: Shows affiliate the currency they'll be paid. HitPath does not do real-time currency conversions, and therefore only one currency can be assigned to a campaign and cannot be changed after the campaign is created. Request other currencies from HitPath Support if you don't see the one you need.
Stats: Tells affiliate how quickly sales data will refresh. Pixeled offers can be left as Real-Time or type in other frequency if data might have a lag.
PPC Campaign: Select "Yes" for Pay Per Click campaigns. PPC campaigns don't need a pixel placed with the advertiser as HitPath will fire the pixel from your server - all sales will have the same IP Address in reports because of this.
Multi Sales: This is used whenever an advertiser is going to allow multiple sales upon a single redirection or Hit ID. For example, education offers where the end user needs to fill out multiple forms and the advertiser is going to pay for every form that is filled out. If "Yes" is selected, the advertiser will need to fire the pixel with a unique transaction ID for each sale related to a single Hit ID. If the same transaction ID and Hit ID are sent twice, the sale will be counted as a duplicate.
Payout Type: Use "Static Payout" for campaigns paying a set amount for each conversion, with "Payin" for amount received from advertiser and "Payout" for amount to pay affiliate. Use "Variable Payout" when the advertiser pays you a different amount each sale, and you pay the affiliate a percentage of that. For variable payout campaigns, the advertiser must include "ate=", amount to earn, in the pixel followed by an actual amount for the transaction. The amount can be encrypted using "Encrypted Payin" under Advertiser > Maintenance.
Unit of Measure: Tells affiliate what will need to happen for the offer to convert and pixel to fire - sale, click, card issued, etc.
Events: Multi Sales campaigns will have "Events" available, providing the ability to create different payable actions for a single campaign. Events allow you to record multiple pixel fires per Hit ID and be notated and paid separately according to the amount assigned to that event. At the affiliate level, each event may have a separate third-party pixel placed and/or be overridden to pay that affiliate a different amount for that event. Contact HitPath support to help you set up events!
PPC status cannot be changed after campaign is created.
Multi Sales status cannot be changed after the campaign is created.
Payout Type cannot be changed once the campaign is created.
3. Links & Redirection
When the status is set to redirect the traffic, the campaign will have an "Alternate Redirect", another campaign where traffic from active expired, paused, or cancelled campaigns can be sent. If using an alternate redirect, choose the campaign that you will redirect the traffic to, and whether to pay the affiliate by using "Pay Affiliate" selections. If you choose to pay the affiliate, the affiliate that drove the traffic will receive credit for the traffic, as well as the clicks and sales. If you select not to pay the affiliate, your Admin Account ending in "001" will display the clicks and sales on reports for the residual traffic. Checking the box to "Copy Approvals to the alternate campaign" enables traffic redirected to reach the new campaign. The "Show Affiliate" selection determines if the campaign will still appear in the Affiliate Portal while paused. If set to "Yes", affiliates will still be able to see the campaign, but it will have a red "Paused" notation and they will not be able to access campaign materials. If set to "No", affiliates will no longer see the campaign in their affiliate portal. "Pay on Suspension" covers whether the affiliate gets paid in the event that the user is directed to the landing page before the campaign expires or cancels, but the conversion happens after the campaign is suspended.
Redirect To: Defines where you want the campaign's traffic to go - the landing page. The link needs to follow proper structure such as http://hitpath.com You cannot just enter hitpath.com as the link for the offer. Use the Macros you see underneath to insert values such as the Hit ID, Affiliate ID, or Sub ID values (C1, C2, or C3) from the system dynamically to be passed to the advertiser in the URL. Please review the HitPath Mechanics tutorials for the best ways to set these links up for the most accurate tracking using the Hit ID.
Allow vanity domains to bypass primary domains: If you have a vanity domain, you can decide at a campaign level to have secondary redirectors bypass the network's primary redirector (affiliate.yourtrackingdomain.com) during the redirect process. Contact HitPath Support for more info on how to use this!
Conversion Page Secure: Use this flag to force third-party pixel URL's to use the HTTPS protocol. If you know that the conversion page of the offer is going to be secure and affiliates are going to be placing their own pixels, always set this as "Yes" so that we always fire the affiliate's pixels as secure even though they may have placed a non-secure pixel.
Alternate Landing Pages: Set additional landers for the offer, and assign weights to rotate them. It is grayed out when you are setting the campaign because this can only be added after the campaign is created. See the tutorial "Landers" for more info!
Passthrough: Pre-populate the advertiser's landing page with data collected by your affiliates. See the tutorial "Passthrough Groups" for more info!
Mask Ref URL: Prevent the advertiser from seeing the affiliate's referring URL.
Campaign Statuses:
There are 4 types of campaigns which are as follows:
Setup/Test:
Use Setup/Test to test the offer without making it visible to affiliates. It's great to use when the offer is being tested or is Auto Approve but not ready to launch. Setup/Test is only available when first creating the campaign.
Active:
When you're ready to launch an offer and make visible to affiliates, set it to Active! Enter an expiration date for the offer or leave the lifetime as indefinite. Expired campaigns can either send the residual traffic to a dead page or an alternate redirect.
Paused:
Use this to temporarily redirect traffic to the alternate redirect.
Cancelled:
Use this to cancel the offer and send the traffic to a dead page or an alternate redirect.
4. Geo Targeting
Targeting define what countries, states, IP addresses, and devices reach the campaign's landing page. If the traffic is redirected to a different campaign, both Geo and Device Targeting have options for "Pay Affiliate". See the gear icon plus the tutorials for "Country Groups" and "Device Routing Groups" for more details on targeting.
Geo Targeting: Based on the IP address, you can direct traffic from different locations to optimize your effectiveness!
No Routing: Lets all IP addresses reach the campaign's landing page.
Single U.S. Route: Allows traffic for a single or group of U.S. states to be accepted or denied, with all other U.S. traffic being routed to a second campaign and the ability to route international traffic to yet another campaign.
Single Country Route: Set all traffic from a single or group of countries to be accepted or denied access to the landing page.
Multi Country Route: Create a rule to send different countries to different campaigns, with any traffic not directed through the rule directed to the main landing page for the campaign.
Device Targeting: This neat HitPath tool allows traffic to redirect based on the device they are clicking from. Optimize mobile, tablet, and desktop traffic!
5. Duplicate Control
Duplicate Control is an important part in determining how a campaign counts unique clicks and redirects non-unique clicks. When a user clicks a campaign link, HitPath attempts to drop a cookie on their browser. For as long as that cookie is set to live, the same user, when clicking the same campaign link will not be counted again as a new click for the campaign. This method mitigates situations like when one user clicks the campaign's link multiple times in a short period. This keeps your click volumes from being artificially inflated and your conversion percentages from being artificially depressed.
None: Counts every click as unique. Please be informed that you should only use this setting if you are sure you want to assign a unique Hit ID every time a campaign link is requested, regardless of whether the user has accessed the campaign before.
Default: Use this setting to restrict the user to only generating one click per a session. Add a length of time for the cookie to exist after the session, by using the Cookie Persistence time setting - the added time starts when the session ends and the user cannot generate a new click until that length of time has passed.
Strict IP: HitPath checks to see if a user from the same IP address has already passed through the system and created a sale. If the IP address is a duplicate, thus, has already created a sale, the user is redirected to an alternate campaign or URL. This is mainly used for Pay per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Click (CPC) campaigns. "Whitelist Dial-Up Proxies" allows IPs listed as dial-ups to be counted multiple times.
Cookies: HitPath checks to see if a cookie can be successfully placed before redirecting to the campaign's landing page. When the cookie option is enabled and a user does not accept cookies, they are redirected to an alternate campaign or URL. If you are relying on cookies to track, use this method to avoid missing a sale.
When sharing an offer with another network, informing them about the cookie lifespan you've employed will minimize discrepancies between your reporting and theirs. If you do not own the landing page, you should attempt to match your setting to the advertiser's to ensure there are as few reporting discrepancies as possible.
6. Suppression
HitPath offers list-based suppression management, meaning that if an advertiser provides the same list for multiple offers, you only have to upload the suppression file once.
None: Assigns no HitPath suppression list for the offer. This is used for display offers where no suppression will be used. Please note that if you do not assign a suppression list, you will not be able to upload email creatives.
New List: Gives you the ability to create a new list for the offer. Generally, you'll create a new list for a new offer for a new advertiser. Lists are either MD5 - which are encrypted - or plain text. If the file provided by the advertiser is an MD5 file, the list will need to be defined as an MD5 list at campaign level. If the advertiser is providing you a plain file, but you want affiliates to only access encrypted MD5 files, you can still set the list to be MD5 to keep it encrypted. Additionally, you can use affiliate settings to define at affiliate level what type of file a particular affiliate must use, if you need to restrict that affiliate.
Unsub Link: Use this if an advertiser provides you with a specific unsubscribe link. If this field is left blank, HitPath will generate an unsubscribe link and host a page for you. The link will be available in email creatives and affiliate links.
Unsub Email: If HitPath hosts your unsubscribe page, a default email address is displayed. However, a different email address can be published on a campaign basis on the unsubscribe page hosted by HitPath.
Unsub Postal: If HitPath hosts your unsubscribe page, a default postal address is displayed. However, a different postal address can be published on a campaign basis on the unsubscribe page hosted by HitPath.
7. Review
Reviewing all campaign settings before saving the campaign is very useful as some settings cannot be changed once a campaign is saved. We recommend double-checking items from section "2. Commissions & Reporting" for Currency, PPC Campaign, Multi Sales, and Payout Type (payout amounts and percents can be changed later but static or variable settings cannot).
8. Extras
After creating the campaign, there are some additional settings that you can set up for the offer.
Automated Alerts: Define what alerts will be sent to affiliates when the campaign status changes.
Campaign Pixel: Place a Universal Pixel to be fired every time a conversion occurs for the campaign. These pixels will not indicate the traffic source, and therefore should not be used for affiliate pixels.
Campaign Icon: Place an image to display on the affiliate portal for the campaign. The smaller icon will appear on the list while the bigger icon will appear when the affiliate rolls their mouse over the smaller icon.
Categories: Place this campaign in a group of similar campaigns to facilitate affiliates finding it in the affiliate portal (diet products into a "Diet" category, etc).
