In affiliate marketing, the term “Integration methods” refers to integrating the link from an affiliate site into a publisher’s website. The so-called integration is a way of connecting your site, shopping cart, or payment gateway with the affiliate system so that it can be informed about the referrals and purchases.
After the notification, the affiliate system registers the click, lead, sale, or any other action performed on a site and finds the exact partner who referred to this action and issues the commission for each action performed. Basically, that’s an essential stage of setting up an affiliate program, that allows to set up the campaign correctly.
As a rule, the integration methods imply adding a few tracking code lines to your initial page code, that help to set up the correct tracking algorithms. With these codes written, your affiliate system can easily track the clicks, sales, and leads until you set up the additional conditions for the affiliate campaign.
There are two integration steps to consider for the affiliate marketing campaign:
- Clicks tracking – system tracks all the referrals that happen after the user clicks on any affiliate link or banner and goes to your site.
- Sales / Leads tracking – system issues the commissions for the referred orders.