What are affiliate smartlinks? This tutorial will help you find out everything you want to know: what they are, how they work, and why you need to use them.
Smartlink has become a buzzword in affiliate marketing over the last few years. Multiple platforms offer smartlinks to their clients. But what is smartlink?
Indeed, there is no standard definition of the term, and it might mean something different from one platform to another.
If we stick to the literary sense, smartlink is a particular type of link in affiliate marketing that selects a relevant offer for the user based on their technical information (e. g. GEO, device, operating system, or connection type).
Each person who clicks on the link sees a specific offer that falls into their interests.
It’s interesting! To set up your smartlink, you need to sign up for a smartlink affiliate network, i. e., an affiliate network that provides smartlinks. Overall, the process of setting up is simple and doesn’t require specific knowledge or skills.
Thus, smartlink solutions are truly smart, which results in generating more revenue, maximizing ROI for the users, and improving KPI for the traffic.
So How Exactly Does It Work?
A smartlink is a remarkable tool in affiliate network’s inventory. It allows accessing a variety of different offers through the same tracking link.
Offers, in turn, are classified by categories called verticals, allowing numerous variations to fine-tune the subsets for specific types of traffic, GEO, devices, and other parameters.
The only thing you need to do is to create a smartlink by selecting a pre-defined vertical and one of the available domain names.
As a result, a tracking link will send traffic to offers connected via the vertical. An actual selection of the offer is made by the machine learning algorithm that takes into account the following conditions and parameters:
- Type of traffic (email, social, chat, mediabuy, etc.) – offers may permit only a certain type of traffic.
- Geo-location – offers may only permit traffic from specific countries or explicitly deny traffic from specific regions.
- Publisher reputation – some offers may be only accessible for publishers with higher reputation.
- Offer daily cap – this parameter monitors caps and prevents sending traffic to offers with caps already filled.
- Repeated clicks – this rule tracks the number of clicks from the same source and prevents multiple registrations from the same IP address.
Pro Tip! Taking into account the parameters and conditions above, you can configure a smartlink in the most productive way for your traffic.
When placed into the inventory, a smartlink detects new audiences, recognizes consumers’ geo-location, OS, device, and interest category, and finds the offer that would encourage users to click and complete the action, displaying it in the inventory.
What Else Can Affiliate Smartlinks Do?
Indeed, smartlinks remain a hot commodity, and those who already use them show increased profits and better campaign outcomes.
For those, who still want to learn about a smartlink, here is a breakdown of what this technology can do and how it can add to your earnings.
1. Handle remnant traffic
Smartlinks in affiliate marketing work for traffic that would never be monetized with other tools. When clicks are not sold directly to an advertiser because a campaign reaches its cap, or your budget is run out, or ads are directed at a user with an unsupported device, OS, and GEO — we get the remnant traffic.
Generally, this type of traffic would be lost, but with smartlinks, there’s a great chance to turn it into profit.
2. Convert any GEO
Smartlinks are designed to convert customers regardless of where they are. So, if you have mixed traffic and a variety of available offers, you will never lose sales, as every area and region can be fully monetized.
3. Auto-optimize
Smartlinks use advanced algorithms for seeking the most suitable offers and permanently optimize themselves. In this regard, you don’t have to worry about the campaign: after some time of working, smartlinks start showing good CPA and reach the rate you are interested in.
4. Be configured as you see fit
Smartlinks can be configured in the most effective way for your traffic, taking different contexts and rules into account. Each rule describes the set of users’ actions, including where they should be redirected.
Thus, when creating a smart URL, you can select geo-location, OS, device, and interest category and the link will divert prospects to the relevant offer based on their circumstances.
5. Independently learn new patterns
Due to AI, smartlinks constantly learn new patterns to efficiently monetize all types of traffic and find the offer to maximize the publisher’s and the network’s return.
Also, complex algorithms consider peculiar properties of the traffic sent by a specific publisher and a sub-source, with only 100 clicks needed to explore the offer EPC and optimize it.
6. Save you a lot of money
Thanks to the ability to use correct GEO/device/OS filtering, smartlinks manage all blank spots in the overall traffic flow, making every click possible to monetize and keep your revenue at a decent level.
Note! Since smartlinks in affiliate marketing use progressive algorithms for searching for the most suitable offers, they need some time to optimize themselves. That’s why smartlinks start showing good CPA after some time of working, not immediately. The optimization speed depends on the volumes, quality, and the variety of available offers.
Where to Use Smartlink Traffic to Make Most out of It
Smartlinks easily replace any referral link you share to attract visitors to your offers. Therefore you can use them as you usually do.
Email newsletter
Every digital marketer knows the value of email marketing. If emails are of the highest quality, they can easily outperform social media posts, which can get lost in the fast pace of life.
And smartlinks are perfect for measuring how interested your subscribers are in each of your offers.
YouTube
YouTube is an ideal place for advertising affiliate programs related to different content.
And the caption your followers can find under your videos can play a crucial role in youtube algorithms. Use engaging descriptions with smartlinks, and you’ll reach more people and get higher search rankings.
Socials
Affiliate smartlinks can help you determine which offers are more relevant to your followers. By placing your smart URL on every post, you can route your audience and check what content is worth promoting and what is not.
Website
Smartlinks are easily embedded on your website and landing pages. On top of that, to use your smartlink, you don’t need specific tools or apps. Simply implement it in your HTML code, and that’s it.
Reap the Benefits of Smartlinks in Affiliate Marketing
An affiliate smartlink is a great tool that makes the life of digital marketers’ easier than ever before. Instead of using many offer links in different campaigns, you create a single optimized smartlink enabling customers to see the most relevant offer.
Based on complex AI-driven distribution, smartlinks independently select the best offer defined by pre-set rules and parameters.
When the unfamiliar audience is generally lost or unavailable for monetization, with smartlinks, you can monetize all your traffic and avoid profit losses, always getting decent payouts.
Thus, using smartlinks is very simple, but it can save you a lot of time and money. It’s an excellent opportunity for monetizing your inventory to the full without extra effort.
