Smartlink in affiliate marketing: how to use it

What are Smartlinks in affiliate marketing?

Smartlinks are a technology in affiliate marketing that contains many offers within and by analysing user data determines which one to show individually. While usually one referral link equals one offer, Smartlinks can provide way more of them, picking the one that algorithm concludes will be the most converting.

In other words, Smartlink offer is not exactly a single offer but a variety of them selected to be shown individually each time. This also means that for every user a single Smartlink might lead to different offers.

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

How does a Smartlink work?

Since Smartlinks in essence present not one particular offer but many, they have their own mechanism by which they both gather user data and select the most appropriate offer. In this part, RichAds ad network will explain how a Smartlink works in those terms.

While clicking affiliate links on ads or being shown a pop ad, which also demands clicking on a publisher’s site with a special JS script, the Smartlink technology tracks that click. By that it can gather such data on the users as geo, device, OS, browser language, etc. The Smartlink AI analyses all the information according to algorithms configured by the affiliate network.

Eventually, based on all the data analysed, the algorithm picks an offer that is estimated to be the most suitable for the exact user. The way Smartlink tools attach certain data with appropriate targeting of existing offers is based purely on configuration set by the CPA network. Meanwhile, the whole process from the click to redirecting users on the selected offer takes literal seconds.

Best traffic sources to run Smartlink offers

For Smartlinks promotion, the best would be ad formats that possess high volumes of traffic worldwide, so that the offers can match as much audience. Also, it’s important that such methods don’t restrict advertising various categories on certain geos, as such policies might affect promoting, for example, online casinos and sports betting platforms on Facebook and Google Ads.

We at RichAds ad network recommend taking a look at push and pop ads:

• Push advertising notifications.
  This is one of the most engaging ad formats, since its appearance resembles regular push notifications users get from apps and social networks. People have to agree to mailing on a publisher’s site to start receiving push ads, which provides an already interested audience. For Smartlink’s benefit, users will be shown ads as soon as online regardless of the page, so there are all the possibilities to eventually present the right offer!
• Popunder (clickunder) ads.
  This is one of the easiest ad formats to start with since it requires only a landing page as the only creative needed and basic targeting parameters. Also, pop ads possess huge traffic volumes worldwide due to their approach that effectively converts impulse audiences, so it’s a decent match for Smartlinks promotion.

Plus to that, push and pop traffic allow promoting Smartlinks at a very cheap cost, which is perfect as it demands in-depth testing!

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

Tips on Smartlink promotion by RichAds

Here, you will find some tips on running Smartlink offers that will help to get as much experience and high ROI, compiled by RichAds advertising network!

1. Start in Performance mode to get a better optimization

Performance Mode is a unique in-house feature on RichAds platform that allows your campaigns to get fresh whitelists, the lists of the most converting sources, on a weekly basis. The algorithm analyses what performs the best for your offer, then automatically adds new whitelists, thus increasing overall CR.

This feature will definitelly suit both beginners and experienced marketers, that want a safe choice on optimizing campaigns without the dull and exhausting part of it. It will also be a great addition to Smartlinks technology, as summed up they will show better performance from the most suitable offers and the best performing traffic sources.

2. Use as broad targeting options as possible

One of the biggest mistakes while running Smartlinks via platforms is to narrow down the targeting parameters way too tight. Meanwhile, what makes Smartlinks so easy and effective is that they can determine the best picks for the audience if the selection is really wide, otherwise there’s a big chance of many users to drop out of there. Plus to that, some categories have “seasons”, meaning the most profitable certain products are to be advertised, while the rest of the time they don’t show such results.

Each SmartLink can focus on a category or can come from a different network. When creating campaigns in RichAds ad network, make sure to create one campaign per country and name them accordingle for better recognition on optimization stage, for example:

• Gambling Yellana (Campaign Name) — Italy (Country Code)

After the initial run, choose the best performing SmartLink. You can also deactivate poor performing countries (ie. have no conversions; have a few conversions but with ultra-low payouts, etc.), as well as underperforming sources (such as websites, publishers, targets, etc.).

3. Choose the highest quality traffic sources

Traditionally, the traffic sources at RichAds ad network are divided into four groups (or sublists) by their quality: Premium (recommended to start with), Standard, Remnant and New (newly added sources). Premium sublist contains all the sources that show the maximum performance regardless of the niche or geo, and they’re highly suggested to start with, especially for Smartlinks.

Launching with the highest quality sources also provides with more vivid results, as you can better evaluate the overall performance and detect the weak spots of the promotion.

4. Enable campaign tracking for Smartlinks

Among the most crucial points for Smartlinks is to monitor the campaign performance with trackers. They can highlight not only the traffic sources that perform the best for a particular offer, but can break-down what offers and categories bring the profits in general. This might come as a blessing for many beginners who are new to affiliate marketing in terms of choosing a promising offer to advertise.

We have made a series of step-by-step tutorials on setting up popular conversion trackers, along with connecting them with RichAds ad platform. Each of them includes every stage from adding traffic sources through to integrating with affiliate networks, CPA offers and launching tracking campaigns!

5. Determine the best converting offer and launch it separately

One of the main cornerstones in Smartlink promotion lies within finding the best offer to advertise among multiple variants that come through the traffic. Even if you think that Smartlinks are enough only to redirect your traffic to an appropriate product, a precisely targeted campaign will show way better results anyways. So regularly check the insights that are gathered within the CPA network and trackers, looking for the product that brings the most profit and run it independently.

If the affiliate network doesn’t cover listing the offers, try asking your manager. If the traffic is of high quality, there will be no bother letting you run offers well-addressed to the target audience.

Conclusion

Smartlinks are a great point of entering affiliate marketing, since they by themselves can evaluate the best offer for a particular user and demand very little in terms of promotion efforts. On the other hand, the low costs on advertising also signalise that the payouts are usually not that big, so they can also serve as a doorway for the offers that work.

We at RichAds are well aware of what challenges might occur in finding the promotion means to run successful ads, so we made our advertising network perfect for users of any level of expertise. On our platform you can easily launch push and popunder ad campaigns on over 220 goes from Tier 3 to Tier 1, having the access to all the top-notch optimization tools in-built. Start a profitable campaign on top traffic by RichAds!

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.