ThriveTracker Overview - Where to Start

We know that it can be a little tricky getting started in a new platform, figuring out where everything is located and how all of the moving pieces fit together.

This is a basic guide to help walk you through the initial set up process and to help you find the different items that you are looking for. Everyone has a unique set up, but this should help guide the overall process. If you are looking for anything more in depth, definitely make sure to browse our other support articles or submit a ticket to our support team and we would be happy to answer any questions.

Navigating ThriveTracker

Let's start with our main menus and what they include.

Over on the left hand side of your login you have your main menu which includes all of the different components such as campaigns, landers, offers, reporting, and much more.

Most of these are pretty self explanatory, but there are a few hidden items that you may want to find:

Click through Codes to track clicks from landing page to offer ---> This can be found under the Landing Page tab > Get LP Code.

Postback URL or Pixels to place on your offer/with your network ---> These can be found under the Tracking tab.

Landing Page Pixel to track clicks to your landing page without using a campaign url redirect. This can be found under the campaigns tab, INSIDE of the specific campaign.

You will also see a Settings Gear Icon at the Top Right of your login:

This is where you can manage more granular settings, any sub user accounts, API, edit your column view for the current page, or use our migration tool if coming over from another platform.

Getting Set Up For The First Time - Where to Start

Let's walk through an example set up. Now, you don't have to do things in this exact order, but this may be helpful so that you can set up your primary components before creating your overall campaign.

Set Up Your Traffic Source

Let's start by setting up our traffic source first. Navigate to the Traffic Source tab of your menu and select Add New Source on the right hand side of the page. This will bring up a modal where you can select any of our Pre-Defined Sources, or you can add your own unique source. We will use Facebook for this example.

You will notice there is a Post-Back Pixel section above. This is where you can place your Facebook pixel if you have one that you would like to fire on the traffic source level. You also have options to place on the campaign specific level once we create a campaign. Please note that you will want to select the pixel or postback type in the dropdown menu. If you are using an iframe for example, select iframe. If you have an html based pixel and it doesn't fit into one of the categories, select Raw Code as the type.

If placing a postback URL here, you will want to make sure to place the {externalid} token in the corresponding parameter of the postback where we need to send your traffic source the unique click ID (this is required for postback tracking).

Important: If you plan on firing an html based pixel on your traffic source (iframe, image, javascript, or other raw code) when you set up your offer and send your affiliate network Thrive's pixel, please make sure to send them the iframe pixel. If you send them a postback, only traffic source postbacks will fire.

If you scroll down in the modal, you will see our Custom Variable fields. For our pre-defined sources, we have filled in the available parameters and tokens for you, but you can definitely adjust as needed. If you are creating your own unique source, go ahead and add any custom variables that you wish to track from your source. 

The parameter can be anything you would like to show in the URL.
The placeholder (token) needs to be the exact token from your traffic source.
The Name can be anything, this is what it will show as in reporting.

Some important ones to note:

External ID - This is used in the event that you wish to use a postback url with your traffic source. Postbacks require a unique click ID in order to fire. You need to pass this through both the traffic source postback using our {externalid} token as well as in the campaign URL, which is done by filling in this External ID row below. 

Cost - If your traffic source has a token to pass you the dynamic cost through the URL, you can place that here. Facebook does not provide this, which is why it was left blank below. By placing the cost token and having the source send it through the URL, Thrive would pull that cost value instead of the default value set on the campaign.

Create your Landing Page

If you will be using a landing page before your offer pages, you will want to set this up under the Landing Page tab --> Add Landing Page.

The LP Group field is for organization purposes. You can create a new group, or in the future, select an existing group.

We have a wide variety of tokens that you can use to pass through your landing URL such as subid, device, offerid, as well as any of your custom variables.

The default offer field is the offer you would want visitors to be redirected to if they reach your landing page without first going through your campaign URL or ad.

Click Through Links

The click through links that you need to connect traffic from your landing page to the offer can be found under the Landing Page tab --> Get LP Code.

We have options for php pages as well as any other page type. You will place this code in any click through text or ad that leads the visitor from lander to offer. This will track as a LP click in reports.

Note: If your offer page is https, you will need to use a https click through link which requires SSL to be installed. We offer full SSL support for $10/mo/domain. Please submit a support ticket to get this set up and our team will handle it for you.

Creating a New Offer

To create a new offer, navigate to the offers tab of your menu and Add New Offer.

The offer group is for organizational purposes, you can create a new group or select an existing group.

Your value per conversion is the payout amount. You will also have the option for your network to pass the payout to us through the pixel. Anything sent in the pixel/postback would override this default payout.

If you need to pass any information through your offer URL to your network, you can do so using the provided tokens. If you want to pass any custom variables from your source, you will use the var tokens. For example, in our Facebook traffic source above we have ad name in custom variable 8. If we wanted to send that information to the network, we would place {var8} in the offer URL.

If you are using Thrive's postback with your affiliate network, please make sure to add {subid} to your offer URL in the parameter that is best to pass them the unique click ID value.

Placing Thrive's Postback or Pixel with Your Affiliate Network

Now that you have your offer added in Thrive, it's time to place either a postback URL or pixel with your affiliate network so that you can track conversions.

You can find these under the tracking tab of your login.

We have a few options depending on what your network can support:

• Postback
• Iframe
• Image

Note: If using postback, please make sure that your network places their token for the unique Click ID after &subid=. This is required for postback tracking.

The type of pixel you place will also control what type of pixel/postback will fire for your traffic source.

• Network places Thrive's postback --> Only traffic source postbacks will fire
• Network places Thrive's iframe pixel --> Any type of traffic source pixel or postback will fire
• Network places Thrive's image pixel --> Only traffic source postbacks will fire

Note: If you will need a secure https postback or pixel, you will need to set up SSL on your domain. We offer full SSL support for $10/month. Please submit a support ticket and our team can help get this set up for you.

Setting Up Your Campaign

Your campaign is what houses all of the different components together. This is also where you will find the URL to use with your traffic source.

To set up a new campaign, go to the Campaigns tab of your login --> Create New Campaign.

The first page will be where you enter in your general campaign information like name, traffic source it will be run on, campaign type, default CPC or CPA, any tags. If you wish to place a traffic source postback or pixel on the campaign level, you can place it here.

The next page will take you to the Campaign Rotation. Rotations are stand alone entities and can be added to 1 or multiple campaigns. This is where you will add in the different landers and offers that you want in your traffic flow.

You can add landing pages, offers under those landing pages, or can also direct link to offers. You can adjust the weights of each to determine the rate at which it serves.

Do you want to send traffic to different landers or offers based on criteria like country, device, browser, etc? No problem, you can use our Redirection Rules for this.

Redirection rules allow you to set up a separate rule under your rotation to capture specific traffic based on criteria met.

Where do I find my URL to use with my traffic source? What if I want to direct link to my landing page instead?

You can find the campaign URL to use with your traffic source under the General Info tab of your campaign. If you want to direct link to your landing page, we also offer a landing page pixel that you can place on your lander to track clicks rather than having to use a campaign redirect first.

More information on the landing page pixel can be found Here.

Reporting

There are a few different places within Thrive that you can view reports. 

1. Campaigns tab - You can view an overall report of all of your campaign's stats on the main page. You will see things like clicks, conversions, cost, revenue, EPC here. 
2. Inside a specific campaign - If you want to look at 1 campaign specifically, you can go ahead and navigate into the campaign and you have a few report options here:
   1. Offers & Landing Pages tab - This will show you how each lander and offer is doing in the rotation.
   2. Day-Parting if you want to see stats by day
   3. Other Variables to view stats by criteria like device, browser, geo, and any custom variables.
   4. Drill-Down if you want to drill-down by a few different criteria.
3. Advanced Reports - You have global reports available here where you can drill-down by different variables across multiple campaigns. You can also view day-parting reports here
4. Click/Conversion Log - Under the tracking tab of your login you will see a tab titled Click/Conversion Log. This is going to be your most granular report. You can view every single click and conversion with all of their details if you export this report.

Other Available Features

We have support articles on almost all of our available tools, but here are a few ones to highlight while you get started with us.

Manual SubID Update
Found under the Tracking tab of your login, this is where you can manually convert or unconvert any Thrive subID. For example, if your network tracked a conversion but you only see the click in Thrive for that subid, you can use this tool to manually convert it. 

Manual Cost Update
Do you need to update the cost for a campaign? You can manually update any cost for a campaign(s) by CPC or total cost.

Geo-Redirect/Bot Filter
If you have the geo-redirect/bot filter enabled on your account you can set up filters for known bot traffic or any other criteria that you want to completely filter out of your stats.

More information on this filter can be found Here.

Job Queue
Any large export jobs can be sent to the job queue to process in the background while you work on other tasks. They will continue to download even if you log off. You can then download the export once ready in this queue.