The offer goals feature is a powerful way to track multiple conversion points in a single offer. It also allows paying partners for different actions after the user clicks the tracking link. Each action can be a different conversion event type (goal).
Using offer goals, you can track leads and sales for an offer, downloads and installs, free signups and paid subscriptions, or other relevant user actions. Many advertisers and ad networks use such conversion events to track the performance of their advertising funnels or to reward partners by offering payouts for users fulfilling certain objectives.
This article is part of our Popular Features series.
Use Case
You are selling a product online and want to pay partners 20% of your sales, but you also have upgrades on the product, complementary products, and even a newsletter subscription. You can track these actions as separate events tied to one offer.
For example, you can set a conversion event (goal) such that when a user clicks a partner tracking link and signs up for the newsletter, you will pay the partner $1. Then, if the user continues to purchase the product, you can additionally pay the partner 20% of the sale price.
Setting Up Offer Goals
Setting up an additional conversion event, also known as an Offer goal, requires just a few changes to your settings. Many other options are available, including the ability to provide payouts or keep the event private.
Step 1: Enable Goals for an Offer
To enable additional conversion events for an existing offer, first, go to the offer’s page. In the Payout panel, click the Edit button. On the following page, set Multiple Conversion Goals to “Enabled.” Click Save once you’re finished.
Tip: When creating a new offer, you can set Multiple Conversion Goals to “Enabled” in the “Goals” card.
Step 2: Add Goals to an Offer
Once goals are enabled on an offer, click Add Goal in the top right of the Payout section of an offer’s page, like creating a new offer or setting up a new goal by auto-generating a new conversion link.
Fill out the form provided for the new goal. If you want to keep this goal private or pay partners for this goal, do so here.
Step 3: Add Goal Conversion Tracking
Once a conversion event (goal) is created, you will be provided three different conversion tracking links depending on how you want the goal reported in the system. Select the conversion tracking link if you would like the completion of the goal to show as a conversion, or select the click pixel if you only want it to show as a click. Place conversion links on the page representing the completion of a specific goal. Sub IDs and sale amounts can be passed following the same methods as all other conversion pixels.
Goal Postback URLs
If you use postback tracking, your postback URLs take a slightly different form than normal. They all take the following form, with the highlighted part showing what differs from a regular postback:
http://NETWORKID.go2cloud.org/aff_goal?a=lsr&goal_name=GOAL_URL_FRIENDLY_NAME&transaction_id=TRANSACTION_ID
GOAL_URL_FRIENDLY_NAME is based on the goal name, transliterated to a URL-friendly (slug) format. This is displayed in the Detail area of the Goals view page, right below the Name field. You can, alternatively, use the goal_id=GOAL_ID format by just placing goal_id=GOAL_ID above instead of the goal_name.
Using goal_name is preferred to using goal_id, as it can represent global conversion events, thus making it easier to track and meaningfully report on. For example, if you want to treat Download as a global conversion event, you can do so using its name. By contrast, a goal_id is specific to a given offer.
With the {goal_name} macro, you can pass along the URL-friendly version of the name (the slug) to your partners.
You can find each goal’s specific URL from that goal’s page. You can also replace the goal_name or goal_id in the postback URL if you know the name (URL-friendly version) or ID of your goal. You can get both of these from the Detail area of the View goal page.
Goal Settings
Settings are set when a goal (conversion event type) is created. They can also be edited and updated by viewing a goal and clicking the “Edit” link on the corresponding panel.
Status
“Active” means the goal is active. If the goal isn’t private and the status is active, then partners can see the goal. If the goal is old or no longer used, set the goal to “Deleted.”
Private Goals
You can also make a goal private to track only the revenue generated when a user completes a specified action. This helps record data to be used internally, providing more information about user activity in the advertising funnel.
If a goal is private, payouts are not tracked. Partners do not have access to private goals. Additionally, you can’t set custom partner payouts or place third-party partner pixels/URLs.
Note: When setting a goal to Private, first remove payout values. If a payout is set and saved before the goal is made private, then the payout doesn’t get zeroed out—it is just hidden. Conversions on the goal will still show a payout value based on what you had previously entered.
Conversion Tracking
Image and iframe conversion pixels use a client-based cookie or cookieless tracking, while Server Postback uses server-based cookieless tracking URLs. When using server postback tracking for goals, remember that you must pass a transaction ID on the click to the landing page so that the value can be passed on to the offer postback goal.
For more information, read our Server Postback Tracking Explained article.
Goal Reference ID
The goal reference ID is a static value you can place to be passed through to a partner’s pixel/postback on goal conversion. This can be passed with the {goal_ref} macro.
Revenue
The amount paid by advertisers per conversion. You can set this to $0 if you only want to track payouts for a goal. Otherwise, setting the revenue will allow you to see the difference in income from an offer and the cost to run the offer on your partner platform.
Payout
The amount paid to partners per conversion. Set a private goal to avoid compensating the partner for the goal.
Tiered Revenues and Payouts
When setting the payout and revenue for the offer goal, you can enable payout and revenue tiers. When goals are enabled, you can set the payout tiers by selecting Edit on the default goal and enabling the tiered payouts/revenues. For additional goals, you enable and set payout tiers in the “Payout” link for that goal. If the payout tier is not enabled, the system will revert to the default payout for the goal.
Multiple Conversions
Enable multiple conversions to be recorded per user for only one active session. An active session is created each time a user clicks on a tracking link. This will allow a user to create multiple conversions for this goal.
End Point
Enabling this setting will close the active session when this goal is converted. This prevents the user from further converting on the offer unless another active session is started. Set this to Enable on the last goal in the flow process. Only additional goals can be set as an endpoint; the default goal cannot be set as an endpoint.
Approve Conversions
Enable “Approve Conversions” to require each conversion to be approved for this goal. Conversions will be set to ‘pending’ by default and excluded from billing and stats until approved.
Encrypted Conversion Tracking
Enable “Encrypted Conversion Tracking” to enforce conversion tracking pixels to only record conversions from encrypted pixels. Disable this feature to dynamically create conversion tracking pixels and URLs based on the offer ID.
Manage Offer Goals
Manage your offers goals anytime by clicking the “Manage” link on the Payout panel. This will show you each goal associated with an offer, including data such as ID, Name, Status, Advertiser, Tracking Pixel Type, Endpoint, Private, Allow Multiples, Payout, and Revenue. You can View, Edit, or adjust the Payout for each goal by clicking the appropriate link in the rightmost column.
Private Goals
Keeping goals private allows you to collect user data on your sales process without paying partners for each action or recording each action as a conversion. This is extremely useful for learning about bounce rates and users aborting the sales process. If you are creating a new goal, toggle the “Private” setting to “Enabled.”
To make an existing goal private, select the goal in the Payout panel on the offer’s page and click Edit in the upper right of the Details panel. Then, set “Private” to “Enabled”.
When goals are private, partners cannot view them in the conversion report and are usually implemented for tracking internal metrics. Because of this, private goals will not have a payout value; only a revenue value can be entered.
Custom Goal Payouts for Partners
Quickly edit the payouts for specific partners on specific goals on an offer’s page by clicking Partner Payouts in the Payout panel. The Offer Partner Settings page allows you to add custom payouts by clicking Add in the upper right. Select the partner using the toggle, select the goal, and fill in the form below, including the payout. Click the Add button to create the custom payout.
You can edit these payouts anytime by selecting the “Partner Payouts” tab on the Payout panel. There, you can make changes for all partners with custom payouts.
Disabling Goals Platform-Wide
If you do not want to add additional conversion events to offers, you can disable them Platform-wide. Go to Company > Customize Application > Settings > Offers. Find the “Offer Goals” setting and set it to “Disabled”. Click Save once you’re finished. Now, you will not see additional goals anywhere on the platform.