ThriveTracker Review 2024: Top 5 Features & Pricing (Is it Worth Money?)

How to Start with ThriveTracker – Beginners Guide 

It can be a little tricky when we start getting used to a new platform where you have to figure out everything and locate and also see how all the moving pieces fit together.

Now in this ThriveTracker review, we will guide to help walk you through the initial setup process and to help you find the different items that you are looking for. Though everyone has a unique setup, this should serve as a helpful guide for the overall process. 

Let’s begin with navigating with ThriveTracker

So as you can check out, these options are pretty self-explanatory, but their a few hidden ones which you may wish to find out: 

With Click through Codes, you can track clicks from landing page offers. This you can find under the Landing Page Tab and then on to Get LP Code. 

Postback URLs or Pixels can help you to place your offer with your network. You can find this under the Tracking Tab. 

The Landing Page Pixel is helpful for tracking clicks to your landing page without using a campaign URL redirect. You can find this under the campaigns tab and then inside the specific campaign.

Plus, you can also view the setting Settings Gear Icon at the top right of your login:

Now that’s where you can manage more granular settings and sub-user accounts, Edit your column view for the current page, API, or use their migration tool if you are coming over from another platform.

Getting Set Up for the First Time – Where to Start

Now we will walk through an example setup. You don’t have to do things in the exact same order, but this can be helpful so you can set up your primary components before creating your overall campaign.

Setting Up a Traffic Source

We shall start by setting up our Traffic Source. And for that, head to the Traffic Source Tab of your menu and select Add New Source on the right-hand side of the page. This will give you a modal where you can choose any of your pre-defined sources, or you can even add your own unique source. In our case, we are using Facebook, for example.

You can see that there is a Postback Pixel section above. That’s where you can place your Facebook pixel if you have one which you would like to fire on the traffic source level. You also have options to set on the campaign-specific level once you create a campaign. Also, note that you will want to select the pixel or postback type in the dropdown menu. And suppose if you are using an iFrame; select it. If you have HTML based pixel and it does not fit into any of the categories, Select Raw Code as the type.

If you place a postback URL here, you have to ensure to place the {externalid} token in the corresponding parameter of the postback where you need to send your traffic source the unique click ID. 

Further, if you scroll down in the modal, you can see the Custom Variable fields. We have filled in the available parameters and tokens in the pre-defined sources for you, but you can adjust when needed. If you are creating your own unique source, you can go ahead and add any custom variables which you wish to track from your source. 

External ID – It is used in the event that you wish to use a postback URL with a traffic source. Postbacks require a unique click ID in order to fire. 

Cost – If your traffic source has a token to pass you the dynamic cost through the URL, then you can place that here. Facebook does not offer this, and that’s why we have left it blank. By placing the cost token and having the source send it through the URL, thrive would pull the cost value instead of the default value set on the campaign. 

Creating Your Landing Page

Next, you will be using a landing page before your offer pages. Here you want to set it up under the Landing Page Tab and then Add a Landing Page.

The LP Group Filed is for organization purposes. You can create a new group or, in the future, select an existing group. Also, there is a wide variety of tokens that you can use to pass through your landing URL, such as device, subid, and offerid, along with any of your custom variables.

Click Through Links

The click-through links are needed to connect traffic from your landing page, and this you can find under the Landing Page tab –> Get LP Code.

They have the option for PHP pages as well as any other page type. You have to place this code in any click-through text or ad that leads the visitor from the lander to the offer. This will help you keep track as an LP click in the report.

Also, make sure that if your offer page is HTTPS, you will need to use an HTTPS click through the link, which requires SSL to be installed.

Creating a New Offer

To create a new offer, navigate to the offers tab of your menu and Add New Offer. The offered group is for organizational purposes; you can create a new group or select an existing one. Your value per conversion is the payout amount. You also have the option for your network to pass the payout to them through the pixel. And anything which is sent in the pixel/postback will override this default payout.

And if you have to pass any information through your offer URL to your network, you can do this by using the provided tokens. If you wish to pass any custom variables from a source, you will have to use the var tokens.

Now How to Place Thrive’s Postback or Pixel with Your Affiliate Network?

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

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

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

• Iframe
• Image
• Postback

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

Remember that the type of pixel you place will also control what kind of pixel/postback will fire for your traffic source.

• 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.

• Network places Thrive’s postback –> Only traffic source postbacks will fire.

Setting Up Your Campaign

Next, Setting your campaign is what contains the various components together. Here you can also find the URL to use with your traffic source. 

And to set up a new campaign, 

• First, go to the Campaigns tab of your login

• And then select Create New Campaign.

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

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

You can add landing pages and offers under those landing pages, or you can also direct links to offers. Then you can also adjust the weights for each to find the rate at which it serves.

And if you want to send traffic to different landers or offers based on criteria like country, device, browser, etc., for that, you can use their Redirection Rules for this. These rules allow you to set up the separate rule under your rotation to capture specific traffic based on criteria met. 

Reporting

There are various places inside ThriveTracker where you can view reports. 

Campaigns Tab

Here, you can view an overall report of all of your campaign stats on the main page. You can see details like conversions, costs, revenue, EPC, and Clicks here. 

Inside a Specific Campaign

If you have to look at one campaign specifically, you can do that as well and navigate into that campaign and get a few report options like: 

• Offers & Landing Pages tab – This will show you how each lander and offer is doing in the rotation.

• Day-Parting if you want to see stats by day

• Other Variables to view stats by criteria like device, browser, geo, and any custom variables.

• Drill-Down if you want to drill down by a few different criteria.

Advanced Reports

In this, global reports are available where you view different variables across multiple campaigns. You can also view day-parting reports. 

Click/Conversion Log

Here under the tracking tab of your login, you can see a tab titled Click/Conversion Log. This is more kind of a granular report. If you export this report, you can check every single click and conversion with all the details. 

Few Other Tools Offered by ThriveTracker

• Manual SubID Update

You can find this under the Tracking Tab of your login. That’s where you can manually convert or unconvert any Thrive sub id. So in case, your network tracked a conversion, but you only can see the click in Thrive for that sub id, you can use this tool to manually convert it.

• Manual Cost Update

You can use this tool to manually update any cost for a campaign(s) by CPC or total cost.

• Geo-Redirect/Bot Filter

And 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 which you want to completely filter out of your stats.

• Job Queue

You can use this option to export any large jobs to the job queue and in the background while you are working on other tasks. This process will continue to download even if you log off.