overview
The conventional wisdom about restaurant websites is that if they look like they were made in Geocities 20 years ago, the food is probably great. The idea behind this is that they don't need to hype themselves up and are spending more time creating a great experience at their restaurant rather than their website. I think the same can be said about software companies. Good programmers focus on efficient, lightweight code and don't care how their brand looks to the outside world.
This isn't to say that Tracknow's website is ugly. Not at all. It's fun and modern enough.But it is teeth all business. You don't have to worry about brand image. There is also no tracking monkey mascot. The “About” page is usually about the company and who's behind it, but it's more about the software. What better way to describe the Tracknow team than with a cute team name like “Trackies”? Like any great restaurant, Tracknow isn't trying to sell more than its own product. This is the menu, everything is delicious, what would you like to eat?
In this way, Tracknow's website serves as a great symbol for the entire software experience. This is a full-fledged software and performs complex operations very well. The user interface is also all business-like, lacking the human touch that even the most basic branding can give to a software experience. As you can see, this is by no means a deal breaker, as the value of Tracknow's features far outweighs the downsides of its format. Additionally, its format is easy to upgrade.
We are reviewing Tracknow in the Affiliate Marketing category. That's what this review will focus on. But the name suggests there's more to this platform than simple e-commerce affiliate tracking. It is a tracking software and its affiliate tracking features also work in the field of social media and influencer campaigns. There's a lot going on under that modest hood.
Pricing
Since Tracknow targets different areas with its platform, there are three different pricing categories, each with multiple plans. What we describe here serves the world of e-commerce affiliate marketing. All plans listed are priced per month, and Tracknow offers a 10% discount if you prepay for a year.
- Small Business, $79 — Track an unlimited number of affiliates with unlimited sales volume across 10 domains/offers.Includes: billing system, roles and permissions, A/B testing, automation layer, advanced tracking (multiple countries), CPA, CPS, CPM, PPC, CPL, coupon tracking, API access, SSL setup, custom domain , unlimited creatives, dedicated SMTP, custom commissions, category tracking, multi-level affiliates, full setup, email and chat support
- Enterprise/Network, $249/month — All of the above, plus: a dedicated account manager, phone support, and white label solutions.
- Social/Influencer, $249/month — Track up to 100 Instagram and/or TikTok accounts for one brand, platform training, dedicated project management, and all other features included in the Small Business plan.
Note that Tracknow also offers a solution for financial/IB users, but this feature is outside the scope of this review.
detail
Logging into an established Tracknow account that's all set up with affiliates and has been tracking data for some time is a great way to see the platform at its best. Equipped with data, this is where Tracknow's minimalist interface shines. There's nothing in the design to get in the way of neatly organized numbers and highly readable graphs.
One thing the interface could do better with is a clearer highlighting of where you are in the platform in the leftmost pane. In the screenshot above, you can see that the navigation menu only highlights the most subtle parts to indicate that you are on the dashboard. Sure, it also says “Dashboard” at the top of the screen, but what happens when you scroll down? And this becomes even more of an issue when you're looking at conversion tracking or reporting, where the screens are pretty similar . There should be something more obvious going on in the navigation menu so users don't get lost.
Before we get to what really impressed us with Tracknow, let's take one more knock on the interface. At the beginning, I mentioned that interfaces lack “humanity”, which may seem like a strange criticism, but they are also known by the acronym HID (Human Interface Design). There's a reason why. Because engineers and programmers speak a different language than laypeople, this “language barrier” shows up in reports, where columns of unreadable data share space with what users want to see. Now, conversion tracking doesn't need to see OrderID or SystemID (both long alphanumeric strings that no one reads). It would be better to find out what was sold for and for how much.
With some tweaks to the interface, Tracknow becomes a complete package with its monitoring and data analysis capabilities. In fact, there's so much automation here that once you start a campaign, there's not much to do other than read the screen and pay your affiliates. For example, if you want to create different reward tiers, such as increasing or decreasing payouts based on performance, this is easy to achieve. Another great set-it-and-forget feature is the ability to create different campaigns for each region/country. When an affiliate applies to participate in a campaign, Tracknow detects their location and directs them to a geographically appropriate landing page. For example, you don't want users in Ireland to sign up for US-specific offers. Tracknow automates this and ensures affiliates are matched with the right audience.
And the reports on affiliate performance far exceed what you expect and want to see.
When it comes to disbursing the amount owed to each affiliate, Tracknow has taken smart steps to make it more manageable as you scale up. Once you have a certain number of affiliates, it can become difficult and time-consuming to manage all payments individually. Tracknow offers a unique dashboard for affiliates to manage and track what they sell and what they earn. From this same dashboard, you can generate invoices to send to brands and agencies, eliminating the need to parse everything and create your own paper trail.
Another great feature is A/B testing. If you create two different landing pages or email campaigns, your application will be divided into groups based on which one you responded to. You can redirect a single application URL to one of your landing pages, and you can also tell Tracknow how to split the traffic (perhaps 65% goes to page A and the remaining 35%). to page B). You can then see which approach works best for your company and fine-tune future campaigns based on what you learn from these tests.
Last but not least, saving the best for last is Tracknow's social/influencer feature. Using influencers is nothing new for affiliate marketers, but what Tracknow does is new. Other affiliate marketing platforms treat influencers no different from other affiliates. You can see an influencer's conversions, revenue, commissions, etc. and infer their social performance based on these. If you want deeper insight into their social engagement metrics, you'll need other software that's more influencer-focused.
Tracknow is changing and rewriting this narrative for people who want to work with influencers but don't necessarily want a full-fledged influencer marketing campaign. When you give an affiliate link or coupon code to an influencer, they get regular affiliate data. and Post metrics for Instagram and TikTok content. However, you can not only view both sets of metrics, but also configure ex-post payments based on views, likes, comments, or shares. This gives affiliate marketers more flexibility in who they pay and how they pay them to promote their business.
integration
Tracknow provides API access and its team does a complete setup of the client, allowing for almost any logical integration. For small and medium-sized businesses running on e-commerce platforms, we offer three out-of-the-box integrations that require no special configuration.
- Shopify
- woo commerce
- Magento
It also works with Google Tag Manager to create postback URLs, eliminating the need to track pixels or cookies.
conclusion
Tracknow is relatively new software, so some growing pains are to be expected. The good news is that these growing pains have nothing to do with function itself. Everything works well, the platform is dense with options for tracking and reporting, and the data reported is accurate, attractively presented, and packed with business intelligence. The interface needs some tweaks, mainly focused on making it more user-friendly, but I have no doubt they will deliver. In the meantime, Tracknow's features and applications are well worth the effort, even if it takes a little longer to use Tracknow. While the social/influencer option is a game-changer for many affiliate marketers, the rest of the platform also makes a strong case for itself.
track now
- Features
- ease of use
- report
