Track leads & customers from affiliates in Insightly
Learn how to track how many leads and customers you get from Affiliates in Insightly
A few years ago, I struggled to track how many leads & customers my Affiliates generated.
I could open Google Analytics and easily see how many website visitors they were sending, but when I opened up my CRM, there was no data about where our leads were coming from.
As a result, I had no way of reporting to my boss the number of leads & customers our affiliate program was generating.
So I decided to change that (both for me and for others).
In this article, I am going to show you how to use a tool called Attributer to capture affiliate data in Insightly, as well as show you some reports I’ve run in the past that I think you’ll find helpful.
3 simple steps to track how many leads & customers you get from Affiliates in Insightly
With the help of Attributer, you can track how many leads and customers you're getting from your affiliate program. Here's how it works:
1. Add UTM parameters to your affiliate links
The first step is to include UTM parameters in the links you give your affiliates.
For example, if you want them to send people to attributer.io/integrations/Insightly, then the link you would send them (with UTM parameters) would look a bit like this:
attributer.io/integrations/insightly?utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=bloggers&utm_campaign=john-smith
We recommended customising the information you put in the UTMs in order to capture whatever data you need to capture.
If you're looking for a recommendation though, here's what we would suggest:
- UTM_Medium = Affiliates
- UTM_Source= Bloggers (or the type of affiliate this is, such as bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, etc.)
- UTM_Campaign= John-Smith (or the name of the specific affiliate)
If you are using tools like Trackdesk or Rewardful to manage your affiliate program then these can be set up to automatically including UTM parameters in the links you share with your affiliates.
You might also want to check out our free UTM builder, which offers affiliate-specific templates. This tool enables you to generate and UTM parameters you can share with your affiliates manually.
2. Add hidden fields to your forms
The next step is to include a series of hidden fields within the forms on your website, like those on your Contact Us or Request a Quote page.
You should include the following hidden fields:
- Channel
- Channel Drilldown 1
- Channel Drilldown 2
- Channel Drilldown 3
- Landing Page
- Landing Page Group
Form-building tools like Gravity Forms and Typeform offer simple ways to add hidden fields to your forms. You can find detailed, step-by-step tutorials for over 50 commonly used form builders here.
3. Attributer writes the affiliate data into the hidden fields
When someone visits your website from an affiliate link with the new UTM parameters, Attributer saves this information in their browser. This means they can browse your site (or even leave and return later) and the UTM parameters from their original visit (from the affiliate link) will be remembered.
Then, when these visitors fill out a form on your site, the Attributer will automatically write the affiliate details (gathered from the UTM parameters) into hidden fields in the form.
4. Affiliate data is captured and sent to Insightly
FInally, when the visitor submits a form on your website, the data that Attributer wrote into the hidden fields is captured by your form tool (along with the data the lead manually entered into the form, like their name, email, etc).
You can then send this into Insight either by using your form tools built-in integration or a third-party integration tool like Zapier.
What data gets captured in Insightly
Attributer is designed to gather data from the UTM parameters. This means that any information you enter in the UTMs, such as affiliate name, category, and more, will be captured by Attributer, written into the hidden fields in your form, and sent to Insightly.
We recommend including the following information in your UTM parameters:
- UTM_Medium = Affiliates
- UTM_Source= Bloggers (or the type of affiliate this is, such as bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, etc.)
- UTM_Campaign= John Smith (or the name of the specific affiliate)
If you do, the following information would be captured in Insightly:
- Channel = Affiliates
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Bloggers
- Channel Drilldown 2 = John Smith
But Attributer isn't just for capturing data on leads that come from your affiliate program. It will actually capture data on ALL leads from ALL sources (Organic Search, Organic Social, Paid Search, Paid Social, etc).
So, for example, if someone was to come to your site from an organic Google search and complete a form, this is what would get captured:
- Channel = Organic Search
- Channel Drilldown 1 = Google (or the name of the search engine they came from)
- Channel Drilldown 2 = www.google.com.au (or the Google domain they came from)
- Channel Drilldown 3 = Olmo Software (or whatever the keyword they used to find your business is, when available)
This ultimately means you'll be able to track the source of ALL your leads, not just those from your affiliate program.
3 example reports you can run when you capture affiliate data in Insightly
Before starting Attributer, I led marketing teams at various companies (some worth billions of dollars), and dedicated significant time to running reports to see how different marketing initiatives (like our affiliate program) were performing.
Below I have included 3 of my favourite reports which can help you understand how your affiliate program is performing.
1. Leads by Channel
Attributer is awesome for keeping track of all your leads, not just the ones from your affiliate program. You can use it to see where your leads are coming from and compare the performance of your affiliate program with other channels like Paid Search Ads or SEO.
Understanding this data can really help you make informed decisions about where to invest your resources.
2. Customers by Affiliate Type
This report shows the number of customers your affiliate program has generated, broken down by the type of affiliate that referred them, such as bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, and social media influencers.
This information will help you identify which type of affiliates are performing best, and can help you make more strategic decisions about how to expand your program (I.e. which type of affiliates to try to recruit more of).
3. Revenue by Affiliate
This report shows how much new revenue has been generated from each individual affiliate.
It helps you understand who's performing best and who might need a little more help.
How Attributer helped William Russell scale their affiliate program
I want to tell you about William Russell, a company that specialises in providing health and life insurance for expats. They had a bit of a challenge when their affiliate management software wasn't working well with their CRM. This made it hard for them to track which of their affiliates were actually generating leads & customers (as opposed to those that were just driving lots of clicks that didn't convert).
But they were able to fix this issue with the help of Attributer.
Now, they incorporate UTM parameters into all their affiliate links, and Attributer passes them through to their CRM each time someone clicks an affiliate link and completes a form.
This allows them to run reports inside their CRM and see the number of customers gained through their affiliate program, the amount of revenue generated, the lead-to-customer conversion rate, average deal size, and more.
With these reports, they can compare the performance of their affiliate program against other marketing channels, such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads, and see how effective it is.
"By using Attributer, we're able to track the amount of customers & revenue that come from our affiliate program, as opposed to just website visitors and leads. This has shown us that it's our most profitable channel and has helped us scale it"
William Cooper - Marketing Director @ William Russell Insurance
Wrap Up
Attributer is a fantastic tool for capturing UTM parameters from affiliate links and sending them to Insightly.
And once the data is in there, you're able to use it to run reports that show things like;
- How many new customers are coming from bloggers vs podcasters
- How much revenue is being generated by each affiliate
- What the lead to customer conversion rate is
- How does the average deal size of customers from your affiliate program compare to customers from your Google or Facebook Ads
The best part is that starting with Attributer is free and takes less than 10 minutes to set up. Don't miss out – start your 14-day free trial today!
Get Started For Free
Start your 14-day free trial of Attributer today!
About the Author
Aaron Beashel is the founder of Attributer and has over 15 years of experience in marketing & analytics. He is a recognized expert in the subject and has written articles for leading websites such as Hubspot, Zapier, Search Engine Journal, Buffer, Unbounce & more. Learn more about Aaron here.