In this interview Sirio Küpper from We Can Track tells you how their affiliate tracking works. Read it below :-).

For questions leave a comment at the bottom of the blog.

1 – Can you tell a little more about yourself. Who are you and what is We Can Track?

My name is Sirio Küpper, 30 years old and co-founder of We Can Track. I studied international business but always had a fascination for data analysis and marketing.

During my studies I worked as a working student for Siemens in Berlin where i learned to create data driven reports and how to calculate indexes to define the reliability of certain products.

Not wanting to stay at a big company like Siemens after my studies I decided to go to Saleduck in Amsterdam, a successful affiliate publisher active in 14 markets. At Saleduck I was able to shine with the skills I acquired at Siemens which is why it didn’t take long until the company decided to use me for data driven aspects, such as data analysis and paid ads management.

We Can Track is a data tracking, processing, attribution and integration software that helps (affiliate) publishers to match their conversion and traffic data and integrate that data in the marketing tools that they use, such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook Ads, Data Studio and more.

2 – How did you come up with the idea to start We Can Track?

The foundation of We Can Track started because I was assigned to focus on Saleduck’s data analysis and paid ads management. Together with Ajay (also co-founder of We Can Track) we worked on setting up an attribution system that allowed us to match conversion with traffic data and even integrate that data in Google Analytics.

Due to the capability of linking Google Analytics with Google Ads we immediately had the conversion data available in our Google Ads campaigns which helped us to make major optimisations and scale up campaigns that were generating profits. This is when we realised that we were on to something special.

We have tested various tracking softwares but they all had their flaws: It was either too complicated and time consuming to set up proper tracking since every link had to be created manually or they were missing significant functionalities. This is why right from the start we focused on automation and simplicity when it comes to the set up of our tracking solution and I think we did accomplish that pretty well.

We worked hard to get our data attribution coverage above 95% back then which was a very challanging task for a company that uses around 100 network accounts from more than 40 different affiliate networks and generated traffic for around 1 million visitors per month.

We actually accomplished to reach 98% which is when we, including our former employer, decided to create a SaaS product out of this, since there are thousands of publishers out there who are facing the same problems and require such a powerful and simple software.

So we founded We Can Track in January 2019 and started to build everything from scratch again. You could say that our current system is the 2.0 version of what we initially built.

3 – When is it interesting for an affiliate to use the software of We Can Track?

Affiliate publishers should start to use our software once they generated their first conversion. Since we offer our solution for free to small affiliate publishers, they simply have nothing to lose and can only gain from using our service.

With We Can Track, publishers can integrate their conversion data in paid ad platforms which delivers great potential, especially for new websites that do not generate a lot of organic traffic yet. So I recommend to get started with paid ads right away once the website is online.

4 – In which countries are the affiliates active that use We Can Track?

We have clients from all over the world, most from Europe and America, but also from Asia and even Africa.

5 – Are there a lot of competitors in the affiliate tracking market?

While there are numerous trackers and aggregators out there I would not consider most of them direct competitors.

Most trackers rely on users having to set up tracking links while we have completely automated that process. So all our users have to do is simply place our JavaScript tag (or install our WordPress plugin) on their website(s) and connect their network accounts.

The whole process can be done within a few minutes while the use of other trackers requires a good understanding of how it all works as well as continuous maintenance and manual work.

6 – What are your ambitions with We Can Track?

We are striving to become an essential intersection for (affiliate) publishers that helps them with their data tracking, attribution and integration, but also with website and campaign automation.

7 – How do you see the future of affiliate marketing? What is going to change?

Affiliate Marketing is becoming more challanging and requires publishers to become more advanced. New traffic sources besides organic traffic will gain relevancy for affiliate publishers.

Due to proper data tracking and attribution, affiliate publishers are able to use advanced marketing techniques which are also used by merchants, such as retargeting users who abandoned the funnel or using lookalike audiences.

8 – What do you like about affiliate marketing? (and what do you dislike)?

What I like about affiliate marketing is that it allows any person with the right ambition to become an independent entrepreneur without the need of investing a lot of money.

What I dislike about affiliate marketing is that a lot of documentation is either outdated or not simple to understand, which leaves a lot of affiliate publishers in the dark regarding advanced technical capabilities.

Moreover, I can’t stand when networks do not deliver the
most basic functionalities to their publishers when they are considered small (e.g. granting the use of subid parameters or access to api endpoints).

9 – Can you integrate affiliate networks in We Can Track that make use of different conversion attribution models?

Yes of course. As soon as a network reports conversion data and offers an API or Postback endpoint, we can integrate that data in our system.