What Is Deep Linking and How Does It Work?
If you have recently opened up an article with a title like “Top 50 Christmas Gifts For The Person Who Seems To Have It All,” you likely are viewing products pulled using affiliate deep linking. Affiliate publishers and brands alike, take advantage of deep linking because it can increase their click-to-sale conversion ratio as they are delivering customers closer to the point of conversion.
Deep Linking Allows publishers to link to a specific product page on a brand's website using their own personalized link. This makes it easy for affiliates to choose which specific products they want to promote. Once a publisher has a brand’s deep link, they can choose whatever product on the brand’s site they want to link to. If a brand creates a text link without deep linking enabled, then publishers can only drive to the URL featured in the text link.
If you launch a collaboration with a publisher, you want to consider creating a private text link(s) for them with deep linking enabled - this will allow you to better track performance. For example, if you enable deep linking within a text link that you exclusively share with one publisher, all click performance from that publisher using that text link will be available. Otherwise, reporting will show one click from each deep link visit in reporting.
Now that you know how deep linking within your affiliate marketing can improve the customer experience and your overall conversion rate, consider adding them to your program if you aren’t already taking advantage!
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