When David and I wrote our first line of Clickable code in 2006, it was always our belief that our ability to help our customers succeed in search advertising would rely on collecting and analyzing the right data. That’s why I’m excited to announce our introduction this week of Clickable Conversion Tracking, a milestone in our product roadmap. It will greatly improve profitability of our customers’ search advertising campaigns and simplify the technical setup of this core best practice. Clickable Conversion Tracking is now in beta, and we’ll release it as a full feature within Clickable Pro in December. (See full press release.)

We’re extremely interested in your perspective. Are you using conversion tracking today?  If not, what are the obstacles?  If yes, what systems do you use?  What do you like about them?  What don’t you like?  Have we hit on the right problems to solve for you?  Please let us know, because your feedback is critical to our development.

Because of the significance of this feature, I’d like to share below an introduction to the practice of conversion tracking, as well as the profitability advantages. Then I’d like to share how Clickable Conversion Tracking works and can drive your success.

What is Conversion Tracking?

The task of a search engine is to deliver clicks to your Web site.  Once a click has been delivered, we have to ensure that your Web site converts those clicks into revenues and profits.

The conversion of clicks to revenues and profits is based on your business model.  You may use your clicks to drive a customer lead for your products and services.  Or, you may use your clicks to drive a sale on your Web site.  Or, you may use your clicks to drive pages views on your site.  All of these are equally valid conversions – or successful outcomes – of your clicks.

The task of a conversion-tracking system is to accurately track each conversion, track its source, and track the cost of the source.  This allows us to make a fundamental shift away from the cost-per-click metric that is used as a core metric by search engines to a cost-per-conversion metric, which is far more important to advertisers.  We’ll examine why below.

Conversion Tracking Improves Profitability

The shift in strategy from cost-per-click to cost-per-conversion allows us to measure the true profitability of each keyword in our campaign. The core idea is that marketers should make advertising investment decisions based on how much profit or value a click delivers in the end – not the standalone price of a click, irrespective of outcome.  Here’s an example:
Consider two possible keywords for an oral surgeon’s Web site that seeks consulting appointments for prospective oral surgery patients.

1. The keyword “dentist” results in 100 clicks at $1.00 each.  Since “dentist” is an overly broad keyword, only 1 in 100 clicks request an appointment with the doctor.  In this case, the cost-per-conversion (aka cost-per-acquisition) is $100.
2. On the other hand, the keyword “Oral Surgery” results in only 20 clicks at $5.00 each, but those 20 clicks result in 4 appointments.  In this case, the cost-per-acquisition is $25.
   

Let’s compare how the two metrics result in different decisions that affect profitability.

• The cost-per-click is $1 for ‘dentist’ and $5 for ‘oral surgeon’.  If conversion tracking is not set up on the campaign, we may be tempted to increase our spending on ‘dentist’ and reduce our spending on the ‘oral surgeon’.
  

• Let’s now view the same decision from a cost-per-acquisition perspective.  The cost-per-acquisition is $100 for ‘dentist’ and $25 for ‘oral surgeon’. With conversion tracking enabled, we now have insight into our true costs for acquiring customers.  We now reach a decision that is reverse of the decision based on a cost-per-click metric:  We need to decrease our spending on ‘dentist’ and increase our spending on ‘oral surgeon’.

In short, the presence of conversion tracking delivers the information advantage to make decisions that reflect the true cost-of-conversion for each keyword. It allows us to improve the profitability of our campaigns and greater overall business success.

(Also see Clickable’s Best Practice on Conversion Tracking)

Clickable Simplifies Conversion Tracking

If the results of conversion tracking are so obvious, why doesn’t everyone use conversion tracking?  Shockingly, we recently analyzed over 1,000 search-advertising accounts of small and midsize businesses and found that over half failed to properly track conversions. We suspect this is largely due to the complexity associated with setup, as well as the sophistication required to act on the data.
We developed Clickable Conversion Tracking to address these fundamental challenges affecting so many advertisers. Here are the primary benefits that will boost your success:

• Remove the burden and errors inherent with managing multiple tracking systems on your Web site:  Traditionally, each search engine requires you to install an engine-specific pixel or JavaScript snippet on your Web site to track conversions from that single engine.  That is, if you were advertising on two search engines, you would be required to have 2 snippets on your Web site.  If you added another search engine, then you would be required to go and change all your pages once again to add the snippet for the third search engine.  We have eliminated the need to have multiple snippets by using a single snippet that works across all the major search engines.

• Eliminate tagging complexity and errors:  We wanted to hide and automate the unique tagging of each destination URL, a tedious but necessary task for tracking conversions.  All changes to destination URLs are made by Clickable with the press of a button.  This assures that your tagging is complete (no destination URL is missed) and consistent (all destination URLs are tagged similarly). It’s that easy!
  

• Orchestrate the multi-step process that starts with setting up conversion tracking to optimizing your campaigns:  The process of optimizing your campaigns based on your conversions can quickly get overwhelming. An advertiser has to put together a jigsaw puzzle of variables, snippets, page footers, cost assumptions, and goal settings among many other tasks.  Clickable simplifies this process and dramatically boosts productivity by enabling advertisers to specify their conversion and campaign goals with Clickable.  Clickable orchestrates the rest by relaying conversion data continuously to Clickable’s ActEngine to deliver you the best recommendations and highest profitability.
  

We hope you’ll try Clickable Conversion Tracking and let us know what you think. Our customers play a large role in building and shaping nearly every aspect of Clickable. If you need help with setup, we’re standing by to support you.

So, if we only use the Clickable conversion tracking code, and remove Google/Yahoo tracking code from our site, will Clickable send conversion data to the Google/Yahoo networks as well? (I guess the question is, if I still want to see conversion data in my Adwords account, do I still need to keep the Adwords conversion tracking code?)

Best,

Alex

If you want to see conversion data in your AdWords/YSM interface, you will have to retain your AdWords/YSM conversion tracking.  None of the search engines allow you to "inject" conversion data into their data streams.

does your software offer automatic bidding?

Will there be a standard report that can be run on CPC?

Thanks

Scott: We currently do not support automatic bidding. In general, our philosophy is that when it comes to bids, some human intervention is good. We "recommend" bid changes. That being said, we are exploring offering automatic bidding as an option.

Rod: We do have CPC information. We have a number of reporting options throughout the product. We also have a dedicated reporting area under the "Analyze" tab. You can sign-up for our free trial and see if we have the reporting options you need. Of course, please feel free to share your feedback or specific feature requests around reporting needs.

Ken,

Thanks for the feedback! Our company is coming on board in January - working Patrick Duffy. I loved him on Dallas, by the way.

I meant to say "working WITH Patrick Duff." :)

Question re. coversion tracking: in the local space it's really about leads to customers, not cpc. In other words, nothing matters unless the phone rings or an email is received! Any thoughts on tracking via landing pages or RCF numbers?  

Rich: We do have the ability to track other conversion goals, including the ones you listed. Those particular offerings are not part of the “Pro” product – but we do have technology and services that address them. If you have further questions on this front, please contact us (www.clickable.com/.../ContactUs.aspx) and we can expand on the discussion and your specific business goals. Many thanks for your comment; we’re always listening and incorporating feedback into the larger product roadmap.

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We have a cpa goal of  $5 per signup for all our advertising. We dont really care how much we pay per click as long as each sign up comes out to $5 or less per person. Can we just enter $5 cpa goal in your system, implement your tracking pixel and have your system automatically manage bids to achieve our goal?

Alex: We do provide you the ability to set a CPA goal based on conversion data. If you already have conversion tracking setup on your website, we do integrate with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN conversion data. If not, a single Clickable Conversion Tracking script can be used for you site across networks.

In terms of automatic bids, we currently do not offer that functionality -- instead we recommend bid changes. As I note above, we are exploring offering automatic bid changes in the future.

Let me know if there are other questions. You can also contact us at the link below --

www.clickable.com/.../ContactUs.aspx

I was wondering if clickable is currently in development for a feature in the conversion tracking software to track phone calls, emails and form submission.  We used a company called Reach Local that provides all of this information on their platform.  The only downside was they weren't very transparent with there cost.  

Ken,

To echo my colleague Ken Yarmosh in the comments above, we do have the ability to track other conversion goals. They are not part of our Pro product – but we do have technology and services that address them. Please contact us (www.clickable.com/.../ContactUs.aspx) and we can expand on the discussion, including your specific business goals.

Max

How do I add your conversion tracking script?

Steve,

I'll have someone from our customer service team contact you on Monday to set you up.

Max

Is it possible to use clickable to include multiple conversion codes on a single 'thank you' page? Although Google already allows that, Yahoo does not. Can your technology help?

Saira: I'm interpreting your question to ask if we offer multiple conversion types. Based on analyzing customer data and feedback, we opted to simplify the conversion setup process and actually do not offer this functionality. We offer one conversion type that works across ad networks. While it is not something customers are frequently requesting right now, we are constantly evaluating the best features to add to our product. In the future, we may re-visit multiple conversion types based on feedback like yours from other customers. Feel free to contact us directly if you have more specific questions.

www.clickable.com/.../ContactUs.aspx

How does clickable work together with the Google Connversion Optimzer. Does it make sense to user your product together with Googles automated system?

Also does your system work with mobile advertising e.g. via Yahoo Mobile and Google Mobile?

Cheers

Ray

Google Conversion Optimizer is a black box system that sets a new bid every time your ads are displayed, using all of Google's resources to determine what bid to use.  Many advertisers feel that this system is not satisfactory, because the bids used by Google Conversion Optimizer, as well as the rationale for setting the bids, are completely obscured from the advertiser.  In contrast, Clickable's bid management is completely transparent, showing users the metrics and rationale used to modify bid amounts, and allowing users to review each bid change before it is implemented.

If you want to use Google Conversion Optimizer, you can still use Clickable to manage your campaigns, but Clickable will not suggest any bid changes for campaigns that are using Google Conversion Optimizer.  The rest of Clickable's recommendations, as well as the full interface for managing and analyzing SEM spending, will still work for you.

As for mobile and other emerging ad formats, we have a lot in store and will be making some announcements soon.

As we were closing the books on 2008 this past week, both literally and figuratively, my co-founder Munish

Does your tool let you set a CPA goal *and also* keep in mind that you want as much revenue as possible... i.e. I'd rather have make $10 on 100 sales than $20 on 10 sales.  I'm afraid if I just optimized for target CPA, I may end up with less total revenue.

Clickable lets you set a goal for either a target CPA or return on ad spend (ROAS).  We recommend that anyone tracking revenue use an ROAS goal, as that will provide the most accurate measure of your campaign success.  Depending on which goal type you set, the Clickable ActEngine will maximize the number of conversions or total revenue available while still meeting your goal.”

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