Voluum is one of the most robust tracking systems available to help you optimize your lead spends. However, if you try to track calls to Voluum using a clickid, you would need enough numbers to track all your concurrent visitors since each visitor would need a unique number to tag the number with the unique clickid. The following documentation is an alternative way to still use Voluum, but only track the information that is important to you, and not down to a clickid. You could also do this for epom.com or a variety of other tracking systems.
Using a tracking system like Voluum you could even have your Google Adwords go through Voluum and only track what you want to track. If you use Google Analytics integration with Retreaver, you are stuck with having a number pool big enough to track visitors with a unique phone number, which is fine for low volume campaigns, but not very good for high traffic campaigns.
Retreaver can interface to Voluum in two ways. By Server to Server using a ClickID, and by Cookie Based Pixels only tracking the relevant information you need from each traffic source to optimize. It is suggested you use the Cookie Based Method instead of S2S so that your number pool sized can be managed better, and the tracking will be more accurate.
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Cookie Based Tracking
When optimizing, send fewer fields to your landing page from Voluum, and then add more fields to track as you refine the broader sources. For example, On Redirect.com, you could bid on 500 Sources and all their Sub Sources. You will be sending both of the values on the click to Voluum to track; however, if you only send in the Source to the landing page initially, you can figure out which sources to bid on and which to eliminate, before you start sending the Sub Source to the lander to refine the Sources traffic by Sub Source.
Traffic Sources
In the below images, you can see that every Traffic Source setup in Voluum has been given some custom token names that will be used to track the important information that you would like posted to Voluum.
No matter what traffic source you are getting the traffic from, it is best to come up with a naming standard for the fields you want to track from each Traffic Source. In this example, we have used r_src through r_src5 meaning retreaver_tracked_source.
Redirect.com Custom Tokens:
1. This is where Voluum will look in the URL to find the custom token to extract. The replacement tokens for this column are {var1} thru {var10} based on the order listed in this column.
2. This is how the Traffic Source denotes the token name for replacement in their system. Note: Delimiters for tokens vary by traffic source, most use {tokenname}, but as shown above redirect uses #tokenname#, LinkTrust uses [=tokenname=], and even Retreaver uses [tokenname]. See the help section in the traffic source for how they delimit tokens for replacements in strings.
3. This is the name of the field to be shown on Voluum reporting. You can name it what the trafficsource calls it or however you want to see these fields on Voluum reporting. If you want to use this column for token replacement it is {var:fieldname}.
4. This is just a flag to indicate if the field should be included on the Voluum Reporting for this Traffic Source or not.
5. The variable r_buyer denotes the Retreaver Buyer of the call. We have to define it for each Traffic Source so that Voluum has it as a custom field, but you would not fill in the Placeholder since you will not be getting this field from the Traffic Source; but rather, from Retreaver after the call is complete.
50onRed Custom Tokens:
MediaHub Custom Tokens:
ZeroPark Custom Tokens:
Of course, these traffic sources may have many more tokens you want to track, Retreaver calls these Tags. There can be many more sources you have. Contact Support if you have a Traffic Source you do not know how to define the Advanced Settings in the Traffic Source for.
Setting up an Offer and Campaign on Voluum
There are many ways to get the traffic to the final landing page via Voluum. However, for this example, we are only going to create an Offer and combine it with a Traffic Source in the Campaign.
Step 1: Offer Setup
Pictured below is the Voluum Offer Edit Screen:
1. http://mylander.com/index.html?a=[PUT_RETREAVER_PUBLISHER_ID_HERE]&os={os}&browser={browser}&isp={isp}&ip={ip}&r_src={var1}&r_src2={var2}&r_src3={var3}&r_src4={var4}&r_src5={var5}&vcid={campaign.id}&dfn=(888)%20222-3333&dn=%2B18882223333&clickid={clickid}
System tokens in Voluum are defined as {tokenname}, while user defined tokens are {var1 thru var10} if doing based on column 1 names of the Tracking Source Custom Variables OR {var:tokenname} if using the name in the 3rd column.
All of the query string variables are optional. Query string are all the data after the ? in the URL. However, if you follow these standards to send to each lander, we can use a standard pixel in the Webhook of all the Retreaver Campaigns.
In this example, we are only sending os, browser, isp, and ip to the landing page so we may use this information for display variables on the page. Variables r_src through r_src5 are sent as whatever values we received from the Traffic Source. Variable vcid is the Voluum Campaign ID; Retreaver will pick this up as a Tag for the postback URL. The last two fields named dfn (Default Formatted Number) and dn (Default Number) are used so that you can have many campaigns from Voluum, but land on the same landing page. By sending in the dfn and dn fields, you will be able to have a unique default number to use if the Number Pool definition in Retreaver is too small.
URLs must be Encoded when placing them in Voluum. In the URL example %20 is the <space> between the Area Code and Preifx, and %2B in the dn field is the plus sign (+).
Step 2: Voluum Campaign Setup
Pictured below is an example of the Redirect.com Campaign Setup In Voluum:
1. Campaign URL to be placed on the Redirect.com system to send traffic through Voluum:
http://YourVoluumDomain.com/96abe75b-91ba-4ca8-a0c8-26c104805316?r_src=#SOURCE#&r_src2=#SUBSOURCE#&r_src3=&r_src4=&r_src5=&r_buyer=
Note that it is adding the query string fields from the Traffic Source Advanced Settings. A different traffic source would have different tokens appended.
2. You can combine any traffic source you want with the same offer.
3. The offer has the URL that points to the landing page in this example.
Step 3: Setting up the Campaign on Retreaver
Although you would normally set up campaigns on Voluum separately for each Traffic Source, in Retreaver that would require extra numbers to be used since the Number Pools are defined by Campaign. It is highly recommended that you just use one Campaign per vertical, and let our tags do the reporting for you.
Here we are only focused on the Webhooks to interface to Voluum with data instead of by clickid. Our dedicated support staff are here to help you configure your tracking interface with Voluum or help configure your campaign, contact us at support@retreaver.com and be sure to have your Webhook from Voluum handy.
Configuring tokens within your Webhook. Note that in the above image, target_id has since changed to buyer_id.
You may have noticed that the landing page url placed on Voluum had &vcid={campaign.id}. This is how we will be able to interface back to Voluum which will have many campaigns, but only have one campaign setup in Retreaver.
- Webhook to do a Click in order to write a cookie to the Retreaver servers, for the pixel that fires below: http://v.selftrk.com/[vcid]?r_src=[r_src]&r_src2=[r_src2]&r_src3=[r_src3]&r_src4=[r_src4]&r_src5=[r_src5]&r_buyer=[buyer_id]&tfn=pixel You can send in [buyer_id] if you have used that field in the Buyer Edits, or [system_buyer_id] if you haven’t. We are sending &tfn=pixel only to tell the code on the landing page, that this is a Retreaver click for the postback, and the lander does not need to try and generate a lead.
- Pixel URL: https://v.selftrk.com/conversion.gif?payout=[revenue]&txid=[call_uuid]
Example Default Number to be used for Redirect.com Campaign
We add two tags to each static number we have to pull manually from the system for each campaign that is running. This will allow us to still track that we have a call back to Voluum; however, we identify that the number pool was full and the default number had to be used:
- vcid is set to the campaign id from Voluum
- r_src is set to whatever you want to show in Voluum reporting that these calls aren’t actually tracking the source of the call on the campaign.
Setting up the Campaign Settings on Retreaver
There are two ways to tell Retreaver what you want to track from the landing page URL:
1. In the campaign settings, you modify what you want us to track from the URL and what Retreaver Tag to place it in.
2. Have the Retreaver campaign look for all the possible tags you want to track, but as you optimize, modify how much information you actually send to the landing page in the URL.
Option 2 is going to make much more sense since we are trying to optimize many campaigns in Voluum to only one campaign in Retreaver. As mentioned in the beginning of this article, the best way to optimize is to start with tags that are not very unique, and then as you decide which ones of those are working well enough to refine more, add them to the landing page URL in Voluum on the campaign.
Note that if you are trying to send an publisher_id to Retreaver, it must exist in Retreaver to populate the tag. In the example above the Voluum landing page URL has &a={trafficsource.name}. This assumes that you have named your traffic sources with the same value as the publisher ID in Retreaver. Since campaigns in Voluum are linked to traffic sources, you could also hard code this to be &a=RD. RD being the publisher ID you have given Redirect.com in Retreaver.
Suggested Optimization Strategy
The suggestion we make as you optimize a campaign (now that you are not tracking by clickID) is to only send broad information to the landing page, and then as you can narrow your bids on the broad tag values, do more refined tracking.
Redirect.com example: Since you won’t know what Sources to bid on from Redirect.com when you start, do a broad bid but only send the Source to the landing page. Even though you get the Subsource from Redirect to Voluum, initially don’t send it to the landing page. Once you have narrowed down what Sources are making calls happen, you then only bid on those Sources, and start sending the SubSource to the landing page. In the flow of this document that would be r_src={var1} initially, then add in r_src2={var2}.
This same logic can be used for any Tracking Source. Send all the information from the Tracking Source to Voluum, but control what you want Retreaver to track by only sending limited information to the landing page originally and adding more information as you refine the bids.
Server to Server Tracking by Click ID
With Voluums clickid postback, the clickid has all the information about the click, siteid, browser, browserversion, os, osversion etc. So you can send us the clickid, and we post that back to Voluum and they will provide your reporting. Voluums reporting gives much more insight on your tracking as well as a great place to optimize the keywords and zones that work.
You need to host up a modified landing page, which we can of course help you with should you need it. Then you configure your Voluum to send similar to what is below.
http://yourdomain.com/index2tm2.php?a=MH&clickid={clickid}
You must include: &clickid={clickid}
You can optionally send:
&os={os} You can filter calls to Buyers using this field.
&osversion={osversion}
&ip={ip} &isp={isp}
&browser={browser}
&browserversion={browserversion}
&etc etc from voluum tags
If you are not trying to track back to anything and just use our reporting, then pass zoneid and placementid to Voluum or bypass them. Then send to us and don’t try to postback to Voluum. We can track anything you send to us.
Note: The Postback URL after the call completes needs UUID, key and CallID.
If you simply want to see what source is bringing traffic for calls, you can just track that with Retreaver.
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