Pingtree Best Practices

Introduction

Pingtree Best Practices

Getting Started

The team at Pingtree has seen 100’s of implementations, builds and offers. Through this experience we have found there to be some operational best practices for your organization to find the maximum amount of success.

To begin there are a few areas that will help with operational excellence in your organization:

Operationalize your Team

Team Involvement: From the initial start of your campaign build it is advised to have a key point of contact in your organization that is familiar with the campaign, its settings and how the traffic flows. This will greatly hello with organization/implementation of decisions later as a key person in your organization is aware of all the nuance.

Planning: Properly planning your campaign from the start will shave off 50% or more of the execution time. Between the groups we see build on the spot vs those who do a proper planning session, those who plan execute far more efficiently.

Execution: Pingtree was meant to be codeless and quick - thus do not let tasks take more time than they need. Many times we see execution is purely due to not knowing how to do something or being unsure of the implementation. Pingtree offers substantial training so that all team members can work quickly and effectively.

Execution is the one trait that separates the organizations that can scale quickly vs those who take a long time to get live. Have a conversation about execution expectations and have the Pingtree back you up on those plans.

Knowing your Offer: One of the most important “best practices” is for you to “know your offer”. This means the setup, numbers, performance, partners, rules and more. Marketing is an ever-changing activity and knowing how you are configured is critical for you to properly navigate the challenges that come with marketing and managing an affiliate program.

Team Involvement

Pingtree doesn't charge for users to be added to your account and encourages you to add your entire marketing and executive team. This inclusion of your team will help all have visibility as well as reduce security risks with any users sharing logins.

Including all team members in a marketing campaign can significantly boost productivity, improve organization, and create a more cohesive and effective team. Here's how:

Increased Productivity:

Shared ownership: When everyone is involved, there's a sense of shared responsibility and accountability for the campaign's success. This encourages active participation and contribution, leading to increased effort and output.

Diverse perspectives: Different team members bring unique skills, experiences, and ideas to the table. This diversity can spark creativity, identify potential problems, and lead to more innovative and effective solutions.

Reduced bottlenecks: Involving everyone from the start eliminates silos and streamlines workflows. Team members can anticipate needs, proactively address challenges, and avoid delays caused by lack of communication or unclear roles.

Improved Organization:

Clearer communication: When everyone is in the loop, communication channels are open and transparent. This reduces misunderstandings, prevents duplicated efforts, and ensures everyone is working towards the same goals.

Better coordination: With a shared understanding of the campaign objectives and strategies, team members can coordinate their efforts more effectively. This leads to smoother execution, fewer conflicts, and more efficient use of resources.

Increased accountability: When everyone is aware of their role and responsibilities, it's easier to track progress, identify areas for improvement, and hold individuals accountable for their contributions.

Benefits of a Unified Team:

Stronger team spirit: Working together towards a common goal fosters a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. This creates a more positive and supportive work environment, boosting morale and motivation.

Increased trust and collaboration: Open communication and shared responsibility build trust among team members. This encourages collaboration, knowledge sharing, and a willingness to help each other succeed.

Improved problem-solving: A unified team is better equipped to handle challenges and overcome obstacles. With everyone working together, problems are identified quickly and solutions are found more efficiently.

By fostering a culture of inclusivity and collaboration in marketing campaigns, organizations can unlock the full potential of their teams, leading to increased productivity, improved organization, and ultimately, greater success.

Platform Use

As the Pingtree platform is feature rich, there are many best practices to ensure that you have a smooth campaign. The best practices outlined here are general concepts to help make sure that your campaign is operationally smooth and you can limit any issues in launching. Here are some of the most common best practices:

Platform Security

Issue every user their own login: Issue every one of your users their own login and avoid sharing logins with multiple users, contractors, vendors, etc. Keep a tighter grip of control on all users and how/when they access your account.
Require users to set passwords: It is advised that you do not user common passwords and create them for all your users. Using ‘Password123!’ For your users, the setup is a terrible idea and we encourage you to use strong, user unique passwords.
Enable and use proper Role Based Access (RBC): Not every user should be a super admin, use the proper role for the type of user that you are adding. You have the full ability to set custom roles and can make as many roles as you need. Build the right access, visibility and control for each user.
Limit user ability to download data: It is possible that you store or collect PII data on consumers. It is imperative that this data be stored securely and that you govern who can export or extract this information. Reserved data extraction rights for Super Admin and Admin roles only.

Data Standardization

Using a structured data schema: When you create campaigns, add marketing partners and advertisers your campaign reporting and optimization is greatly enhanced by having structured data. This means that you collect and store data in the same fields for all sources and properties. This makes the scalability and reporting aspect of your campaign greatly enhanced and easy to use.
Marketing Partners and Source traffic fields: Use field management to build your data ingestion with fields that all ingest the same expected values. For example you might have a field ‘house_type’. In this filed you can standardize the incoming data to be {‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’} or {‘house’, ‘apartment’, ‘other’} In any format, the concept is that all data flows in the same.
Use and create fields that make sense: You will be consistently reviewing data and reports. Make your custom fields in conventions that you and most importantly others will be able to understand. In the best practice above we had a field named ‘house_type’ - this is self explanatory and the data that comes in will make sense. If you made this field ‘h_ty_1” for the house type you might know what this is but many others will not. Just make it make sense!

Proper Testing

Clear your cache and test in incognito: Testing will require you to clear cache or conduct your testing in incognito in the event you have some form of cookie or caching storage on the user session. This will help you test as a net-new user.
Test before you launch: Use staging to build and test before making it live in production, especially when running live traffic. This will help you make for a smooth cut over of the new workflow. Pingtree offers the ability to stage and test before making workflows live.
Test after each change: Your campaign might have rules and validations that require you to test when you make an update. Our suggestion is when you make a material change to your pages, forms and data to test the workflow to ensure it is routing and selling properly to your advertisers and endpoints.

Reviewing Data

Review and check log data: From sources to endpoints Pingtree has logs to see what is taking place with your data. It is advised to be familiar with this data and review it on a regular basis as external parties may make changes without your knowledge and you will want to catch this and reconcile any issues quickly.
Audit your transaction_id’s for intended flow: In your Data Tab you will be able to see granular data down to the transaction level. Take time to look through transactions that are working as well as failing to sell or meet filter criteria. In each transaction there is video recording that will help you visually verify the data that is taking place.
Build custom pivot reports: Create your campaign reports that are custom to the data points and fields for you to quickly analyze your campaign and marketing performance.
Setup and implement event structures: Pingtree has the ability to set events to fire along the entire lead generation life cycle. This will allow you to see where an issue may be present or fall off is occurring.

Support Services

Pingtree Support

Pingtree offers best in class support with live screen sharing sessions in-application. Ditch the Zoom links and call us directly from the application. A Solution Engineer will be able to see your dashboard and support you visually. We can even drive your screen to help walk you through complex setups!

Chat Support. Need a quick answer or how to find something, simply drop it in the chat and a Solution Engineer will be able to support you in finding what you need.

Video Support. Call a Solutions Engineer and work with them live to resolve your questions and needs. Share screens and allow an engineer to take over you screen and walk you through a resolution.

Ticket Management

When you have multiple campaigns, larger tasks or feature requests Pingtree offers a completely built in ticket management solution that allows you to coordinate your needs and track to resolution.

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