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In today’s fast-paced landscape of digital marketing, staying ahead is essential. At CAKE, we recognize the challenges our clients face with managing domains in an environment where the lifespan of tracking domains is becoming increasingly shorter.

That’s why we are excited to introduce Domains Management. This powerful capability gives you full control over your domain strategy, while boosting your ability to easily adapt to the ever-changing digital environment.

Why Domains Management matters

In recent years, web browsers have tightened restrictions with tracking domains, significantly shortening their lifespan. This has made managing domains cumbersome and time-consuming, thus creating inefficiencies and delays that could potentially have a negative impact on traffic, revenue, and business performance.

Our new Domains Management feature addresses these challenges head-on. The feature empowers you to manage your domains directly within the CAKE platform, from adding tracking domains to purchasing SSL certificates, and accessing insights through detailed reporting. Overall, this tool equips you to navigate modern performance marketing’s complexities with greater independence and efficiency.

Key features and benefits

 
1. Add Tracking Domains

Users can add domains they own as Cookie or Redirect Domains, with the added convenience of an option to automatically purchase SSL certificates. This enhanced autonomy enables you to implement branded domains, significantly improving your ability to mitigate risks from less reliable traffic sources and boost overall traffic quality. Moreover, it serves as a strategic
defense against domain-centric tracking prevention mechanisms, such as Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP).

2. SSL Management and Visibility

The SSL certificate purchasing process is streamlined, allowing you to acquire certificates directly within CAKE. The comprehensive Certificate Grid provides full oversight of your SSL
management. This integration simplifies certificate management, particularly beneficial for Proxy Users, by delivering complete visibility and control. As a result, you’re equipped with more
efficient and independent domain management.

3. Domains Report with Affiliate, Offer, and Campaign Drill Down

The Domains Management feature introduces a comprehensive report that enables detailed insights into domain assignments across various entities, including Affiliates, Offers, and Campaigns. This allows you to effectively manage your domain strategy by providing a clear overview of current domain utilization. With this information at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions about reassigning or eliminating domains based on their traffic performance, ensuring optimal use of your domain resources and enhancing overall campaign effectiveness.

The Value of Autonomy in Domain Management

The introduction of the Domains Management feature marks a significant shift in how you can approach domain management within CAKE. With the ability to manage domains more independently, you can more easily streamline your workflows and adapt to the digital landscape.

Moreover, the ability to add multiple domains to your CAKE instance opens up new possibilities for tracking strategies and branded domains, empowering you to confidently explore traffic sources without compromising your trusted partnerships. This flexibility enhances your network’s quality but also positions you more competitively when negotiating with premier partners.

Looking Ahead

At CAKE, our goal is to continuously innovate and provide you with the tools that help drive your success. With the Domains Management capability, you can discover new ways to optimize your affiliate strategies, improve your network’s performance, and ultimately, increase your revenue.

We invite you to explore this new feature and see how it can transform the way you manage your domains. As always, our team is here to support you.

For more details about Domains Management, check out this Knowledge Base article.

The post Domains Management Simplified: Introducing CAKE’s Latest Innovation appeared first on CAKE.

CAKE is packed with powerful features designed for you to remain competitive by freeing up operational hours, delivering key insights, and enhancing tracking and lead distribution processes. Here’s a recap of what’s new in CAKE!

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Templates – Eliminate repetitive advertiser and offer setups 

CAKE’s Advertiser and Offer Templates save significant operational hours by enabling customers to select from a list of default and customizable templates. The advertiser and offer template feature gives customers the tools they need to quickly activate new advertisers and offers, eliminating repetitive tasks across the setup process. These templates are particularly valuable for complex offer setups involving rules targeting and attribution settings, that can easily be replicated after the initial configuration.

For instance, CAKE provides a default offer template that includes redirect parameters using tokens, which can seamlessly be passed to the advertiser on the redirect. This template is useful when a customer has multiple landing pages connected to a single offer and always wants to pass the same query string values (i.e., CAKE Request ID, CAKE Affiliate ID, etc.).

Discover the full capabilities of CAKE’s Advertiser and Offer Templates in the video below.

 

Learn how to set up advertiser and offer contracts in our Knowledge Base article here.

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Advertiser Sub IDs – Gain powerful conversion insights 

CAKE Advertiser Sub IDs provide customers with granular conversion information that fuels campaign optimizations.

Gathering enough conversion information is a common pain point among performance marketers. Insufficient conversion insights make it difficult to determine an affiliate’s overall influence on conversions and to accurately reward them for driving high-quality conversions.

CAKE Advertiser Sub IDs enable customers to collect, track, and report on additional data from the advertiser on every conversion. CAKE provides 10 dynamic data fields (e.g., adv1, adv2, etc.) that can be extracted from the advertiser to reveal essential insights into user behavior surrounding a conversion. The additional data allows customers to effectively optimize campaigns, partner strategies, and affiliate payouts.

Explore how to automate granular data collection, enhance reporting insights, and strengthen affiliate relationships with CAKE Advertiser Sub IDs here.

Ready to set up advertiser Sub IDs? Head over to the Knowledge Base here.

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Chromium Client Hints – Access privacy-friendly tracking 

We’ve adopted Client Hints in response to Chromium’s User-Agent Reduction. Chromium, the code for the Chrome browser and other browsers that leverage it, has implemented the User-Agent Reduction, which eliminates user-identifiable information from the User-Agent String.

This change affected tracking, measurement, and fraud detection. It also impacted CAKE’s Rules Targeting (on device and operating system on clicks), Session Regeneration (on clicks and conversions), and reporting.

Now, with Chromium Client Hints, developers can seamlessly access additional user information while respecting consumer privacy and ensuring tracking continuity. Furthermore, CAKE has integrated with the WURFL Database to retrieve additional insights into users’ devices, while simultaneously enhancing device lookup rules.

Learn more about how the implementation of Chromium’s Client Hints offers a privacy-friendly tracking experience for you here.

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JSON support – Streamline the lead-submission process

The introduction of JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Support enhances CAKE’s lead submission process and replaces conventional data formats such as XML. The outdated XML format lacks flexibility, presents integration challenges, and impacts the speed and efficiency of lead data transmission.

JSON is a method of formatting data before sending it from a server or webpage to an endpoint. In this scenario, JSON is used to format lead data before it is posted into CAKE.

CAKE’s JSON solution equips customers with a lightweight and easy way to read/write data interchange format that is widely adopted by most developers and highly flexible. JSON also fuels a more efficient and accurate lead-data submission process in a structured and simple format, while also enabling seamless integrations with other platforms and systems.

Learn how to Server Post a lead into CAKE using the JSON format here.

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Stay in the loop on all CAKE releases

We’re diligently working behind the scenes to build the features and solutions you need to maximize your revenue potential. Stay up to date on all new CAKE releases by signing up for our newsletter here.

We’d love to hear from you! If you’re an existing customer, join the CAKE Idea Portal and share your individual business challenges and proposed solutions, plus vote on other customers’ solutions.

Log in to the
CAKE Idea Portal

Log in

Register for the CAKE Idea Portal

The post Discover What’s New in CAKE appeared first on CAKE.

Or maybe you needed immediate help, but your vendor didn’t have support agents readily available, and even worse, a knowledge base was entirely nonexistent.

saaUnfortunately, these nightmare scenarios are all too common, especially in the fast-paced world of performance marketing where some technology providers just can’t keep up.

CAKE is laser-focused on cultivating partnerships with our customers to identify their individual business needs, so we can deliver support and products that fuel long-term growth and profitability.

Our customer-centric strategy extends across every CAKE department to provide what matters most – access to a real team, user-friendly self-service options, and proactive customer outreach coupled with innovative solutions driven by customer input.

Here’s how CAKE is devoted to helping you achieve success.

Real people, always accessible 

A readily available customer success team is essential when running a profitable performance marketing program. CAKE ensures that you always have the option to connect with a real human who has a deep understanding of your business.

Client success team – Leverage a dedicated client success manager and implementation specialist to unlock best practices, powerful insights, and strategic direction for achieving your business objectives. This team is comprised of industry experts with decades of performance marketing experience who are eager to help you succeed.

Phone, ticket, and Slack support – Connect with a knowledgeable team of technical experts who deliver quick solutions and are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Professional services – Tap into a comprehensive suite of onboarding, training, consulting, and technical service representatives to create custom solutions for your business. For example, access technical direction on CAKE APIs, third-party platform integrations, or partner with a Solution Engineer to configure your system to best fit your needs. Our professional services team increases your operational bandwidth so that you can focus on revenue and growth. Learn more here.

Quarterly business reviews (QBRs) – Take advantage of annual QBRs during which your customer success representative offers insightful performance trends and optimization opportunities tailored to your business. Our goal is to ensure that your ongoing performance aligns with your annual business objectives.

Speedy resolutions with self-service options

Whether you prefer individualized support or favor self-service options, we provide multiple tools for you to quickly and efficiently get the product answers you’re looking for.

Knowledge Base – Find answers to your product questions by exploring our comprehensive database of articles covering every feature in CAKE. Sort by high-level CAKE concepts or search particular topics to get the information you need, fast. Check out the knowledge base here.

Video library (training and product updates) – Utilize our extensive library of training videos that highlight everything from the CAKE fundamentals and platform navigation to campaign setup and tracking implementation. Get the videos here.

CAKE blog – Discover industry trends, product how-to’s, customer success stories, and new feature releases on the CAKE blog. Searching for a particular topic? Leverage our tag cloud to find the exact information you need and explore other interesting content. Bookmark the blog here.

Proactive communication and active feedback loop

A reliable and innovative platform that supports customers’ strategic growth and ensures ongoing business continuity goes a long way in performance marketing. This is why we prioritize proactive communication and value the opportunity to engage with customer feedback and respond to their feedback and insights.

Email communications – Discover exciting product updates, critical system notifications, expert tips for getting the most out of CAKE, and stay up to date on industry trends through our monthly newsletters.

Customer success outreach – Receive one-on-one outreach (phone or email) regarding time-sensitive product updates and essential actions required by users.

CAKE Idea Portal – Join our exclusive customer community where you can collaborate on business challenges and proposed solutions, and collectively vote on other customers’ ideas. The CAKE Idea Portal is a space for customers to influence CAKE’s product roadmap and direction. Learn more.

Early-adopter program – Gain early access to new product launches before they are available to all customers. This is your opportunity to fine-tune products, ensuring they align with the requirements of our customer community.

BONUS

Become a CAKE expert by joining our complimentary certification program and discover how to maximize your usage of CAKE, including best practices and practical tips.

Ready to explore the full potential of CAKE? Reach our team here.

The post Experience Excellence With Top-Tier SaaS Customer Success appeared first on CAKE.

Get acquainted with James!

What is your role at CAKE and what are you focused on?

As the Commercial Director at CAKE responsible for EMEA, MENA, and APAC, my primary focus is to work with our UK sales and customer success teams to expand our partnerships across multiple geographies and ensure that all businesses have access to the best technology platform in the market.

How did you get started in the performance marketing industry?

‘More years than I’ll admit’ ago I was looking to move on from a role in a media agency. Coincidentally, my wife was actually offered a job at Marko Media (MyVoucherCodes), a leading publisher. The role however was a little too different from what she was looking for, yet it did pique my interest, and I ultimately ended up accepting the job. It was my first introduction into ecommerce and affiliate marketing, and I was immediately enthused by the industries. More importantly, I also very quickly made friends for life.

What are two of the biggest European trends you are seeing in performance marketing in 2023?

Brands are expecting more. The traditional ‘commercial network’ tracking of matching a click and conversion with a few additional metrics like average order value (AOV) thrown into the mix is no longer enough. Brands are also expecting greater control (such as insights into traffic quality at the promotional level on the click), increased visibility into their ROAS, and the ability to glean additional insights from their activity (e.g. lifetime value or incrementality from their traffic sources). While CAKE offers all of these capabilities plus so much more, it is great to see the additional pressure for innovation because that’s how industries grow and thrive.

Then there is of course the impending depreciation of cookies. This in turn is forcing the industry to reevaluate how to track performance and respect consumer privacy. Thankfully CAKE took a proactive approach to delivering a platform capable of adapting to the cookieless future by offering the options of server-to-server tracking, first-party session cookies with JavaScript SDK tracking, and even fingerprint tracking.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

Before the arrival of my two daughters, I spent a lot of time playing rugby and boxing. I still manage to find time for boxing but nowadays I’m mainly going for (short) runs, enjoying time with the family, and of course an occasional pub visit with my friends.

What is one piece of advice you would offer brands who are looking to expand their performance marketing program?

Expect more from your network and tracking technology provider. Utilize the technology that’s out there to equip yourself with the performance clarity and transparency you deserve. In doing so you’ll be able to better manage your partners, control the quality of your traffic, increase revenue, and ultimately demonstrate the value of your performance marketing program.

What is your favorite CAKE feature and why?

One of my many favorite CAKE features is the intelligently designed redirect strategy. This provides any brand or partner with the ability to control the quality of their traffic by ensuring that only viable traffic lands on the promotion or offer. For example, if a user has clicked on an expired offer (a common occurrence with affiliates) then CAKE will automatically identify that and redirect the user to the most relevant, live offer, or any number of predefined landing pages.

The reason the redirect strategy is so powerful is that it protects users’ journeys, which simultaneously protects the brands reputation. But it also has huge peripheral benefits such as:

• Boosts the conversion rate because the user is landing on the correct and relevant content.
• Improves the stickiness of the website and therefore the SEO.
• Enables brands to quickly demonstrate the improved value of the channel.

What is one thing people don’t know about you?

If I told you that then everyone would know 🙂

The post Spotlight Q&A With James Boden, CAKE’s Commercial Director (EMEA, MENA, APAC) appeared first on CAKE.

In the interdependent world of performance marketing, partnerships are integral to performance marketers success. Providing fast and reliable payments is key to nurturing long-term relationships that fuels ongoing ROI.

Upgrade your partner payment process with CAKE Pay and focus on what you do best – running a profitable performance marketing program.

Here’s how it works.

CAKE Pay in Action

The partner payment solution you deserve

Pay the way you want to

Pay partners on all traffic that is tracked in any price format including cost per click (CPC), cost per thousand (CPM), conversions, leads, and phone calls. In addition, you can pay by product, category, or SKU. The flexible payments ensure you have the opportunity to work with affiliates across any media channel.

Pay when you want to

Select from three custom net payment term options (Net15, Net30, Net40) to decide when to pay your partners. This enables you to have the same net payment terms for all affiliates.

Remove repetitive tasks by consolidating invoices

Send a single, monthly payment to CAKE Pay and avoid the time-consuming and cumbersome process of generating multiple invoices for every partner each month. By syncing tracking updates to invoices directly in CAKE, users can streamline and simplify the partner payments process.

Offload tax form distribution and management

Deliver the appropriate W-9 tax forms to newly onboarded partners and distribute annual 1099 tax forms.

End manual, inaccurate invoice processes

Offer affiliate partners a simple setup to receive payments and commissions through an automated ACH transfer or utilize PayPal to expand partner opportunities.

Expand global affiliate reach

Leverage global payments to work with affiliates around the world, regardless of their currency.

Give partners the billing clarity they deserve

Provide partners with the ability to download real-time PDF invoices directly from their affiliate portaI.

“By adding CAKE Pay to our existing affiliate marketing technology, customers can operate their entire performance marketing program on a single solution. CAKE can do it all — from launching campaigns and measuring performance, to offering flexible commission structures and paying partners. This integrated approach enables users to increase revenue and unlock greater control over their performance.” – Santi Pierini, President at CAKE

Upgrade partner payments with CAKE Pay

CAKE customers can leverage CAKE Pay today by reaching out to your customer success manager. Not a customer yet, but interested in learning more? We’d love to chat. You can reach our team here.

The post Introducing CAKE Pay – A Better Way to Pay Partners appeared first on CAKE.

In a year marked by rising digital ad prices, inflation, and increased competition, our customers continued to make significant strides in both growth and profitability. Collectively, CAKE customers launched more than 509k performance marketing campaigns across 254 vertical industries.

The last year also proved to be a time for increased customer collaboration and engagement. Our customers’ valuable feedback and innovative ideas helped shape CAKE’s 2022 product roadmap and drive future plans for our 2023 product expansion.

We’ve got exciting product releases coming this year

While we aren’t ready to reveal all of the details just yet, what we can say is that we’ve spent the latter part of 2022 gearing up for 2023. We are excited for the launch of new features! Stay tuned for what’s to come.

Cheers to 2023 and all that’s ahead!

Check out all of the amazing milestones our customers hit in 2022 plus notable moments for CAKE.

[yir2022]

The post 2022 – A Year in Review appeared first on CAKE.

Simplify the affiliate experience: Custom campaign names visible in the affiliate portal

Create custom campaign names that override the Offer or Offer Contract default naming convention and display the custom names in the affiliate portal. This new feature ensures affiliates know the exact campaign to run and avoids sharing internal naming conventions with partners.

To take advantage of this feature today, navigate to the global settings and turn on the feature “show campaign name.”

Boost efficiencies: Redirect Parameter field on the campaign card

Save time and resources in how you generate affiliate links by using the Redirect Parameter field that now lives on the campaign card. The Redirect Parameter field allows users to type in a query string that is dynamically appended to the landing page URL. This process eliminates the need to build a running list of landing URLs that then need to be assigned to each individual affiliate.

System admins can turn on the Redirect Parameter field for individual roles by following these steps: Navigate to Cards > Campaign > Home tab > Info sub tab > Redirect Parameters.

Unlock ecommerce insights: Importing a Shopify product feed directly into CAKE

Leverage our new Shopify integration to import Shopify products into CAKE and enable SKU tracking which turns on SKU-level reporting. The ecommerce integration attributes shopping cart details with affiliate performance, tracks ecommerce campaigns and revenue, pays affiliates, and offers access to real-time performance insights. Interested in getting started with the integration? Contact your account manager.

We’d love to hear from you – Submit a feature idea

Join our exclusive customer community, the CAKE Idea Portal, where you can share your proposed feature ideas, upvote other community member ideas, and gain visibility into the features fueling the CAKE product roadmap. Sign up for the CAKE Idea Portal here.

Explore other time-saving features in CAKE

• Simplify ad operations, fast track advertiser integrations, and ensure accurate tracking with the Dynamic Offer Pixel.
• Leverage the Mass Adjustment Tool to streamline workflows and get granular with data.
• Create a great experience for affiliates with these 11 affiliate portal features.

The post Product Update – New CAKE Features to Know appeared first on CAKE.

Check out the highlights from our conversation.

What is your current role at CAKE and what are you focused on?

I am currently a Business Development Representative at CAKE. My role consists of reaching out to potential clients and learning the ins and outs of their affiliate and lead gen businesses and educating prospects on how to build effective affiliate programs. When speaking with prospects I try to gain as much insight into their strengths and weaknesses to help tailor a demo to their specific use case.

Working in a dynamic environment has made me focus on current and future affiliate marketing trends while deepening my knowledge of CAKE.

Can you share more about your journey into performance marketing?

I was first exposed to performance marketing while earning my bachelor’s degree at San Francisco State University. I had been aware of affiliate marketing, but I had no idea about all the moving parts that it encompasses behind the scenes.

Once I became part of the CAKE team, I quickly realized how vast the performance marketing landscape really is and how pivotal CAKE’s platform is for large companies. From then on, a whole new world of marketing opened up and I learned about all of the players and innovative technology in the performance marketing space.

What is the biggest trend you are seeing in performance marketing in the U.S. right now?

Privacy is a huge topic of discussion. As the general sentiment toward data privacy shifts, affiliate marketers want to make sure they will still be able to effectively and efficiently track their events and conversions.

CAKE’s ability to measure performance without relying solely on cookies enables companies to track their affiliate program without forgoing privacy concerns. We are able to prioritize consumer privacy while maintaining accurate measurement through server-to-server tracking.

Outside of work, what are you passionate about?

I’m passionate about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I have been practicing Jiu-Jitsu for close to two years and have been enthralled by the values and skills it teaches both on and off the training mats. It has centered me in my work, personal relationships, and overall health. In my free time, I love training with friends at other gyms and putting my Jiu-Jitsu to the test by competing in local competitions.

What is one piece of advice you would offer prospects looking for an affiliate software solution?

Have a plan to scale your business. Whether you’re just starting out or are already running an affiliate program, plan to have a platform that will be able to grow alongside your business. CAKE has different tiers that are easily scalable to the size and scope of all businesses.

What is your favorite CAKE feature and why?

My favorite CAKE feature would have to be event tracking. It goes without saying, different companies are looking to track different events that lead up to the sale of a product. I’m always interested in how clicks become conversions and enjoy understanding a company’s sales funnel. CAKE’s ability to track a variety of events, whether it’s a signup to a newsletter or a free trial, is pivotal for businesses to better understand the steps a prospect takes to purchase a product.

What is one thing people don’t know about you?

I am a huge documentary nut. The intricacies of profound events and extraordinary people have always fascinated me. My current obsession is true crime. Understanding the psychology of regular people who commit evil crimes deeply interests me. Each of these events are like their own blockbuster fantasies that we wouldn’t believe actually happened unless documented by police reports and first-hand accounts.

The post Spotlight Q&A With Sol Silva, CAKE’s Business Development Representative appeared first on CAKE.