There is a lot of opportunity in the dropshipping game, but just like any business proposition it isn’t without its risks.
Indeed, according to many experts, the success rate for dropshippers in the first year is an abysmal 10 percent. This failure rate can be attributed to a myriad of issues, but one of the top contenders is that new dropshippers just don’t see enough profit in the first year. This causes them to walk away before sinking too much of their own money into the project.
By and large, the biggest upfront cost for a new dropshipping business is advertising. After all, how can customers find your products if they don’t know about them?
But advertising is a tricky business. Deciding who to target your ads towards, what platforms to post your ads on, and the most effective design are just a few of the factors that go into creating an advertising campaign.
And even after all of the decisions have been made, it can be difficult to measure the efficacy of your investment.
Determining which advertising processes yield the best results will help you keep your advertising costs in check and give you a better chance at success.
Fortunately, there are a number of tools out there that allow dropshippers to measure the success of their advertising campaigns. We’re going to take a look at two of these tools: ClickMagick and Voluum.
What Is ClickMagick?
ClickMagick is an affiliate tracking software that offers many robust features.
The tool uses click tracking to provide various and free analytics for your campaigns, while continually taking stock of how well your ads are performing.
Tracking Pixels
One of the key features of ClickMagick is its ability to report the conversion rates of an ad campaign. The service accomplishes this by adding tracking “pixels” to your web pages.
According to ClickMagick’s website, a pixel is “just a bit of HTML or Javascript code you get from your tracking platform and add to the “source” of the appropriate “thank you” page on your site.”
For example, if you’re tracking opt-ins, you add the tracking pixel to the page that the user is redirected to after they enter their email address. This will allow you to start testing and optimizing your various campaigns.
ClickMagick’s Other Features
ClickMagick’s simple dashboard is easy to navigate, making it a breeze for affiliate marketers who want to carry out split testing (A/B test) and track their links.
The 30-day free trial period is enough time for even the most novice dropshipper to learn how to test their links. Users can also split test the links, using the dashboard to monitor the sales funnels landing page, or links which perform the best.
ClickMagick also allows you to track conversions on an external page. Often times, affiliate marketers will send customers to a “thank you” page after they make their purchase, but if you want to send traffic to an external page instead, ClickMagick will allow you to track that action as well.
One way to increase sales is by creating scarcity. ClickMagick helps you create this perception with its countdown timer.
If you need to sell a product quickly, or if you’re offering a limited-time sale or discount, this feature will help you do just that. The countdown timer can be created in less than five minutes and used on any link.
One of the worst things that can happen to an advertising campaign is when your link is shared on a website and the page goes down.
You can lose valuable sales and get a bad return on your advertising investment as a result. ClickMagick avoids this problem by monitoring your links and notifying you if a page goes down through an email or phone message.
Then ClickMagick reroutes the ad traffic or pauses the ad until the page is online again.
These are just a few of the many features that ClickMagick offers its users. Besides, you can check out this ClickMagick review.
Unlike other affiliate marketing tools, ClickMagick offers a number of other functionalities designed to help affiliate marketers optimize the success of their ad campaigns and marketing effort.
ClickMagick Pricing
ClickMagick’s three pricing tiers are designed to help users find the best fit. These include:
- The Starter Plan
- The Standard Plan
- The Pro Plan
Each plan comes with a free 30-day trial so you can determine if ClickMagick is the best fit for you.
The Starter Plan will run you $37 a month and offers up to 10,000 clicks a month, all core features, two custom tracking domains, six month data retention, and “fanatical” one-hour support.
The Standard Plan will cost you $77 per month and includes up to 100,000 clicks each month, all core features, funnel tracking with five funnels, organic tracking of five websites, ten custom tracking domains, one year of data retention, and one-hour support.
The Pro Plan is for the most serious customers, coming in at $197 per month.
With the Pro Plan you are promised as many as one million clicks per month, unlimited funnel tracking, unlimited organic tracking, unlimited custom domains, two years of data retention, along with all the core features and the standard “fanatical” one-hour support.
ClickMagick Customer Support
ClickMagick offers a knowledge base and a ticketing system for responding to customer issues.
The knowledge base is like ClickMagick’s encyclopedia that contains answers to practically all questions that a user might have. But for any user that wants to go a step further, the ticketing system is the next alternative.
The ticketing system works just like other platforms. A user gets to fill the form, and type in their queries. The ClickMagick backend team then responds to the user’s queries by sending a response directly to the email address provided on the ticket.
ClickMagick Pros
- Automatic bot filtering
Other ad tracking software do not facilitate automatic bot filtering. This makes it a very strong property for ClickMagick.
- Conversion Tracking
No doubt ClickMagick has a pretty comprehensive conversion tracking system in place.
- Geotargeting
This is another stand-out feature of ClickMagick. Its geo-targeting functionality allows you to increase your conversion rates by focusing on high converting locations.
ClickMagick Cons
- Comprehension
It will take you time to understand how ClickMagick works if you are not tech-savvy.
Now, let’s talk about Voluum for this ClickMagick vs Voluum comparison.
What Is Voluum?
Voluum is a link tracking tool that allows users to check the success of their advertising campaigns.
The service was designed by Codewise to process real-time data, allowing for instant delivery of information to its users. That’s because Voluum’s system is powered by an architecture which allows it to process numerous data points as they happen in real life.
The service is also accessible from the cloud and can be used from any device, which allows advertisers to keep up to speed with all of their campaigns even if they’re at the grocery store.
The platform uses high-grade encryption to protect users’ data and authentication methods that are eerily similar to those used by global financial institutions.
Managing your affiliate campaigns was never easier. Voluum helps you to track, optimize and automate campaigns, giving you complete control of your marketing.
In the case of a server timeout in a specific location, Voluum will redirect traffic to the closest data center to ensure that the campaign is always live and can be clicked on.
Voluum also brings with it the ability to scale its services depending on the volume of traffic you receive. No matter how busy your site becomes, Voluum’s infrastructure is designed to scale up or down depending on the need. This ensures that data limits don’t impede your success.
Voluum offers its own reporting suite, but sometimes users want more. To fill this need, the service comes with its own API that users can use to connect reporting systems to their tracking application.
Voluum Features
This ClickMagick alternative prides itself on three major features: Track, Optimize, and Automate.
Track
Unlike other ad tracking software, Voluum facilitates cross device tracking. That way, you can quickly track the performance of your marketing or PPC campaign emanating from any device.
Specifically, the software helps users to;
- Track affiliate marketing from a dedicated dashboard
- Facilitate conversion tracking throughout the different stages of a consumer journey
- Monitor ads impressions
- Track organic traffic from referring websites and social media
- Monitor mobile app campaigns
Optimize
Voluum also ensures that you get the most accurate, and up-to-date information about your campaign performance. To help you achieve this, Voluum provides you with;
- Realtime reporting
- Data grouping and drill-down
- A/B Split testing analysis
- Error log
Managing your affiliate campaigns was never easier. Voluum helps you to track, optimize and automate campaigns, giving you complete control of your marketing.
Automate
With the automate feature, you can;
- Integrate Voluum with other platforms through its API access.
- Filter out bot, whether known or unknown based on custom metrics like IP address, location, etc.
- Get notification. This can be on conversion milestones, first conversion, or any other important metrics.
Voluum Pricing
The price tag for Voluum is steeper than for ClickMagick, but it still offers a tiered system depending on the user’s needs.
The Discover Plan is $89 per month and includes one million events per month, three months of data retention, one custom domain, and one dedicated domain.
The Profit Plan is $149 per month and includes three million events per month, six months of data retention, one custom domain, and one dedicated domain.
The Grow Plan will run you $449 each month. It includes ten million events each month, two additional users, a year of data retention, three custom domains, and one dedicated domain.
By far the most expensive is the Agency Plan, which costs $999+ each month. It is billed based on custom requirements.
Additionally, the company offers users the ability to create their own customizable plans and save with annual subscriptions. The service also comes with a free seven-day trial.
Voluum Customer Support
Like ClickMagick, Voluum has a robust knowledge base. Also, they run a ticketing system for customer support.
To fill a ticket, you have to go to the contact us page of the platform. In addition to this, Voluum gives a time priority to tickets based on the user’s subscription.
For users on the Grow pricing plan, they typically get a response to their tickets within four hours (4 hrs). For users on the Profit pricing plan, the response time to tickets raised is twelve hours (12 hrs). If you are a user on the Discover plan, you might have to wait up to twenty-four hours (24 hrs) before getting a response for any issue you raise.
It is obvious from the arrangement that Voluum has priorities for its highest-paying customers. For the rest, well, they just need to be patient.
Voluum Pros
- Tracking
Voluum comprehensively tracks ad link performance and provides reports in a user-friendly interface.
- Scalability
This is really a good side to Voluum. You can decide to upgrade your current plan or downgrade. It’s all yours to decide.
Managing your affiliate campaigns was never easier. Voluum helps you to track, optimize and automate campaigns, giving you complete control of your marketing.
Voluum Cons
- Customer Support
Customer service is generally poor for customers who are not on its Grow plan.
- Refund Policy
The company’s refund policy is poor to state the least. Some customers have reported poor refund policy experiences.
- Data Retention
The data retention on voluum is highly limited. It can be as short as three months. For you to access more data, you will have to upgrade your plan. This is not so good for small start-ups that have limited software budgets.
Voluum vs ClickMagick – Which Is Better?
The clear winner of this Voluum vs ClickMagick comparison is ClickMagick.
Obviously, Voluum is a pricey affiliate link tracking software, unlike ClickMagick which has affordable pricing plans that are suitable for affiliate marketers, individuals, and small business users.
For what it’s worth, utilizing ClickMagick’s free 30-day trial is likely the best first-step.
