Folks, I am no stranger to performance marketing. I have logged over 20 years in this beloved channel, and I have participated in every nook and cranny of the affiliate marketing ecosystem. With the insight I gathered leading a top-tier affiliate network, driving a global advertiser program at scale, and now evangelizing technology on the platform side at TUNE, I can say with confidence: When partnership strategy meets program structure, something magical happens. 

Earlier this year, we launched TUNE’s brand of partner marketing and a new vision for marketing partnerships. Our stated mission is crystal clear: Enable marketers to do more with their existing relationships, while empowering them to build more high-quality partnerships. Simplify marketers’ end-to-end partner management tasks, while helping them eliminate the risk of fraud and compliance issues. Make that magic a reality.

Since that announcement, we have launched a number of key product capabilities to back our vision. If you are considering changing your solution for performance partnerships, now is the time to add the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform to your list. I’m beyond excited to share why.  

Move TUNE to the Top of Your Shortlist

In TUNE’s recent e-book, we discuss the key aspects of driving partner program success. Not surprisingly, two key relationship drivers top the list: being attuned to your partners’ specific needs and delivering on them. Problem is, most of the promises made to partners — fair and timely payment for efforts, attribution regardless of the channel, partner trust — rely heavily on true technology solutions to fill in the gaps. 

Yet to date, there have been few true technology-based solutions available to performance and partner marketers. Most solutions that claim to be platforms are really networks in disguise. They hit you up on performance fees and build a marketplace of partnerships thanks to your hard work. And as networks, they tend to compete with your other networks. The ecosystem has yet to experience a platform that is: 

1. a true technology platform that helps advertisers, networks, and partners connect flexibly and work collaboratively across mobile and web;
2. a technology solution that protects your proprietary relationships from easy replication with your competition; and
3. a SaaS-based solution that does not require a Ph.D. and/or a forklift to administer. 

That is all about to change. Today, TUNE becomes a viable alternative in the partner marketing space as the only SaaS platform that empowers you to partner the way you want to via features that support every step of the partner marketing lifecycle:

Pay Your Way

At the heart of any enduring business partnership is trust and predictability; motivating the right behaviors with the right rewards is core to building this trust. This year we released two enhanced capabilities in the TUNE Partner Marketing Platform for advertisers and networks to leverage for this purpose.

Payout Structures

To improve the performance of a program, specifically with regards to growth and profitability, you need to elicit the right publisher behaviors. To create true success for the brand, these behaviors must align with your financial objectives. TUNE’s new payout structures are purpose-built with these goals in mind. With our advanced commissioning tools, you can:

• Customize your partner rewards – Invent new ways to get the most out of your partners.
• Reduce complexity and increase efficiency – Build incentive structures simply and comprehensively.
• Optimize the payout – Flexibly adjust incentives to generate the right outcomes.

TUNE Pay

TUNE Pay pairs powerfully integrated accounts payable workflows with international payment processing to help you pay partners the way you want to. With TUNE Pay, you can free up your busy schedule to spend more time building deeper partnerships and less time balancing your checkbook:

• Pay partners flexibly – Pay through TransferWise and PayPal. Customize approvals, payment periods, currencies, and methods.
• Bank the time and cost savings – Replace manual reconciliation and verification workflows with a seamlessly integrated payment solution. Save on the lowest payment fees on the market.
• Reduce financial exposure – Improve cash flow by reducing clawbacks and payouts related to fraud.

Capture Every Conversion

Apple has declared war on user ad tracking, and Mozilla and Google are fast-following with similar vigor. With Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.2 (ITP) for the Safari web browser, Apple has effectively disabled most of the mechanisms through which advertisers connect the dots on the users they’ve engaged with.  

With the advent of this protocol, web and mobile web tracking methods that depend on cookies are becoming virtual black holes of attribution. TUNE’s solution to this growing challenge is built upon years of experience working in the mobile world, and we believe it’s exactly what is needed to help modern marketers adjust to this new reality. 

ITP 2.2-Compliant Cookieless Tracking

TUNE’s cookieless tracking solution eliminates attribution risk for your company and your partners. Build your tracking infrastructure on a mobile-friendly standard that supports all mobile browsers and social channels. Implement TUNE’s lightweight solution and eliminate “leakage” from mobile web and social channels to promote your business. Win over mobile partners with a tracking method that builds confidence and helps you:  

• Give credit where credit is due – Ensure partners are rewarded for the results they deliver across mobile, mobile web, and desktop.
• Simplify the setup process – Implement tracking across all channels in a few easy steps.
• Make mobile tracking work, always – Track all events using the standard that powers most mobile attribution today.

Activate Mobile Partners

If you are a brand with a mobile app, chances are someone in your organization has been measuring mobile outcomes (e.g., cost-per-install, cost-per-post-install event) via mobile measurement partners (MMPs) for years. So how can you take those insights on mobile partnerships and optimize the results along with your traditional partnerships? By leveraging your existing infrastructure, you have everything you need to activate the mobile partnership channel and incorporate performance marketing into your apps. TUNE’s tight integrations with MMPs enable this capability for you with minimal effort.

Native Mobile Measurement Integrations

• Unlock mobile partnerships now – Use our turnkey integration with five of the top mobile measurement partners to have the right tracking, right away.  
• No additional SDK needed – Integrate using the measurement SDK already in your app to do the work. No developers required.
• Experience mobile seamlessly – Improve conversion rates by leveraging technology that optimizes the mobile user experience.

Build the Trust

Fraud likes to hide in plain sight. And it’s especially hard to see it when your program is in motion. In partner marketing programs, beyond transactional fraud, attribution fraud is the most common type. Fraudsters like to claim credit for driving results that are not rightfully theirs. This behavior creates difficulties for brands in deciphering which traffic sources are valuable and truly incremental. The TUNE Partner Marketing Platform has recently released two key solutions to help you traverse the fraud landscape.

Proactive Fraud Prevention

Automatically detect and reject fraudulent activity with Proactive Fraud Prevention from TUNE, the only partner marketing platform with automatic fraud protection built in. This free technology combines revolutionary automation capabilities from TUNE with premier ad fraud detection from Fraudlogix to provide brands the most powerful protection in the industry:

• Play offense, not defense – Let your platform work with you and for you.
• Manage it all on one platform – Fraudlogix data is built right in — no moving parts.
• Invest in the right relationships – Choose the partners that best align with your goals.
  

Time-to-Action Report

Without a baseline of what is “normal,” it is difficult to tell fact from fiction. And without clarity, it is hard to take proper action. TUNE’s Time-to-Action Report measures the lag time between the action and the attributed event to enable you to:  

• Vet all of your traffic – Easily identify outliers in your program to investigate.
• Eliminate fraudulent ad spend – Improve ROI on your overall traffic mix.
• Back up decisions with granular data – Make decisions with clarity and confidence.

Ready to Hear More?

We’re excited to share everything we have planned for the future in addition to everything we’ve released this year. Visit tune.com/get-started or contact [email protected] for more.

Author

Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she handled content strategy and marketing communications at several tech startups in the Bay Area. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned home to Charleston, SC, where you can find her strolling through Hampton Park with her pup and enjoying the simple things between adventures with friends and family.