Wildcard Filters

 

With more lead sellers arriving on the scene and more intertwined partnerships between lead buyers and sellers, leads oftentimes exchange hands more than once before ending up in your lead system. It is highly likely that a lead posted from one of your SRCs was actually generated by one of many affiliates or publishers working with your Vendor/SRC. Because of this, being able to track a Sub_IDnd segment your lead traffic even further than the direct SRC value that the lead was posted in with, is very important. For every lead type, there are 2 main tracking variables available to use:

  1. Pub_ID

These can be referred to as "sub tracking variables" and are used to identify where your SRC received the lead from, even if these variables don't identify specific publishers or affiliates.

Sub Tracking Example

Let's say Lead Seller XYZ is selling you leads. You create the SRC value (XYZ) for them so every lead that they post into the system, shows SRC=XYZ. XYZ gets their leads from 3 different places. In order to track the leads delivered from all 3 places, XYZ could pass unique Sub_ID or Pub_ID fields for each and even mask these values as to not identify the specific publisher. In essence, SRC XYZ can identify THEIR 3 sources like the example below:

Lead 1 Lead 2 Lead 3
SRC=XYZ SRC=XYZ SRC=XYZ
Sub_ID=abc123 Sub_ID=6476 Sub_ID=rrrr

 

All 3 leads came from XYZ, but were originated from 3 different places on the SRC's end.

Reporting By Sub Tracking Variables

By having SRC XYZ post in unique Sub_IDs for each of their unique lead sources, you have the ability to track your lead performance not just at the SRC level, but at the Sub_ID level. In order to see how well each of the Sub_IDs for SRC XYZ are performing, you can run a lead export or view the Admin Leads Report. This will allow you to sort all of your leads by SRC as well as Sub_ID and see things such as lead status, the number of times the lead was sold and even refunds.

Filtering By Sub Tracking Variables

Let's say that you evaluate the performance of SRC XYZ at the end of the month and see that all the leads from Sub_ID=abc123 are selling well, while all the leads from Sub_ID=rrrr and Sub_ID=6476 are being requested for refunds or not selling. You want to continue accepting leads from SRC XYZ because of how well leads from Sub_ID abc123 are doing, but you don't want to accept all leads from SRC XYZ because Sub_IDs rrrr and 6476 are not performing well. Wildcard String filtering gives you the best of both worlds. This filtering option gives you the ability to filter leads based on a set of values without having to edit your lead type fields, form, or delivery. In our example, you would be able to filter out the bad Sub_IDs without having to remove SRC XYZ entirely.

SubID Wildcard filter example

We checked the check box to "enable" the field to be used as a filter. We then selected "exclude" as the radio button. Then we entered in the two Sub_ID values (comma separated) that we want to prevent from selling to this Lead Filter Set. The box will accept letters, numbers and also an asterisk * that you can use to represent a "wildcard" string. A wildcard string can be any letter, any number, and any special character as well (spaces, commas, dashes, periods, dollar signs, etc.). This gives you maximum flexibility when it comes to setting the Sub_ID filters. For our example, an alternative solution would be to use the Sub_ID include option with the special magic string You can also use this magic string ##empty##

SubID Wildcard example boberdoo

Looking at the image above, this Lead Filter Set would accept any Sub_IDs that came in with a value starting with "abc" and then 3 numbers/letters/characters after it. For example, additional values that would be accepted are:

  • abc123
  • abcabc
  • abc12a
  • abc---

Finally, the magic string of "##empty##" means that a lead can match if the field Sub_ID came in with no value/blank value.

Filtering By Words/Strings/Sub-Strings

This is common for wanting to filter include or filter exclude certain landing pages or URLs.  Since a URL can have so many different variants (ie www.something.com/123 or https://something.com/newpage/123, etc.) this trick can be used to capture any leads that have this "string" of characters together.

image(11)
In this example, the system would try to match any leads to this filter that have the string "boberdoo" located anywhere in the "Pub_ID" field!  These would all be examples that match:
https://boberdoo.com
boberdoo.net
boberdoo.co/999999
THISISABOBERDOOTEST