What is a Postback?
A postback is an exchange of information between servers based on a users actions.
How is a Source Postback Used in a Pingtree Campaign?
When a lead source is providing your campaign with traffic, they may want feedback on the leads to either:
Track the leads that generated revenue for the traffic source.
Track the performance quality of the leads so they can further optimize on their end.
While Pingtree has an affiliate portal for traffic sources who are signed up as a marketing partner, those partners and custom sources may have their own platform they use for their internal tracking.
A source postback requires a trigger in order to active the transfer of data from Pingtree's server to the source's server. This trigger can be through certain actionable events or rules designated in your campaign. This can also be fired manually.
What's Needed?
The source will need to provide the following:
The postback URL: This will serve as the endpoint ingesting the data that's being sent.
Data and Mapping: Only data that's captured and attributed with the lead can be dynamically sent back. In order to do this, you must know the field in which your campaign is ingesting that particular value and the field structure for how the source ingests that data so you can map this to the source. They may also require you send back a static field and value which isn't being actively captured.
Request Method: There are two primary methods Pingtree can send data which would be either a GET request or a POST request.
Format: By default, source postbacks will be set as a POST request and JSON format. You can also change the encoding from request sent in the body to xml,
x-www-form-urlencoded, or form-data.
Form Data vs Event Postback
When configuring your source postback, you must also determine the trigger which fires the data from Pingtree's server to the source's server.
Form Data Postback:
A form data postback is triggered when there's a lead submit action and isn't triggered based of a certain event.
Event Data Postback:
This postback to fire when the lead record has initiated the event that you've designated as the trigger.