Tracking Email Responses

If you have unlimited email aliases available through your web host and want your test ads to generate responses via email, you can use a unique email address as tracking code for each one.

Note: A potential drawback to this method is that more email addresses you make publicly available, more spam you're likely to receive.

Another option for tracking email responses is to ask respondents to place something unique in subject line, which serves as tracking code.

In a pinch you can use following trick to help automatically place what you want in subject line of a new email message when it’s clicked on in an email program: mailto:user@domain.com?subject=Send-Info (Replace user@domain.com in above example with email address you want to use.)

When above link is clicked on in an email message, text immediately following ?subject= will automatically appear in subject line of a new email message in most email programs. (In example above, Send-Info would appear.)

Attempting to Beat Your Control

Your main objective in testing is always to try to come up with a better pulling variable (headline, offer, guarantee, price, etc.) than your existing control. Whenever tests prove that another variable pulls better than your existing control, it replaces it until a future test reveals an even better one.

Make Testing a Habit

Remember that most successful direct response marketers (Internet marketing being just another form of direct response marketing) tend to do lots of testing.

Instead of viewing testing process as too much bother, you should view it as a wise investment in crucial information that reveals how to progressively improve profitability of your marketing. Considering all advantages that testing offers, reasons for making it a habit are obvious.

You don’t have to be content with same mediocre level of response to your marketing campaigns, unaware of what’s really working and what isn’t.

If you aren’t already, start taking advantage of scientific testing to constantly improve your marketing results, avoid making same wasteful mistakes, and earn more profits. And if you're already profiting from it, consider taking advantage of it more fully.

Finding out where you *are being* found is a much more effective plan. It tells you what's working, results come to you, and it tells you how people are thinking to find you. You're not guessing how you think they should be finding you. You're learning how your clients think and how they already found you.

Okay, so how do I find out how my visitors find me? I use a simplestatistics tracker on my sites. Your hosting company may provide stats for you check into it. They should include a section for referrers or top referrers. If so your all set. Find a way to access those stats. Check referrers section and they will tell you how you were found. If it was through a search engine, click on link and it should bring you to page you were found on, complete with keywords used, listed right there. You can check your progress every week and find out where you are popping up.

If your host does not have tracking software go to www.goldstats.com or some other FREE stats place and get yourself a statistics tracker on your site right away!

For me, marketing without referrer stats is like...

...trying to catch a fly in dark.