Monday, May 25, 2009

May 25th "Autoresponders in your World" Series, Part 5.

Why Autoresponder Response Tracking is Critical for your E-mail Marketing Campaigns.

Regardless of how you advertise (Pay-per-click (PPC), Search engine optimization (SEO), articles, banners, etc.) your business decisions must be based on actual performance. Testing is vital, but what’s the point if you do not track your test results? Ignorance is far from bliss – not knowing what works can suck your advertising budget dry. What’s worse, you might inadvertently get rid of successful campaigns!

Instead of bouncing from one form of advertising to another without understanding why tactics need to be changed or dropped, consider integrating autoresponders into your Internet Marketing. Through a special feature known as response tracking, you can analyze the success rate of each message you send out, and not be caught off guard by surprising results…

Most reputable autoresponder services offer a response tracking feature that is easy to set up from within a control panel. For example, to measure the number of clicks to a particular website:
  1. Enter the website’s address into the autoresponder’s tracking tool.
  2. The autoresponder software generates a special tracking URL.
  3. The new URL is used to record the number of (unique) clicks at your website originating from your autoresponder message.
The autoresponder is responsible for redirecting your subscribers to the website you are currently promoting. Inside your account, you can track the deliverability rate (i.e. messages actually delivered), the click-through rate (CTR), as well as an email open rate. As you can see, autoresponder-based response tracking is what makes email relationship marketing so powerful and effective.

Autoresponders are not created equal, so before committing to an autoresponder service, make sure that it offers tracking services. Response tracking is the best way to determine the effectiveness of your subscriber messages, and whether they need to be tweaked or completely overhauled.

Indirectly, response tracking can also indicate how good your sales copy is. Consider this: even if your autoresponder message is a winner that generates a high CTR, your
conversion rate may be quite poor. Therefore you can infer that one or several sales copy elements need to be changed.

Tracking autoresponder responses looks so simple, yet for some reasons most people either ignore this option or don’t use and interpret results properly. Still, it’s never too late to consider adding it to your Internet Marketing arsenal.

Take the guesswork out of your campaigns! Time and money cannot be wasted, regardless of whether you are a part-time marketer or seasoned professional. By knowing what works and what doesn’t, you will lay the groundwork for a more effective – and profitable – business.


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Rahul Majumdar is an Information Marketer specializing in article marketing, list-building, and digital product creation. Sign up for more of his insights here.

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