Tracking Response Rates in TE’s
Ad Tracking is a huge topic that cannot be explained in a single post. But I have been getting a lot of questions lately about tracking results in traffic exchanges and it deserves some mention here.
Tracking can be a very complicated procedure. It all depends on what you want to track and what feedback you are looking for. In other words, what question are you trying to answer or what problem are you trying to solve?
If you are selling apples and oranges, tracking provides a clear indication of which one is of more interest to the market.
But if you are selling several types of apples, the data can be very difficult to decipher. It can take tens of thousands of responses to have enough data to base a decision on.
Some people in the market prefer green apples and some like red. If more people like green than red, do you stop selling red apples? Of course not. You sell more apples by offering both.
Taking a look at the ten different splash pages we use in TE Profits, which one gets the most response? Does it really matter?
First, they are ALL apples. Some are red and some are green.
Each of the splash pages has different targeting or a slight variation in the headline. Some target people who want more traffic. Others target list builders. Most of the new splash pages target frustrated surfers who simply want to improve results from traffic exchanges and make some money along the way.
Would you simply take the one splash page that gets the most response and only promote that one? If you did you would be leaving a lot of business on the table.
TE Profits uses some “internet marketing” tools, but in reality what we are doing is simply generating leads for our businesses. We are using predominantly free advertising resources. The need for tracking is very low as a user of TE Profits.
My necessity for tracking is very high in order to provide you with the best service and most responsive marketing material. I do track response rates to each of the splash pages.
I do this so you do not have to.
I track in order to see which splash pages are due for an update. Keeping them fresh improves response.
If you are an “internet marketer” selling a wide variety of “fruit” and using any form of paid advertising, you MUST track your results to keep a positive return on your advertising dollar. To do your own tracking, here is what you will need before you even consider what tracking tool or service to use:
1. Your own web hosting
2. Your own splash pages and squeeze pages
3. The ability to create and host your own landing pages
Then… you will need a tracker. After all of the hours of set up you will start collecting data. It will take at least a week to get enough data to have anything useful to evaluate. Then you have to make sense of it.
If you are interested in doing some tracking, the place to start is with your TrafficWave Adtracker. It is a valuable service that is already in your tool bag.
The TrafficWave tracker is what I call a “single stage” tracker. It only calculates “hits” or “clicks” on a link. For example, if you wanted to verify that a particular exchange was actually delivering the traffic they say they are, you would add a tracking link for your splash page.
In this example, you do not have to host your splash page. Simply replace the splash page url with the tracking link url, which counts the page view and redirects to your splash page. Then compare the number of “hits” in your hit counter against the number of views the exchange reports.
For TE Profits I am interested in splash page “click thru” rates as well as squeeze page “opt in” rates. HitsConnect will do one or the other, but not both with a single tracker. The service I use, ProTrackerPlus [link removed], does both with a single tracking link.
Think carefully about “WHY” you want to track your promotions before jumping into something that has a very large learning curve and demands a great deal of time that you could otherwise spend building traffic credits.
.
PS. If you are an upgraded member in VitalViral, you have an easy way to track where your signups are coming from by using the VitalViral capture pages. For more information, see this post.
[edited April 7, 2010]
I removed the link to ProTrackerPlus (above) as I am no longer using or recommending the service. While it was the most promising, full featured tracker I had found… the site owner does not adequately take care of his customers or maintain the service. Latency issues are causing tracking links to be delayed in responding (or not at all). At the time of this writing, all my PTP tracking links are defaulting to the main PTP sales page.
My #1 recommendation for quick, easy tracking in TEs is VitalViralPro!
7 Comments:
Hey Scott:
You beat me to the punch…I logged in to start asking a
number of questions about tracking your splashpages,
but you pre-empted me so to speak !!
Seriously, while I lack any degree of knowledge about
tracking [ other than the basic 'hits' approach using Traffic Wave] I understand what you are saying.
But it would be more than helpful to know the conversion
rate of the different splash pages. If one SP results in
more otp-ins than another this would certainly be desirable
information.
But are you saying the TW system doesn’t have
this functionality, and that only Hits Connect and Pro
Tracker Plus provide this level of detail?
Regards, Merl
Merl,
The TrafficWave adtracker is a one-stage tracker, only tracking “hits” or clicks on a link.
Hits Connect is two-stage. It can track “hits” and one action.
ProTrackerPlus is three-stage. It can track hits (clicks on a link), actions (click thrus) and sales (opt ins).
Hope that makes sense.
Scott
Question about ProTracker Plus – I see they offer a code that can be built in to affiliate pages – is this in place on the ‘thanks’ page? What I would really like to know is which exchanges are generating the most opt-ins, rather than which page they came from.
.
Jacquie,
You are correct. One of the codes would be on the ‘thanks’ page. In order to track with that code, you would need to host your own ‘thanks’ or subscription landing page so that you can install your unique code on that page.
Scott
Thanks for sending me here for the answer to my tracking questions, Scott!
The cleanest way to track what splash page and traffic exchange your signups are coming from is for Scott to put two additional query parameters in the autoresponder signup up form on the spash page. They would populate “hidden” fields–one for the splash page identifier and another for the traffic exchange name.
I have done this myself and this would amount to a trivial amount of html and php code.
That way you avoid an Ad Tracker and know exactly where your signups are coming from–it will be on your subscriber records in your Traffic-Wave autoresponder.
.
Thanks for the idea, Jim.
Installing a trivial amount of code is no problem. Learning, writing and implementing a code for the first time is seldom trivial.
If you would like to send me an example of what you have done yourself with the TrafficWave form code, hidden fields, and queries to accomplish this, I am all ears.
The challenge I foresee in writing the code is how to query the traffic exchange name so that one capture page template could be used in 200+ exchanges. If a splash page is used in front of the capture page, the splash page must query the exchange name and send it to the capture page form in the URL generated (or drop a cookie).
The idea you presented would be good for tracking WHERE the sign ups are coming from, but not for statistical data such as the opt in rate for a particular exchange. For that you need a good Ad Tracker that crunches numbers for you. That is why I use ProTrackerPlus.
Thanks again,
Scott
Scott,
Here’s a sample traffic-Wave autoresponder form code that adds a third query parameter that represents a Traffic Exchange code that puts a dummy name for a lead capture page called “sampleLCP” in the Company field and the code “xxx999″ in the City field.
http://www.jimrazz.com/tep/sample.php?id=jimrazz&tw=jimrazz6947&City=xxx999
For a screenshot of what this shows in the Traffic-Wave autoresponder info go to
http://www.jimrazz.com/tep/screenshot.JPG
The sampleLCP value was hard coded on the form as that’s the name I assigned it. It could have been “s10″, “surf4cash”, or whatever name you, the owner of the form, assign. As long as we all know what it is.
The xxx999 could be a traffic exchange identifier of xxx and campaign code of 999. You could put some else in there like “Traffic Swarm.” This code is only meaningful to the person who’s submitting the URL to the traffic exchange. Just change that last query parameter for each traffic exchange submission.
Jim
Excellent analogy and explanation of when tracking is NOT needed.
I tend to go overboard on my tracking and let it drive me a little bit crazy but you make a lot of sense and gave me some peace of mind lol Thanks
I still use the ‘Muddy Wall’ approach. Sometimes you have to throw some at the wall and see what sticks.
As you say Scott, sometimes you really have to ask if the time invested in tracking is going to be offset by the result. Time is at a premium for me. Results from TEs are pretty much Luck-of-the-Draw anyway, as far as I am concerned.
I have noticed the changes you make to the Splash Pages from time to time. The fact that you are looking after this part of the business is good enough for me.
Thanks