Do you track Click-Through Rates (CTRs) in your AutoResponder using one of those obscure tracking URLs they generate? They look pretty much like so:
http://clicks.aweber.com/…
http://click.icptrack.com/…
What does that imply in some of your subscribers’ mind?
“That guy/garl is observing whether or not I clicked on that link.”
Do you agree that there are people who don’t want to be tracked or observed? Do you further agree that, if you constantly convert standard links to “trackable links,” some of your subscribers will deliberately avoid clicking on links in your AutoResponder messages?
If you agree to both, why then do you still track?
Oh I see… you want to know the percentage of those who did click through. Sounds obvious and reasonable.
Well, knowing what I just said above, what about a smarter and more effective approach? :-)
Track only once every now and then rather than each and every time.
When you track, say, every other month your subscribers are accustomed to standard links in your messages and likely won’t notice when you do decide to track click-throughs in one message. Thus your CTRs are more accurate and representative.
—Marcus
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Totally agree Marcus!
I now test only when I am going to send the email again (eg to a different list, or change it from a one-time broadcast and add it to my general follow-up sequence), and only the first time.
Results may change in future, but it’s not worth risking having those ugly links in the emails.
Love how you expressed it, Martin: “…not worth risking having those ugly links in emails.” :-)
I have never tracked since having my blog. For several reasons, #1 reason is like you mentioned NO I don’t like to be tracked. Then the second reason is I think you said it right, here in your post that tracking can be done on a once every month or so. As usual you have given us something to think about. jj
Exactly, JJ. Also, especially professionals usually enable tracking in every message and I’m wondering if they don’t know how to write good copy that they still feel the need of tracking every piece.
As someone who is familiar with online marketing, I do tend to hover over these URLs to see if they are being tracked (just out of curiosity). But I’m not sure whether the average person would do this?
I belong to that hover-over-URLs group too.
Before I got aware of what autoresponders are, I always trash instantly the minute I found autoresponder messages on my inbox. But now that I myself learn to do it, I suddedly found value on it. Though there are really trash messages from autoresponder I learn to browse on them to see which has value on it unlike before.