Re: [epub] Tracking New Subscribers

[Eva Almeida <admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Eva Almeida <admin@ebooksnbytes.com>


Hi Dave,

I actually am interested in tracking subscribers as well.  There are a few
ways I am going to track mine and I thought I would share these ideas
with you and the rest of ePub.

>I remember seeing once a method of adding some code to and URL so tracking
>new subscribers from a specific ad buy or trade would be made easier. I
>believe it involved adding a "?" and some other code at the end of the url
>for tracking purposes. Can anyone shed some light on the process for me?

It really depends upon what subscriber system you use.  I have personally
used two different kinds so I can share my experiences with both of these
systems.

The first system I used was a simple subscribe address and I could track
my subscribers by altering the subject line like this:

mailto:subscribe@healthandmoneytips.com?subject=epub

This would let me know that the subscribers came from the ePub list when
they sent me email from the above address.  This failed to work when I
changed my ezine to Listbot.  The subscriber address changed to:

mailto:freeinfoclub-subscribe@listbot.com and there was no way
(that I know of) to track where people were subscribing from since
I don't receive a copy of the subscriber's email.  I could use my
original email address and manually add them at Listbot using the
above tracking technique or use the system below ...

To correct this, I now use an online subscriber form thanks to
the excellent Master Subscriber CGI script by William Bontrager:
http://www.willmaster.com/master/subscriber/ 

I set the online form up (after William installed the CGI program
on my site) and the subscriber enters their email address in
the form and presses submit.  Several things occur next:

1. Their subscription request is sent to Listbot.

2. They are redirected to a Thank You page on my site.

3. They receive a confirmation email from Listbot and they
    have to reply to confirm their email.  I used to think that
    this wasn't a good idea (confirmations) since I thought
    it would decrease the amount of subscribers I receive.
    Although this is true, there is less chance of them
    accusing me of spam since they have confirmed
    that they wanted to receive my ezine.  I use to have a
    problem where people would subscribe to my old subscriber
    address with incorrect email addresses and I would have
    to keep unsubscribing these bad addresses.

Okay, here is where the tracking comes in.  You could do 2
things, add a ? to each page of your site where your subscription
form is at:

ie.  First subpage is entitled: food.html and so in your subscription
form you could add this to the url where your subscribers will
be re-directed:   http://www.foodweb.com/thankyou.html?food
and another page where other people subscribed may have
been at cook.html so the thank you page on that form would
be http://www.foodweb.com/thankyou.html?cook

In your stats for your site, you would see that the url

thankyou.html?food  had 20 hits 
thankyou.html?cook had 10 hits

This would roughly show that your food page was twice
as successful at pulling subscribers as your cooking page.

I know that these aren't completely full proof but they would
give you a rough idea how many subscribers are joining from
your site.  You could also create separate Thank You pages
for each page or directory of your site.  That would take more
work, but may be worth it in certain cases.  You could also
direct potential subscribers to different pages on your site
for each email or ezine advertisement in order to track their
success at attracting subscribers.

I will try a few of these tips on my site and let you know my results!

Eva 



*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Eva Almeida, Publisher
Publisher of The Marketing Edge Tip-Zine
http://www.marketingedgetips.com/?sig
Subscribe: mailto:freeinfoclub-subscribe@listbot.com

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