EMAIL TRACKING
Have You Ever Wondered How The Expensive Monthly Mailing And Autoresponder Services Can Tell You How Many Of Your Emails And Newsletters Were Read AND Which Of Your Subscribers Read Them?
Imagine what an advantage you would have if you could do the same. Well now you can. Learn here how you can easily track email and newletters yourself whether you use your own hosted autoresponder or desktop mailing system.
I won't mess around, you do need to know how to do a little bit of HTML, do simple edits to a php file (using notepad) and have ftp access to your website hosting account to be able to do this. Even with a desktop mailing system you will still need access to your server to set up a folder and upload files.Incidently, this is not a sales page. Many people already have the scripts you need to do this, some varieties are free, however this clever idea will show you how.
Once done though, you won't have to worry about any monthly fees you would normally have to pay to your autoresponder service provider to get email tracking data.
If you don't know even simple HTML coding and have no idea what I am talking about when I say 'ftp' then I recommend you use an autoresponder service. Bookmark this page and come back here later when you understand more about it and feel confident you can do this yourself.
If you're looking for an autoresponder service then the best (and certainly most popular) is Aweber. If you're just starting up and you need a free autoresponder service, try Email Automatic Responder. You can upgrade later when you've built your list up.
Like many of you I've been running websites of one sort or another for several years. In the beginning with my first website I needed to do it on a shoe string budget. I wanted (read needed) to avoid costly software programs or anything which would put me on yet another monthly package. After all I already had enough of those with domain names, hosting fees and the like.
I soon had modest traffic to my website and felt I needed to start doing three things.
1. Track the clicks being made in and out of my sites
2. Start building a subscriber list
3. Figure out how to track emails & newsletters
You need to know how to do the first two in order to do the third, so if you already have a clicker tracker you use and a subscriber list you email to, then feel free to go straight to part 3.
Part 1 - Click Tracking
The first, tracking clicks, was easy and free to accomplish. If you already are tracking your website clicks then go on to part 2. If you need to get hold of a click tracking script, you can get this great little free click tracker utility. You MUST also get this click tracker manager as it makes managing all of your click IDs a breeze.
It allows you to see the unique visitor and raw (return) visitor clicks over the last 100 days for every link you set it up for. It watches the IP address to know who is returning and who is unique.
It's pretty simple to install, although tedious if you have a lot of links to set up. There's some simple instructions which come with it, which you'll need to read before you start.
In a nutshell, you first edit the php file they give you (using notepad) and input the URL where you need the link to point to. Upload the two files (one php, one txt) to a folder of your choice and don't forget to allow read/write privileges (777) to the txt file.
When the user clicks on the link to the php file you uploaded, it takes a record of the click (by writing it to the txt file) and then redirects the user to the URL.
You must create a new 'pair' of php/txt files for each click you wish to track. Just set the pair names to something memorable and edit the php file accordingly.
You can also use this script to track clicks to PayPal (see how many close conversions you may be losing) or any other 'normal' link. With PayPal you'll need to create an 'Email Button' which works like a normal link, and then create a click ID for it.
Click trackers cannot work for some types of links, such as PayPal buttons, Adsense links, form submissions and the like, and if the visitor simply closes their browser there is no way to tell where they went.
On the bonus side, it's great with affiliate links as it automatically doubles as a link cloaker because the link first points to within your own website. This 'cloaks' your affiliate link from bots (or people) trying to steal affiliate sales.
That's it for the Click Tracker. We'll see soon how this can help with your email and newsletter campaigns too.
Part 2 - The Autoresponder
The second thing I needed to do was to set up an autoresponder to collect email addresses and send out pre-set (follow up) and ad-hoc emails and newsletters. It also needed to have two crucial functions, firstly that you could send newsletters and emails in HTML format, and secondly you could add name and email fields into the email.
These two functions are critical to tracking, as we'll find out later.
If you already have a good autoresponder working on your site and just need to know about the email tracking please skip to part 3.
For the others, the bad news is I couldn't find anything for free that could do what I needed. I tried all the usual sites and normally if I can't find something, it means it's not there! As I didn't want to get into any expensive monthly commitments like Aweber, and I didn't want to risk my subscriber lists to some cowboy flogging one of those $1 or $2 a month services, I ended up trawling the web looking for a cheap one-time purchase autoresponder software that I could install on my website hosting server.
One Interspire, wanted close to US$500. It did what I needed to get done, plus a lot more too, but it was out of my budget. If you can afford Interspire then you won't go wrong.
After more digging I finally found one which fitted the bill, It's called PHP Autoresponder and it was within my budget.
PHP Autoresponder sends out HTML emails or text emails (as follow up emails, ad hoc emails and anniversary emails) using text files. All you have to do is create the email or newsletter using your favorite HTML editor, then save the final file as a .txt file instead of an .html file.
The instructions to set it up are ok, and if you persevere you will get it working. Support can help. The only tricky bit I found was getting the 'cron jobs' to work. These are automated execution files which sit on your hosting server and will send out your emails and newsletters according to the settings you give it, ie. time of day, day of week etc.
You can access the 'cron jobs' area from your website's cpanel although you may need to get your hosting service to enable it first.
One word of advice, make sure you test any emails to yourself only first (not using the autoresponder). There's nothing worse than getting subscription emails which don't work and aren't ready to be sent.
Part 3 - Email Tracking
Now came the difficult part. How am I going to track how many of my emails are opened and which of my subscribers opened them?
The equation really has two parts.
A. How to track the opens?
B. How to tell who opened them?
Part A - Tracking the opens
The first part of the equation wasn't too hard to overcome. The reason I said earlier that the Autoresponder needed to be able to send HTML newsletters and emails is because with HTML you can add images. Images need to be 'fetched' by the subscriber's email program from your server, and we can take advantage of this activity by imbedding at least one image into our email or newsletter.
Here's the trick:
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Instead of having the code directly fetch the image file from your server, have the email's HTML code go to a php click tracker file, it will record the 'click' (which is effectively a page load), then redirect the instruction on to the URL location of the image file it needs to load.
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The URL that the click tracker re-directs to does not need to be a web page. It can be an image file as well. By fetching the image, the click tracker will record the activity in the same way as it would a normal 'human' click.
You only need to do this with one of the images. Also note that in some cases the images are called automatically, in other cases (like with Outlook) the user needs to authorize the images before they appear.
If the recipient does not authorize the images then it will not record a 'read', so you need to give an incentive for the reader to do so. You can put an image at the top of your newsletter or email (even a very small 2x2 pixel image would work) and use the "alt text" in the image link for a message to your subscribers like "YOU NEED TO AUTHORIZE IMAGES TO VIEW THIS EMAIL PROPERLY".
This will encourage your subscribers to authorize the images thereby recording the read on the click tracker.
That's how you count how many of your emails are being opened, and you can do that for free.
Part B - How to tell who opened the email
The answer to this email message tracking problem looked like it would be as difficult to locate as the holy grail. Again I scoured the net and wasn't able to find anything free or within my tight budget on email marketing tracking. I was about to resign myself to not having access to this important data on who read my newsletter emails. I knew how many read them, just not who.
Then I stumbled across an interesting script from PhP programmer Robert Plank.
It's part of the 7 script ReadyToGo PHP product Robert brought out some time ago. You can't get it as a stand alone script, you must buy the package. The package is well worth it anyway, with seven really useful scripts for your arsenal.
I'll mention the other six scripts later, but for now we're only interested in Script Number 2 of 7 - the "Simple Email Tracker" script.
The Simple Email Tracker script was designed to allow you to record which of your subscribers clicked on links in your emails or newsletters. If they clicked on a link (like 'place an order' or 'go to a webpage') then the php script calls a file on your server, records the email address of who clicked in a text file, then redirects the reader to the appropriate page.
If you already have an email tracker that can do that then you're ready to go! If not, then you'll need to get ReadyToGo PHP.
In order to work it requires you to add the email address as a 'field' into the link being clicked.
For example, if the link you normally put there is:
Dear {subscriber_name}
Get your <a href=http://www.yourwebsite.com/special-offer.html>special offer</a> here.
Then you would change it to:
Dear {subscriber_name}
Get your <a href=http://www.yourwebsite.com/yourdirectory/track.php?u={subscriber_email}> special offer</a> here.
When the recipient clicks on the 'special offer' link, the script records the {subscriber_email} in the text file on the server before redirecting the visitor to the web page. All you have to do is download the text file and you'll see a list of subscribers who have clicked the link.
If however, your readers read your email newsletter but don't click on the link you won't even know if they have read the email or not.
Now for the fun part, there is a way of getting round this:
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Just like with the click tracker, if you use the 'simple email tracker' to be the link to load the image file in your email newsletter, then when the reader opens the email (and if necessary 'authorizes images'), they will unwittingly pass over their email addresses, thereby giving you a record that they have opened your email.
They don't have to click on anything! |
The last part is to put the two parts of the equation together.
If you use the simple email tracker to load the image file, but instead redirect it at the click tracker php file, and then point the click tracker redirect to the image file, you'll record who opened your email and how many, as a running total over a period of the last 100 days.
That's how you do it. Note that some people still only open their emails as text, not HTML, so you will never know what actions they are taking. Additionally some will still read your email but not authorize images, despite the carrot you are offering. You will never know what actions they are taking either unless they click on a link somewhere else in the email, and that link is also tracked (which you can do, using different file names).
The script comes with a good manual on how to set it up, and Robert has always been great at lending his support to the newbies, or even the ol'bies who run into trouble. All you have to do is remember to set up the script to load the newsletter email image, instead of a regular click to another web page.
Without Robert Plank's ReadyToGo PHP the task is impossible.
To get your hands on it you need to get the whole ReadyToGo PHP package. But don't despair, in addition to the Simple Email Tracker script, it also has 6 other very useful scripts making the US$47 price tag great value for money. Here's a quick look at the other scripts:
1. One Time Offer Confirmation Button: Engineer one time offers to make buyers MORE likely to choose your upsell than your downsell.
2. Simple Email Tracker (as featured).
3. Dynamic Headlines: Compress more information on squeeze pages and landing pages and stand out with a simple unique effects.
4. Multi Countdown: Automate one year's worth of special offers in advance and take a vacation.
5. Search Spy: Find out what visitors are typing in ALL your search boxes... even ones that lead offsite... so you can read their minds and figure out exactly what they want to buy.
6. JavaScript Split Tester: Use this ultra simple split testing script that doesn't use databases and will work on static, PHP, or ASP.net sites. Almost no coding required, just copy and paste a couple lines of code.
7. Sticky Date Panel: Follow-up with repeat website visitors WITHOUT e-mail and hit on a different benefit if they take too long to buy from you.
If anyone has any questions or would like to comment on the strategy, please feel free to leave a posting in our blog.
Thank you.