Archive for May, 2010

PostHeaderIcon Email Advertising – How Ad Tracking Helped Create a Killer Ad

Charlie Cory asked:




I recently undertook an email advertising promotion,
using a number of advertising media. The exercise
involved a program of mine called the Magical Marketing
system.

As an email advertising Internet marketing exercise, I
decided that I wanted to approach the members of some
of the affiliate programs that are featured in Magical
Marketing, and offer their members the chance to join
this system, and reap the benefit of the multiple promotion
methods that it employs.

And. as an email advertising marketing exercise, this has
worked very well, and whilst an interesting exercise in
Joint Venture Marketing in itself, it has produced a result
so remarkable in my eyes, that I felt it worthy of a report.

With one particular featured program, I did a multiple
ad test, to see what the comparison between three ads.
It was the results of this that struck me, and prompted
me to put this article together.

The three ads, which were very similar. This is good of
course, because it means that any variance in the results
can be explained in relatively few ways. So there are two
points that need to be made about these ads, which may
affect your thinking about how you write your own ads.

1. Use Of Variables in Headlines

I don’t know about you, but I am always hearing that
using someone’s name in an advert can make a significant
difference to the effect of that advert. Not all programs
have this kind of facility though. It just happens the
program that I ran the adverts with does, so I made use of
it in the headlines for 2 of the 3 adverts, but not for
one of them. I have used the variable in the body of all
three ads, so some personalisation took place in all cases.

2. Bulleted Benefits

Again, all the books and articles that I have ever read
tell you to spell out the benefits, and a lot of them tell
you to bullet them to add emphasis. So, I have done this
with all three adverts, but with a difference between ads 1,
and 2 and 3. In the first advert, I just made single word
references to the benefits, in the other two, I elaborated
in order to explain the benefit better.

3. Conclusions

The results are so striking, that they are worthy of comment.

The ads were placed from 12th December 2004 to 18h January
2005. So, the time span is about a month, but, I use the
program in question to send other ads out too. About every
3rd day, I will send one of these three ads, in rotation.
So, each of the ads would have been sent about every 6 days
or so.

Advert 1 pulled in 70 unique hits, with 19 action hits. The
latter is where prospects followed through to the sign up
page.

Advert 2 pulled 5 unique hits and 1 action hit.

Advert 3 pulled 4 unique hits and no action hits.

Headlines
I have always advocated trying to keep headlines short,
especially where email adverts are concerned. You only have
the width of the email pane to enter your message, so
you must tell your story within a few words.

I don’t consider any of the Headlines that I have used to
be excessively long. However, the first advert is very short,
and perhaps that accounts in part for the huge number of
additional clicks for the first advert?

In part, I believe that this is true.

However, I am now thinking that perhaps email prospects have
become wary of seeing their name in emails from people that
they don’t really know. Think about how you react when you
see such an email?

Do you open it immediately, or do you become suspicious?

Trust your gut feeling.

I have used the personalised approach in the body of the email,
and maybe the psychology here is that once someone has opened
an email, they have ‘let you in’ and are more amenable to your
being personal.

Headline conclusion

I am more convinced than ever that email headlines should be
short – as short as possible. I also recommend that if you
personalise the Headline, you stop, and test your ads without
it.

Bulleted Benefits

You can see that advert 1 has produced a massive amount of
additional click thru’s over the other two ads. Bearing in
mind that each ad went out, probably every six days, the first
two ads are not far removed from the norm with the program that
I used. This makes the results achieved by Advert 1 even more
staggering.

The change in headline may go some way to explain this, but
the huge number of clicks tells me that something much more
significant has occurred.

Thankfully, the body of the three ads are very similar in all
aspects, except one; the bulleted benefits. In the first ad,
I have given one word answers. In the other two, I have
elaborated.

Bulleted benefits conclusion

One cannot escape the fact that keeping the benefits so short
has had an impact. And not only in click thru’s either. If you
look at the graphic under ‘Actions’ column, you will see that
I have tracked the prospect through to the signup page. You
might expect that the 20% conversion rate be the same, but it
isn’t, it has increased to around 28%. So the shorter bullet
points have also pre-sold more effectively, so the prospects
likelihood of signing up has increased as well.

As a final note, please remember that all of this is courtesy
of tracking my ads. If you don’t do it, then you will struggle
to make an impact in the marketing world.

Create a video blog…instantly.

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PostHeaderIcon Why Testing and Tracking is Important to Moms Who Work at Home

Mandy Buchanan asked:




If work at home moms want to get the most out of their home-based business it is important that they test and track all marketing efforts, no matter what business they are involved in. This testing and tracking can involve landing pages, ad copies, marketing tools and more.

Testing and Tracking Your Marketing Tools

This is important for determining where your time is best spent and what marketing tools are actually bringing results for your home-based business. It is important to get a good ad tracking tool that allows you to see where your conversions and clicks are coming from so that you can see who is sending visitors to your website, how many they send and how many of these actually convert.

Testing and Tracking Ad Copy for your Home-based Business

Another important element that you will want to test and track is the ad copy that you use for marketing your home-based business. Split test different copies to see which copy brings in the most visitors and the most conversions. This way you will gradually be able to adjust your ad copy to get the best results.

Testing and Tracking Landing Pages

This involves having two pages that are similar but that differ in certain aspects that you are testing for. You will then send visitors equally to each of these different pages and see which page gets the most conversions. You will then be able to adjust the pages until you find the perfect combination that brings in the best results. Once again, it is best to use a good ad tracking tool to get the best results.

Testing and tracking is important for the work at home mom because it provides her with a way to see where her marketing efforts are best spent and how to get the best results from her ad copy and landing pages. In order to do this it is best to get a good ad tracking tool which allows you to split test and track hits and conversions.

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PostHeaderIcon How Much Does Call Tracking Cost?

Daniel Bernal asked:




Actuaries have a formula for determining the cost of call tracking. It is a measurable commodity in that sense. Advertising firms feel the benefits far outweigh any cost incurred as it gives them measurable proof of the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns they sell to their clients. International enterprises look at tracking systems as a cost savings utility that prevents unnecessary drain of funds on unproductive ad campaigns. Call tracking has become an integral part of effective money management in all forms of internet advertising programs. The database built by these systems activities also provides a powerful customer retention tool. In an economy where so many companies can provide the same services, customer satisfaction often is the determining factor in winning and retaining customers. Call centers with tracking technology excel in making clients feel their concerns are known and resolved with a single call.

The formula used for determining the cost of call tracking for a company is;
Cost = Sum of Marketing Expenses divided by the Number of Phone Calls Received Per Month

Some service providers charge on a per minute basis that shrinks as volume increases. These online providers offer bulk rates and discounts for enterprise clients. Other providers offer monthly service packages for as little as $25. The large comprehensive marketing firms often offer call tracking services as a part of the free services bundle they provide their clients.

When a small business is trying to determine how much call tracking services costs will cost them there are a few items that should be factored in. Deducting the cost of maintaining a bank of expensive business telephone numbers alone can often cover the cost of an online tracking program. The service provider maintains the inventory of telephone numbers that are used to link the ad campaign that generated the telephone contact to the sales lead. Computer hardware and maintenance costs are also shifted from the small business to the service provider. The technology supporting tracking services continues to change quickly. The burden of staying current with new innovations in the marketing performance measurement industry is beyond what most businessmen care to deal with but want to benefit from. The database that is created in the call tracking process doubles as an effective knowledge base for quick recognition of clients, their history with the company and issues when they call customer service representatives for help with problems or concerns. The company that gives that feeling of instant recognition to their clients has a distinct advantage over those that have to place people on hold, request call backs or have to transfer them to different people to get their needs met.

Creating a spreadsheet of the expenses that can be reduced by subscribing to a call tracking service with a column for the multifaceted benefits of the easily accessed information on marketing ROI and customer history.

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PostHeaderIcon Work At Home Business Tip – Test Everything

Mike Makler asked:




Dinner With Mark Joyner

About 3 Years ago in Los Angeles I was Fortunate enough to have dinner with Mark Joyner. I was at a Seminar and I was standing in the Hotel Lobby talking with Mike Litman and Mark Joyner came buy and said to Mike let’s do dinner, he looked at me and said why don’t you Join Us. Mark Joyner was talking about one of his online Programs and how he tested 1000’s of Headlines. Mark’s Message is you can never test enough. One Small change can have a dramatic impact on Click Thru Rate. Things like Color, Font Size, Wording, Placement all effect your Click thru Rate.

KeyWord Phrases As a Small Work-At-Home Business I realize you probably do not have the resources of a Mark Joyner to do 1000’s of tests for 1 Headline, But that shouldn’t stop you from Testing. There are lot’s of things you can do to test. Let’s say you are running a Google Ad Words campaign for your work at Home Business and you are using the Following Keyword phrases
Work at Home
Work at Home Mom
Work at Home Dad
Online Business
Part Time Income
Split Testing


You can do Split testing. You would Run 2 Different Ads for each Keyword Phrase. You would then see which Ad got better results for each Keyword Phrase. Now that you have found your “Best Ad” So Far for each key word phrase you can now proceed to see if you can find Better Ads for one or more of your Keyword Phrases. Just Continue to do Split Testing with each of your Ads. You can run a Completely Different Ad Against your Best Ad or you can Tweak your Best Ad Slightly.

Some Tweaks you might try are
Changing one or two Words. Changing a Capitalization, Changing Fonts Changing Punctuation
Some Ad Word Guru’s Maintain you should constantly be running Split Tests always searching for a ‘Better Ad’.

Split Testing works with any type of Ad. You decide to run some Ezine Ads. You want to know which Ezine Pulls best so you run the Same Ad in Each Ezine and see which Ezine(s) received the Best Pull Rate. Now that you know which Ezines Pull Best you can Now Do Split Testing to see which Ezine Ad Pulls Best.

How Do You Know Which Ad Pulled Best?

Ad Tracking The Missing Ingredient. Ad Tracker are Like Alias for a Website URL. Let’s Say the web page you want to send people too is http://ewguru.com You would send them to your Ad Tracking link instead. By Seeing which Ad Tracking Link received the Best Click Thru Rate you of Course would know which Ad Pulled Best.

ad tracking
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PostHeaderIcon How To Build A Website – Seven Steps For Building Optimized Websites For Affiliate Programs

Alexander Marlin asked:




How To Build A Website – The web has developed into such a mass marketing arena, that many offline advertisers are now coming online.
This is the first sign that selling online will be a trillion dollar media in a couple years.

Research has proven that online buying has been on a steady rise and more and more businesses are starting up every day.
Google indexes about ten million sites daily, yes, ten million web sites per day.

In short, you will only see a bigger bloom and that mean that the best medium for earning online will be with affiliate programs.
Yes, affiliate programs earn cash for you even if you don’t have your own product.

How Can You Learn To Make Affiliate Programs Earn Cash For You?

The key to making any kind of money online is to master these seven steps:

1) How To Build A Website That Is Optimized For Search Engines

As far as I am concerned, you must learn to how to build a website that is simple an fast, because the online world is like a giant real estate market. If you can’t build enough websites, you won’t own enough virtual space to build enough income to survive online.

Even if you have your own product, you must learn to use other peoples products and make back-end sales. That is what affiliate marketing is about and you must learn how o build a website based on making back-end sales from other peoples products.

2) Master Keyword Research, using the number one tool online

If you have been online long enough then you will obviously know that anyone building successfully optimized websites are using, wordtracker or KeywordElite. So, your task is to learn exactly how to perform keyword research using wordtracker or Keyword Elite.

3) Where To Get The Cheapest Hosting Online

There is no excuse for not doing your own due diligence when it comes to discovering where to find a reliable web host. The online medium has grown so huge, that any kid out there can start his own hosting company.

But, the question remain, are they technically gifted enough to cope with the issues and problems faced once their business starts blooming.

No one pays $100 monthly to host a site anymore, the prices range from as low as $5 up to $25 to host one site. so look around and don’t jump at the first host. Your plan is learn how to build a website that will survive online.

4) You Have To Design Your Own Site, Or Else Pay The Price

I know, this sounds a little strange, but many marketers online pay $1500 or more just to have someone design their site. Well, the sad part is a well designed site without the right words won’t sell anything.

Searchers online are looking for information, they want you to be able to solve some problem they have. Don’t get fancy, with a nice looking flashy site, just get started and grow slowly while learning how to do everything that is needed to be successful.

Once, you get going, then you can learn where to get freelance workers to do those simple things you did while getting started. But It Is great practice to learn and just keep on learning all you want to know, online education isn’t expensive.

5) How To Use Ad Tracking, To Improve Your Business

Ad Tracking, is the key to success online, you have to know where your visitors are coming form. You need to know how to build a website and tweak that website by constantly making small little changes and tracking the results.

There are no short-cuts to this, start with some kind of tracker, there are scripts, tracking software or ad tracking service you can use. Just get yourself something to track, while improving your website conversion.

6) The Secret To Writing Ad Copy, That Your Visitor Will Love

First to illustrate the secret, if you have a friend out there in the world somewhere that you call your best buddy, then you will understand this. Just tell your buddy something you just learned, and he will sit there listening and devour every word you say.

Now, do you see what the secret is?

The secret is… to just write as if your talking to your best friend and only give sound advice and proven strategies that your using.

There is nothing better than having your visitors believe in what you say that they keep coming back for more, and that is how you will earn online.

7) Master How To Make Affiliate Program Earn Cash For You

The best part of online marketing is that even if you have no product, you can earn more than someone who has his own product.

How is that possible?

Easy, if they are not using affiliate programs to earn from other peoples product they are depending on one source of income. You will be earning more by promoting many different products; that’s the magic with affiliate programs. To be successful with this method you also have to learn how to build a website that captures email addresses – so called List Building.

Anyway, I have shown you the seven steps you need to master to learn how to build a website, now go out there and build your first web site. Your first will be the most difficult. Get started now, don’t wait another minute.

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