How To Track Performance Using AWeber And Pretty Links

by Tiffany Johnson

Scenario A: You are planning your list building strategy and have decided to put an opt-in form on your Facebook page. This will be the first thing a new visitor sees the first time they come to the page.

Also, you are changing the opt-in form on your website with your new free offer. You are curious to see which web form will get the most views and opt-ins.

How do you plan to keep track of how your web forms are doing?

Tracking results in AWeber

AWeber is my number one recommended email marketing service. It’s how I send out my newsletters and autoresponders each week.

The form on my website in the right sidebar at the top is an AWeber web form. I know how many times it’s been shown on my website as well as how many times someone has submitted their information.

The big question is whether or not the form is performing as expected. The expectation of course is for people to be interested and get our free report by entering their name and email address. This is exactly what you want on your own website.

1. Give each web form a name other than “web form.”

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When creating a new web form include the location of the form as part of the name. For example, if you have a web form in your side bar on your homepage, in AWeber name it something like Side Bar Form On Homepage. If you have another form on a particular sales page or Facebook, include that as part of the name.

This way you know which form the information is referring to, where it’s located and whether it’s actually getting results. If you currently have several web forms already setup, it’s not too late to give them names that help you identify where they are located.

2. Check submissions.

After your web form has been live for a while check your ‘Submissions’ in AWeber. This number lets you know whether people have responded to your web form. It’s not an exact number of who’s on your list, however if the form has 0 and it’s been displayed 2292 times, you’ll know what you’re saying on the web form or promotion page is not working.

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I know that more people sign-up for my free report from the sidebar than Facebook, or the lightbox plug-in I previously used called PopUp Domination. In fact, more sign-up after reading a blog post and than reading the actual page that provides details about the free report. This is the type information you need to help continue to build your email list and plan your email marketing strategy.

The tracking information will not tell you why the form is not working, however you’ll at least know where to look on your website or elsewhere to make necessary revisions.

Tracking promotion pages using Pretty Links

Scenario B: You are planning your list building strategy and have decided to start advertising on different blogs. You’ve created a promotion page they’ll be sent to when they click on your banner ad. You plan to advertise on two different blogs to gauge which website will drive the most traffic to your site and the most email sign-ups.

How do you plan to keep track of how well your banner ads are doing if the banners on each website are pointing to the same page?

Prior to learning about the Pretty Links plugin, I would copy and paste the content from a promotion page and create different pages based on how I was marketing the page. For example, if you were advertising on a website and you wanted to point people to a certain page you’d provide a link to that particular site.

Let’s say you placed an ad on a mommy blog and wanted to point them to your website. Instead of providing them with yourdomain.com, you’d provide them with yourdomain.com/mommyblogsite. Where “mommyblogsite” would be the name or an abbreviation of the website you were advertising on. You’d definitely want it to be something that you would remember for tracking purposes.

You’ll definitely want to see this in action, but for now here’s the pic:

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It’s very important to include a description so you’ll know one pretty link from the next, especially if you’re creating multiple pretty links to the same target link.

I remember last year when I ran a Memorial day promotion and had some people interested in promoting it, I created a separate page for each person. No more!

Thanks to Pretty Links, I can create as many additional links as I want without setting up a new page.

If you haven’t been tracking your web forms or you’ve been taking the long route with tracking your promotional pages like I did, it’s definitely time to check out some simpler options.

Now it’s your turn! Are you tracking performance on your web forms and promotional pages? Please share in the comments below.