Are You Stupid To Do This? (Aweber users)

Trader54

15 years ago

I use the click tracking, but some probably use their own tracking method in that case I would guess you turn it off.

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Emma Ngin

15 years ago

Would definitely not want mine OFF. And yeah, who would want to do that anyway? C",)

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Clayton Jolin

15 years ago

The reason why people might want it off because its just makes the link look ugly.

It would convert all links to something like "clicks.aweber.com/random-numbers"... That can sometime piss your subscriber off if they've no idea of what aWeber actually is.

Anyhow, I'm not with aWeber.

ClaytonJ

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Raiel Schwartz

15 years ago

Same reason as Clayton Jolin said, the links look ugly. Aweber should allow you to place a code on your page for tracking. There has been multiple times I haven't clicked on a aweber link simply b/c I didn't know the URL of the site or where it could have taken me. Even though I'm probably not the majority, I know I'm not the only one who is turned off by that.

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WritingMadwoman 15 years ago

Besides being ugly, the links become super loooooong so they often become two lines, which many email programs may break so they no longer work properly. My rule of thumb is if I'm sending a strictly HTML message I can do the link tracking because I can use anchor text to disguise that long, ugly link. If plain text, I won't do link tracking.

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janina

Banned 15 years ago

[DELETED]

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Fernando Veloso 15 years ago

Originally Posted by janina

will not off it dude..

Geezz Janina. all your posts are one liners. Hope your sites and marketing approach have some more content.

Clayton bring a good point to discussion, i believe the way links show up when click tracking is ON might be scary to people outside IM world.

Thanks for bringing this up cause i definitely need to remove the click tracking in one of my lists. I bet people get scared and that's why the click through is low.

Will test and re-test next couple of days to get confirmation of what works best.

Fernando
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LB

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Betinis

Click Tracking can be ON or OFF.

Why would you want it off?

Turn it OFF and watch clickthroughs increase dramatically.

Especially outside of IM, no one knows what an "aweber" is and they are hesitant to click that big long ugly link to a domain they don't know.

It's nice to track clicks, but it's preferable to make more money.

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VegasGreg

15 years ago

They really should be OFF.
1)As mentioned they are ugly and scare off many clickers.
2)They can (and do) break in some emails.
3)Some browsers can cause 'page not available' to be seen.

It's funny how so many GURUS tell people to clean up their URLs and use a forwarding script to make them short and easy to read ( like mydomain.com/recommends/myproduct) and then put that link into their Aweber autoresponder and then turn Aweber tracking on which defeats the whole purpose of cleaning it up to start with.

If you do use a script to shorten it (preferably one on your own site) they should have their own tracking mechanisms built in, so you still get your stats.

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Adrian Cooper

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Betinis

Click Tracking can be ON or OFF.

Why would you want it off?

Definitely off.

I keep telling AWeber that the default should be off. It is easy easy to forget to uncheck the box.

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Kevin Riley

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Betinis

Click Tracking can be ON or OFF.

Why would you want it off?

Why would I want it on?

Myself, I'd rather have more readers clicking on my links, then be able to track how few are clicking on those ugly tracking links.

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CurtisN

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Kevin Riley

Why would I want it on?

Myself, I'd rather have more readers clicking on my links, then be able to track how few are clicking on those ugly tracking links.

With all due respect, shouldn't people care more about what's on the other side of the link rather than what the link looks like?

What you're describing is kind of like judging a book by its cover or a person by their looks.

Curtis

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Lawrh

15 years ago

Originally Posted by CurtisN

With all due respect, shouldn't people care more about what's on the other side of the link rather than what the link looks like?

What you're describing is kind of like judging a book by its cover or a person by their looks.

Curtis

Bizarre statement. There is nothing to judge. A cryptic link hides the destination and creates doubt. People in general are learning to be skeptical about email offers, obscured links feed that doubt and skepticism.

Lawrence

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CurtisN

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Lawrh

Bizarre statement. There is nothing to judge. A cryptic link hides the destination and creates doubt. People in general are learning to be skeptical about email offers, obscured links feed that doubt and skepticism.

Lawrence

Not at all. If you read some previous posts, you'll see that people are implying that uglier links get less clicks.

It ain't cryptic at all if you tell your reader where the darn link points to.

Curtis

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Lawrh

15 years ago

Originally Posted by CurtisN

Not at all. If you read some previous posts, you'll see that people are implying that uglier links get less clicks.

It ain't cryptic at all if you tell your reader where the darn link points to.

Curtis

Believing that people will blindly accept instructions in an email is optimistic to say the least. Perhaps if the recipients are dedicated followers, otherwise make the links readable or live with a crappy CTR.

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CurtisN

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Lawrh

Believing that people will blindly accept instructions in an email is optimistic to say the least. Perhaps if the recipients are dedicated followers, otherwise make the links readable or live with a crappy CTR.

It's not about instructing them to do anything. It's about telling them that the link goes to X. The decision to click is up to them...that decision should have nothing to do with what the link actually looks like.

Are you saying that using Aweber tracking links leads to a crappy CTR? That's a bold claim, one that I don't think you can substantiate.

Curtis

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JustinPremick

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Craig.Michaels

Aweber should allow you to place a code on your page for tracking.

We do.

Originally Posted by Kevin Riley

Myself, I'd rather have more readers clicking on my links, then be able to track how few are clicking on those ugly tracking links.

Well... it's not just about tracking how many people click...

It's about tracking who clicks.

If it were just about quantities, you could add ?utm_campaign=email1
(email2, emailn, etc.) to your URLs and just let Google Analytics
take care of it for you.

But that GA data would be relatively low-value because it wouldn't
tell you who clicked and you couldn't segment and email only those
who clicked (or only those who didn't click).

Originally Posted by slashman

You could easily use HTML but with people so aftraid of spam, the email providers block everything

At AWeber we send our own customer and prospect autoresponders
& broadcasts using HTML. For that matter, so do thousands of
businesses (some using AWeber, other not doing so) and many of
them do end up in your inbox, yes? (They sure do in my Gmail.)

Email deliverability isn't as plain-Jane simple as "don't say Free and
don't send HTML." Your spam complaint rates have much more to do
with getting delivered than this does.

Here's the thing with HTML and deliverability:

You can do a lot more with it than you can do with plain text.

Yes, this also means you can do a lot more things that could get
you filtered (48px bold red ALLCAPS text, anyone?).

But saying "You could easily use HTML but with people so afraid
of spam, the email providers block everything" is like saying
"you can't drive a Porsche or you'll get pulled over by every officer
who sees you just because it's a Porsche." Obviously not the case.

This doesn't mean HTML is universally better than plain text. But
avoiding it because you're convinced it can't get delivered - and
then on top of that avoiding tracking your email campaigns since
you don't like tracking links in plain text - doesn't seem in line
with the marketers' mantra "test, test, test."

Originally Posted by slashman

It's hard enough to get your message heard without big gray blocks (which are supposed to be images) around your text.

I understand where you're coming from here. Image blocking is
annoying at the very least.

But nobody said you have to use images to send HTML emails.

Start with some simple HTML emails - make it look like your
plain text version, but bold important text (like you do in a
sales letter), make words clickable instead of just having the
URL displayed... it doesn't have to be a huge leap from plain
text to big, flashy, image-heavy HTML! There are a million
shades of grey in between for you to explore.

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jasonl70

15 years ago

regarding html emails: I tested this a lot, and found I had slightly better results with plain text (the html did not contain any graphics, and looked just like the plain text). I'm putting together a new html template to test that looks a lot more like a newsletter (graphics, etc). But so far, plain old text has worked best for me.

Originally Posted by CurtisN

It's not about instructing them to do anything. It's about telling them that the link goes to X. The decision to click is up to them...that decision should have nothing to do with what the link actually looks like.

Are you saying that using Aweber tracking links leads to a crappy CTR? That's a bold claim, one that I don't think you can substantiate.

Curtis

just because it "should" have nothing to do with it, doesn't make it so. I quit using them myself because I got better results when dropping them.

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badfun

15 years ago

Originally Posted by jasonl70

regarding html emails: I tested this a lot, and found I had slightly better results with plain text (the html did not contain any graphics, and looked just like the plain text). I'm putting together a new html template to test that looks a lot more like a newsletter (graphics, etc). But so far, plain old text has worked best for me.

I agree. HTML text is too easily botched in the mailers; blocked outright or put into junk accounts. Especially now that so many people sign up with gmail or hotmail accounts.

Stick with plain text and experiment with click tracking. I think those in the IM niche are less suspicious of the link, but other niches may distrust it. Also, it's possible that click tracking could count as phishing with some email clients, and your mail will get junked.

my two cents.
brent

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Chris_Willow

15 years ago

Originally Posted by CurtisN

With all due respect, shouldn't people care more about what's on the other side of the link rather than what the link looks like?

What you're describing is kind of like judging a book by its cover or a person by their looks.

Curtis

That may not be very cool, but we do it all the time. That's how our brains work:rolleyes:

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David_Thompson

15 years ago

I notice sometimes the tracking links gets broke for some odd reason...

Anyone else ever had that happen to them.

--David

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Shaun OReilly

15 years ago

If you send out your e-mails in HTML format then it's possible
to use anchor text for the link so that the 'ugly' tracking link
is not visible (unless the reader hovers their pointer over the
link).

I send out e-mails in both text and HTML format so the
recipient can view the e-mail in the format they prefer.

If you're on the AWeber Analytics package then you can also
insert a piece of code on pages of your site so that the
tracking links have go via your domain rather than AWebers.

Personally, I prefer to track most of my links because I want
to know how effective (or ineffective!) my e-mails are.

What gets measured, gets improved.

So, I try to mitigate the 'ugly link' factor by sending out HTML
e-mails that allow the use of anchor text.

Dedicated to your success,

*Shaun O'Reilly

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bio prez

15 years ago

you can always put a special redirect link in your email with using your own domain that you can track yourself rather than using aweber's tracking....

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dsmpublishing

15 years ago

I love to see my tracking rates and would never even dream of turning mine off.

kind regards

sam
X

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Robert T Jillie

15 years ago

I use a redirect link in my emails using .my own domain and it works well for basic tracking on my campaigns without a long url/

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slashman

15 years ago

Yea... I don't use it. You could easily use HTML but with people so aftraid of spam, the email providers block everything, It's hard enough to get your message heard without big gray blocks (which are supposed to be images) around your text. Sure... make it look more legitimate... thanks...

I always use plain text just in case. I track my visitors on the web page itself.

Thank You

George

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rlscott2

15 years ago

Thanks for all the comments here. I'm finally about to take the plunge and open an Aweber account. These tips were very timely.

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DougBarger

15 years ago

Here's another tip and benefit of using html along with your text emails for your broadcasts from your aweber backoffice:

When you send a html version, you can actually track your opens too!

It's fun to watch the number of opens and the number of clickthroughs side by side.

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mikeyman120 15 years ago

I don't use the tracking for my follow up emails. I want the reader to see the links and become familiar with the site. I only use the click tracking when sending out a broadcast email that I want to track.

Mike
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TiffanyLambert

15 years ago

Yep I always have mine off. Why?

Let's say I'm branding my plr site. I want that name and link getting into their head as much as possible. Not some aweber.com/*^T#^%RE@#$E*)U)(U* URL. There are other ways to track your traffic, but branding is priceless.

tiff

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Kris Turner

15 years ago

Like others have said, you'd turn it off to stop your links turning into unclickable monsters. If you want click tracking on, you're kinda forced into using HTML so that you can make your links say anything you want.

I just started doing this recently, and things are going fine. Wish I'd started sooner!

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jbsmith 15 years ago

I have also found that clickthrough's seem to go up with link tracking OFF - that said, each email is different in terms of other elements so it is not a purely scientific finding.

Mostly now when I want to track clicks I use either redirects or 1Shoppingcart
tracking URL's from their Ad tracking module...I find they look less weird than the Aweber tracking links.

Jeff
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- jbsmith 15 years ago
  
  Oh - by the way, another reason to use 1ShoppingCart Ad tracking (if you use 1Shoppincart that is) - they will track conversions (opt-in's and sales) against your Ad tracking campaign which is much more powerful than just seeing clicks.
  
  Jeff
  
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Yudi

15 years ago

I have always kept mine OFF because of the ugly links, but I think they may have changed something recently.

I always subscribe myself to my own lists so that I can see what the emails look like when they come through, and just today I sent an email with tracking ON and yet the link was clean and nice, just as I had typed it.

Don't know if something else was affecting it or if Aweber has changed something, but I definitely appreciated the clean link for once.

Anyone else noticed that change?

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Trieu

15 years ago

As much I want my trackings to be on, I usually check them off when displaying url links. Otherwise the link looks really messy which doesn't make it look clickable

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tkulzer

15 years ago

A significant number of folks here say they are not using click tracking
because they don't want aweber.com links in their emails. That's
entirely understandable and the reason that we introduced click tracking
using your own domain in May 2008.

Track Clickthroughs Using Your Own Domain

This same functionality also allows you to track sales of how many $$$
where made on each email along with other actions you might want to
track on your site.

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