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My First Email Campaign: Confused About CTR

by TonyLaw
12 replies
Today I'm running my first ever email ad campaign and I'm confused about the statistics I'm seeing.

I signed up as an affiliate for a "guru" and am promoting one of his offers. I generated a tracking link from his Infusionsoft affilate page deal and put it into an email ad. The link directs them to his squeeze page video webinar.

I purchased a solo ad campaign from a company and here's what that company is reporting so far:

Sent 12545
Opened 2115
CTR 41

In my affiliate control panel in Infusionsoft I'm seeing the following:

Hits 27
No purchases yet

Shouldn't I be seeing more hits on the squeeze page? I thought that the "opened" in the email stats is a result of the link being clicked. How else would they be able to see how many were opened (unless with a tracking pixel perhaps?)

And I'm confused about the CTR. That's a percent of the Sent or Opened or what?

Thanks.
Tony
#campaign #confused #ctr #email
  • Profile picture of the author Nigel Booker
    CTR is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown.

    The figures you've given don't make that much sense - perhaps you should go back to the company serving the ad campaign & ask them.
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    • Profile picture of the author TonyLaw
      I just downloaded an Excel spreadsheet of the stats from the campaign. Looks like the CTR number is actually the total number of people who clicked through not a rate. The spreadsheet shows 41 people.

      I had included a link to my website and it shows that 14 people clicked through that link so the hits count of 27 in my affiliate control panel is correct.

      Learn something new everyday, eh?
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      • Profile picture of the author Dann Vicker
        Originally Posted by TonyLaw View Post

        I just downloaded an Excel spreadsheet of the stats from the campaign. Looks like the CTR number is actually the total number of people who clicked through not a rate. The spreadsheet shows 41 people.

        I had included a link to my website and it shows that 14 people clicked through that link so the hits count of 27 in my affiliate control panel is correct.

        Learn something new everyday, eh?
        Exactly. But I really wonder why you should have such an abysmally bad ctr from a good open rate. I typically get at least 10% of the people who open my mails click though, and that is for cold lists.
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        Looking for high quality solo ad traffic? 200-2000 clicks available/day. Testimonials here. PM me

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        • Profile picture of the author TonyLaw
          But I really wonder why you should have such an abysmally bad ctr from a good open rate. I typically get at least 10% of the people who open my mails click though, and that is for cold lists.
          The email ad was written by the guru who's program I'm marketing and his offer is enticing so I don't know if that's the problem.

          Could be the list isn't targeted well. I bought 300,000 targeting "internet marketers" for $49 so the list could be crap. I bought it from optindatalist.com (not an aff link)

          This was my first email campaign so I went cheap to get familiar with the whole process before putting more money into higher priced solo ad sellers.
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  • Profile picture of the author kolled
    Great Tony! You took action and did something. Now you can concentrate on refining your methods to reach your goals.

    I also wondered why so few clicked through,seeing that so many of them opened the mail. Anyway, like I said, it's a start. You can always tweak and grow from there!
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    • Profile picture of the author TonyLaw
      Well, the campaign has ended and here are the results:

      Start Date: 3/22/2012 Total Amount Sent: 300,000 Total Amount Opened: 50,358 CTR: 210

      As I found out, the CTR they list is not a rate but actually the total number of people that clicked on a link in the ad.

      142 clicked on the link to the guru's webcast I was promoting and the rest clicked on the link to my website which is under construction but has a banner ad to another affiliate program I'm promoting. Both of those webcasts have an email submit to their main offer.

      Nobody opted in on either program. Rather disappointing, I'd say.

      If my math is correct, 16% opened the email and out of those only .4% clicked through.

      The ad was a "swipe" or template I got as an affiliate of Rich Schefren. It was very well written and promoted a webcast for his "From Frustration to Freedom" program. The webcast page is very professionally done. I think I can put the link here, it's not an affilliate link:
      From Frustration To Freedom - Strategic Profits

      Like I said previously, I bought the list from optindatalist.com and supposedly targeted people in the US and UK interested in Internet Marketing.

      Those of you with experience with solo ad campaigns could tell me if this campaign was the norm or sub par or what. Personally I think the list was crap but I'm new to this so...
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      • Profile picture of the author habdul
        I paid for 300,000 through optindatalist.com .. it sucks .. imagine that I had one visit only.. around 48000 people according to the company opened their email .. only one visited my website .. crap .. not recommended .. avoid it at any cost
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  • Profile picture of the author jsparky623
    A lot of those opens could also be the same people opening it multiple times. They generally don't only track unique opens. Same generally goes for CTR. The numbers all around can be skewed because of factors like mobile devices.
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  • Profile picture of the author TGforever
    You also have to take into consideration that you were sending traffic to an IM product. A lot of people in this market, like us, get tons of emails a day from people and gurus. I get around 20-30 a day even though I am constantly unsubing from many IMers but I may actually open the email cause it has a catchy subject but I hardly ever click through.

    Then you have to look at your campaign, are you offering a free product of value, that really makes the person want to take action?

    Maybe test the squeeze page on free traffic sources and see what the conversion rates are.

    If you are just blasting a sales product out without warming people up to the idea of buying from you and giving them something of value to trust you, your actual sales and conversion's will be low.

    Are you going to try again with this company? Im actually looking into it to try and build my list.

    Offering a free product in email blast- Get them on my squeeze page- Give them free product worth value- send them a 5 day course to build up my reputation with them- then send a email with my offer.

    You know what I just thought of, I wonder if this company has HTLM and you can inbed Iframe into the email so your squeeze page is right there in the email and they never have to exit out of there email to opt-in. Not sure how many people would be able to view the html tho.......Anyways would be interested in if you gave up or tried a different company, or another email campaign
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  • Profile picture of the author JayParker
    The best thing you can do is provide value by giving a free report and send the traffic to the squeeze page. Build a relationship with your subscribers and then promote the "guru" products, you are most likely to make a sale when you presell successful an offer.
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  • Profile picture of the author joann111
    any good email marketing companies you guys recommend ? try lots of them, very expensive to send to lots of subscribers, they cost is very high, monthly, not just one off. any cheaper ones out there ? many thanks
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