Redirection script to boost sales with Aweber

12 replies
Hi everyone,

I am trying to embed a 4-day sale into an autoresponder series (Aweber). I want the sale to work only if the subscriber clicks within 4 days of the initial send.

I think the best way to do this is use Aweber's personalization variable for DATE, and inject it into the target URL.

So the URL I'd ask people to click on would be:

www.MySite.com/sale.php?{datecode-goes-here]

The php file would grab the date code from the URL and compare against today's date. It would then forward to the actual sale URL if the difference is less than 5 days. It would forward to a secondary URL if the diff was 5 days or more (meaning the sale is over).

Obviously length of sale could be changed by a simple variable in the file.

Here's one page I found with some sorta similar stuff:
Redirect Based On Date AND Time [Archive] - Dynamic Drive Forums

Does anyone feel like helping me code this up? I need it for my business, but you (coder) could easily create a tutorial on how to use this to boost sales in an autoresponder sequence. It would make a nice WSO for you
#aweber #boost #redirection #sales #script
  • Profile picture of the author Brandon Tanner
    If I'm not mistaken, you can't put a personalization token inside a hyperlink in an Aweber message IF you start the link with "http" (FYI when you start a link with "http", Aweber cloaks the link). If you try that, it will break the link (at least that's how it used to be -- I haven't tried in a while though).

    So to use a token inside a link, you would have to start the link with "www" (which means that Aweber will not cloak the link).

    So if you couldn't cloak the link, then your recipients would see the date in your link, and they could easily bypass your little "trick" by changing the date in the address bar after they click the link.

    You could workaround this problem though by doing something like this...

    1) On your opt-in page, use PHP to get the Unix Timestamp (which is the # of seconds since 1/1/1970), then pass that number to a hidden field to your opt-in HTML code, which gets passed to Aweber. (You'll have to create a custom field in Aweber for this)

    2) In your autoresponder message, make the link in this format (assuming your custom field is named "timestamp")...

    www.YourSite.com/offerpage.php?t={!custom timestamp}

    When your recipients get the link it will look like...

    www.YourSite.com/offerpage.php?t=46372862515

    (and 99.9% of them of course won't have a clue what that number means

    3) So when they click the link to 'offerpage.php', use PHP code to redirect them to page A if the timestamp is less than 4 days old, or to page B if it's over 4 days old.

    I don't have time to do any free coding right now, but it wouldn't take more than a half-hour or so to code the whole thing. Bet you could find someone over at Fiverr to do it.

    Hope that helps!
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    Hey Brandon - I'd pay for the help

    I like your timestamp idea except the sale i will do won't be immediate. It will probably be 3 weeks into the opt in period, and depending on how I set it up (for delivery on certain days of the week) I probably can't predict the exact time of the sale to use the opt in time as an accurate counter.

    I think even if aweber cloaks a link, it gets uncloaked in the browser window later, otherwise it wouldn't work, right? All variables need to get passed.

    I've done this before with email address appended to URL. It works.

    Also, your timestamp idea requires some custom kind of personalization variable and I don't think aweber let's you create custom variables do they?
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    Oh, I forgot to say that if I insert a date in the URL I wouldn't name it date. I'd call it something like "ref" which wouldn't draw as much attention as "date". I might also throw in some useless crap so ...

    http://www.somesite.com?ref=02-12-20...int=08-12-2012
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    • Profile picture of the author Brandon Tanner
      Originally Posted by Chris Thompson View Post

      Hey Brandon - I'd pay for the help

      I like your timestamp idea except the sale i will do won't be immediate. It will probably be 3 weeks into the opt in period, and depending on how I set it up (for delivery on certain days of the week) I probably can't predict the exact time of the sale to use the opt in time as an accurate counter.

      I think even if aweber cloaks a link, it gets uncloaked in the browser window later, otherwise it wouldn't work, right? All variables need to get passed.

      I've done this before with email address appended to URL. It works.

      Also, your timestamp idea requires some custom kind of personalization variable and I don't think aweber let's you create custom variables do they?
      Option A (the easiest way to set up the script) would be to have the sale start at exactly x days and x hours after the opt-in.

      Option B would be to have the sale to start on a specific day of the week and at a specific hour of that day, at least x weeks in the future (for example, the first Tuesday at 9am at least 3 weeks after opt-in). That would require more coding though.

      I've actually done something very similar to Option A in the past with Aweber, so I know it can be done. To be honest with you, I've really got too much on my plate to take on any custom jobs right now. But I'm sure you could find someone in the 'Warriors for hire' section or at Fiverr to help you out with this.

      Originally Posted by Chris Thompson View Post

      Oh, I forgot to say that if I insert a date in the URL I wouldn't name it date. I'd call it something like "ref" which wouldn't draw as much attention as "date". I might also throw in some useless crap so ...

      www.somesite.com?ref=02-12-2012&usr=04-12-2011&int=08-12-2012
      Yeah, you might fool a few of them with that, lol.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    Thanks Brandon - I've gone ahead and hired someone at Fiverr for a quick cut at my initial idea. I don't really mind if the sale is easy to hack for a tech savvy person. But I have to at least try to make it a time limited sale so I'm not being dishonest about the scarcity element of the sale.

    The other consideration I have to (maybe) deal with is the A and B landing pages. Say page A is the sale page and Page B is the "sale ended" page.

    It would be nice to ensure that people can't visit Page A directly. They can only visit from the redirect script.

    I've got no idea how to do this, and it's something for later consideration. Right now I just want to go live with a basic solution.
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    • Profile picture of the author Brandon Tanner
      Originally Posted by Chris Thompson View Post


      The other consideration I have to (maybe) deal with is the A and B landing pages. Say page A is the sale page and Page B is the "sale ended" page.

      It would be nice to ensure that people can't visit Page A directly. They can only visit from the redirect script.
      You can accomplish that by starting a PHP "session" on the script page, then assigning the timestamp (from the Aweber link) as the value of the session. Then you would call that session from page A and check to see if the timestamp is within the acceptable time window. If it is, then the user stays on page A. If it's not, then they are instantly redirected to page B. And if someone tries to access page A directly without first going through the script page, then they will automatically be directed to page B (because there would not be a session value in that case).

      Just tell your programmer all that -- he'll know what I'm talking about.
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  • Profile picture of the author Chris Thompson
    Brandon - thank you very much for that idea. Looks solid.

    Here's the PHP code my Fiverr gig dude delivered. Looks to do exactly what I asked him to do. For $5 it's totally worth it.

    <?php
    $date = $_GET['date'];
    $date_array = explode('-',$date);
    $m = $date_array[0];
    $d = $date_array[1];
    $Y = $date_array[2];
    $current_date = mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d"),date("Y"));
    $user_date = mktime(0,0,0,date($m),date($d),date($Y));

    $diff = $current_date - $user_date;

    if($diff <= 345600){
    // if less than 4 days
    header("Location:http://www.google.com/");
    }
    else{
    // if greater than 4 days
    header("Location:http://www.facebook.com/");
    }
    ?>
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    • Profile picture of the author nekrozon
      If you're looking for something still that's in production, check out james grandstaff's 5 days sales machine!
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    • Profile picture of the author Craftisy
      Try the PHP function time(), Chris Thompson's post should work!
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  • Profile picture of the author JamesGrandstaff
    Hey Guys,

    I achieved this with 5 Day Sales Machine product. Let me know if you still have questions.

    James
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  • Profile picture of the author Earnie Boyd
    Could another option be to use a "coupon" token based on the date of the mail sent? The potential client would then enter the token and you could redirect the page based on the token age? The token would be given in the body of the mail sent and not part of the URL to click. Someone could fake the URL but would be harder to guess to the token values.
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  • Profile picture of the author Angel Anderson
    if you are using a wordpress site you can modify the htaccess file
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    The Strategy Specialist Helping You Achieve Your Goals Via Training And Support contact me via http://www.angelanderson.com
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