Aweber Click Tracking – How Not To Do It
Every business has it’s own unique set of tools to perform various tasks each day required to keep it moving forward. One of the most important tools of an Internet Marketer is some kind of email marketing software such as Aweber. This software tool is also know as an Autoresponder.
A most important feature of this software is click tracking. This feature keeps track of how many times a link is clicked and who clicks it.
The other day I sent out a broadcast message to my subscribers the same way I’ve been doing it for quite a while. The only difference this time was that I really needed to know how many people actually clicked on the links I had placed in the email and were taken to the predetermined destination I had picked out for them.
The next day I went into Aweber to check my stats only to find that no one had clicked any of the links I had put in the email. Well I knew this was not the case because of some of the results I was getting due to people clicking on my links.
Something was askew and I had to find out what it was. Watch this video to see what I found out.
til next time…
Jeff Sargent
Tagged with: aweber • click tracking • email marketing software • internet marketer
Filed under: Videos
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Hi Jeff,
I love Aweber but what you show on your video is something that I wasn’t aware of.
You’d think that every URL would be recognized as a link as it is in emails.
But Aweber doesn’t do that. It is therefore like Word Press where you also have to make a link live the way you show in the video. Otherwise it won’t show as and be a clickable link.
The video is very helpful and for that reason I’ll re-tweet your post so others can benefit from it.
Vance
Vance Sova´s last blog ..Alex Jeffreys Marketing With Alex Las Vegas Workshop 2010
Hey Vance,
Nice to see you back here. Thanks for re-tweeting my post.
You WOULD think that every URL would be recognized by Aweber and counted but as you could see in my video that’s not the case. I mostly use anchor text in my emails that’s why I didn’t pay much attention when every now and then I had zero clicks.
I just figured something went wrong and Aweber didn’t count the link being clicked. It wasn’t until I really needed to know how many clicks I had in a certain email blast I sent out and had zero clicks that I realized there was a problem and I needed to fix it.
I had no idea it was because I wasn’t selecting the URL I had in my text and not inserting the same URL as the destination URL. You get the point better watching the video.
I have a feeling there’s a lot of people out there making the same mistake I was and are just forgetting about it. This business is all about testing and tracking and if you don’t have accurate results you will never be able to if your business profits are up or down.
Later,
Jeff Sargent
AWeber recognizes URLs in messages automatically, the problem you encountered was due to creating a message in HTML vs. plain text. Your email program may make that URL embedded in an HTML document clickable, but for many recipients it’s not. The only way it’s truly a valid link is if you make it a link using the link builder or embedding the “a href” text in the raw HTML. That’s just the nature of HTML. If you pasted that URL into a plain text document it would automatically be recognized. This is the same behavior as if you pasted a URL into the text section of a webpage, your web browser only makes it a link if it has the proper “a href” link properties in the HTML.
Another thing to note, when creating HTML messages I strongly discourage making a raw link like that clickable. You should always make a link clickable by using words that describe what the link is. The problem is, when you have a display URL as “example.com” and then a click tracker changes the link and it actually goes to “tracking-example.com” then most email programing anti spam filters or phishing detectors will flag that email as suspicious.
Hey Tom,
Thanks for the great info in your comment.
Your comment about discouraging against making raw links clickable is an interesting one to say the least. I know I had no idea and I’m willing to bet not many people out there are aware of this. As email marketers we have enough problems with spam filters now and we certainly don’t want to be raising any more flags that our emails may be suspicious and then get tossed into the spam folder.
I know I see more and more emails everyday get thrown into my spam folder from reputable marketers I’ve been receiving emails from for years. Since you left this comment I’ve been checking and most of them are because of using a raw link as the clickable link as opposed to using contextual links.
Just to make sure everyone here understands the difference I will give an example.
Just as I mentioned in the video what I was doing wrong make sure you don’t make the same mistake here. After you type your display url you need to highlight it and then a little window will pop up asking you to enter the destination url.
RAW link: http://sargentmarketing.com/blog/videos/aweber-click-tracking-how-not-to-do-it/
Contextual link:
For more information on how to properly use links in your email marketing you might want to read my blog post on Aweber Click Tracking
I hope everyone gets the point here Tom so we all can stop feeding the spam folders and start getting more emails read by our subscribers.
Thanks,
Jeff Sargent
Hi Jeff,
I already got into the habit of doing that from the start, mainly because I wanted to make sure my links would be clickable for sure in my emails…
I only found out a couple of weeks ago that it didn’t track the links if you didn’t make live, but I actually didn’t expect it to, so I wasn’t surprised by it.. I didn’t want it to track this particular link, and that’s why I didn’t make it live.
But I just learned something very interesting from Tom’s post above, who is from Aweber I see, about turning your links into words to help stop it being filtered as spam… I’ll have to start doing that in my future mails that I set up.
Nice post and video Jeff, I’m sure many people aren’t aware of that factor so it’s good to make people aware of it.
Speak soon,
Paul
Paul Lear´s last blog ..My Goals For 2010
Hey Paul,
Glad to hear from you again.
I know many people aren’t aware of the things said in Tom Kulzer’s comment and that’s why we all have to stick together and pass the word around about stuff as important as this. Now’s the time when I wish I had 1,000 visitors a day to my blog so everyone could learn about this.
I know you’re following what he said because I see you doing it in your emails.
Later,
Jeff Sargent
Great post Jeff,
I wasn’t aware of this so thanks for taking the time to share the info!!
Very interesting point that Tom makes and definitely something I’m going to start doing straight away.
Rob
Rob Bradley´s last blog ..Vegas…
Hey Rob,
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, I’m sure glad Tom Kulzer stopped by and left that comment. Certainly if we should listen to anyone we should be listening to the CEO of Aweber Communications. We just need to get the word out to as many people as we can about what he says here.
Later,
Jeff Sargent
Hey Jeff
You alright mate? sorry I have not been over for a while.
Great video and it outlines yet another thing I didnt know.
There is just so much stuff to learn, plus im not techie so it makes IM just a little more complicated for me.
Well im sure we shall meet soon.
Cheers
Marcus
marcus passey´s last blog ..Las Vegas JAN 2010-Internet Marketing Seminar-Alex Jeffreys-Mike Filsaime & Grey goose Vodka!
Hey Marcus,
Nice of you to stop by. Where have you been hiding?
You see, if you stop by here more often you will learn all kinds of things you didn’t know. lol! No, just kidding Marcus. But the comment left by Tom from Aweber should open a few eyes. I know it opened mine and I’ll be doing my links differently from now on.
You never want to stop learning.
Later,
Jeff Sargent
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for sharing your experience. I wasn’t aware of the difference. Partly because I though you must explicitly attach a link code the a text (even if it’s an URL) when your are working with the HTML format in Aweber. Now I’m aware that this is the way you it have to be done and I can avoid doing the mistake you’ve shown for us.
Great video
Estani
Estani Chapel´s last blog ..List Building With Giveaway Events – 2
Hey Estani,
Thanks for the comment. I don’t have any problem showing mistakes that I’ve made as long as it will help others not to make the same mistake. After all, click tracking is a very important part of our business and if we’re doing it wrong what’s the point.
Glad to be of help.
Later,
Jeff Sargent