UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING BLOG

I’ve often been asked something like, “We’re sending 100’s of emails as part of our cold calling strategy, how can I see if any of them are resulting in visits to our web site?” Ok, I’m not exactly often asked that question, but somebody did ask it once. But it is a good question that deserves a good answer, instead I’ll give it a so-so answer and hope that we can garner some good comments that will make it a good answer. And so intrepid reader, read on!

A quick and easy answer to the question is to use a different signature or URL in your cold calling emails than you use for your regular emails. For instance my regular signature is:

Regular Email Signature:

Chris Kieff, Director of Internet Marketing

MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
50 Main Street
White Plains, NY 10606
T: 914-251-1500 ex.25
F: 914 997 0636
www.MSCO.com
www.YourMarketingSucks.com
www.YourManagementSucks.com

Cold Calling Email Signature

Chris Kieff, Director of Internet Marketing

MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
50 Main Street
White Plains, NY 10606
T: 914-251-1500 ex.25
F: 914 997 0636
www.MSCO.com/inet

Now, I will just have our webmaster create a copy of the home page in that special “/inet” folder on the web site. Now using ClickTracks our web analytics package, we can track every single click on that link in my emails. Just as an aside- if you aren’t using Click Tracks for web site visitor tracking you have missed the boat. It is by far the most intuitive, helpful, web tracking tool I have ever encountered. And by the way, we can help you get into it very quickly and easily. Contact me for details.

Note: I could create a custom landing page on the site to go along with the emails I’m writing. I’ve made the decision that for these letters I’m writing I don’t need a special landing page, our home page is sufficient for this purpose.

Next in PPC or other forms of online advertising you can easily implement the same strategy. Instead of directing the searcher to your home page, or landing page, create a special copy for each element you want to track. Then use your web analytics to gauge how well it’s working.

There are other techniques such as using query strings and landing pages for achieving the same results. However, for my money this is a simple, easy to implement, technique to make tracking your effectiveness and your ROI. It only takes 5 minutes to make a copy of the landing page or the home page and stick it in a new folder on the web site. Keep the name of the folder short so it’s not too much for people to type if the link in the email is disabled by their security settings.

WARNING- TECHNO BABBLE: For those of you with SEO in mind be sure to label the page with the Robots Meta tag or your Robots.txt file to exclude Google and their friends from thinking you are duplicating content.

And so, my intrepid reader here you are having spent 5 minutes reading this blog instead of doing real work. Didn’t you learn anything when you read “Your Management Sucks?” You should be doing something else right now, not reading stupid blogs!

But for those of you who are guiltless, perhaps reading this after hours at home on the weekend… Here is your payback for the time you’ve spent here- one of the most popular blogs on the net today is Boing Boing. It’s a site that’s hard to describe but easy to enjoy.

Please remember to always look before changing lanes on the information super highway.
Thanks for reading,

Chris Kieff, Internet Guru @ MSCO

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 4:16 pm and is filed under E-Mail Marketing, Online Marketing, Over the LINE, Unconventional Thinking . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.