Take a close look at the link below

(but don’t click it yet – I’ll explain)

Here’s the link:

http://morehere.net/go/track/blog-s22

I want you to notice what I’m using (and what you should be).

That link is like my own private research assistant.

It tells me what’s working and what’s not.

For example, take a look at this screen shot from a recent email campaign I did in one of my niche markets…

I sent 5 different emails and posted the same promo on this niche blog.

Each email was almost identical and was sent to the exact same list.  The only variation was the Subject Line.

I was trying to see what subject line would get the most clicks.

Well after the first two emails there was a noticable difference.

The first one got 106 clicks.

The second got 244.

All the others were somewhere in between.

But think about that…

One subject line more than doubled the response!

I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t track the links.

I use these types of tracking links for everything I do.

Email campaigns.

Twitter messages.

Blog Posts.

PPC Ads.

Wherever I post a link, I try to use a tracking link.  It’s the best way to gauge what’s working and what’s not.

Without tracking, you’re flying blind.

You’ll never know exactly where your traffic is coming from and you’ll always be “guessing”  (personally, I like to know).

So the link I gave you above… I’ll know if you click on it.

http://morehere.net/go/track/blog-s22

In fact, I’ll know exactly how many people click that link.

But I want you to take a closer look at that link so I can teach you exactly how I use it…

There are two main parts to pay attention to.

The first, is the part that says “track”.

That’s the code I’m using for this particular link.  You can make that whatever you want.  So if I were tracking a promotion for “dog training”, I might call that “dogtraining”.

For this example I used something easy to remember and reletively short.

Now the second is the “blog-s22″ on the end.  Do you see it?

http://morehere.net/go/track/blog-s22

That part let’s me track different “campaigns”.

So in this case I put “blog-s22″ because I’m posting this on my blog on September 22.

But likewise if I were to add “twitter” on the end, the link would still go to the same place but I would know that those people who clicked the link with “twitter” on the end came from any promotions I did on Twitter.

Make sense?

So instead of having a “generic” tracking link, I can drill right down to see where all my traffic is coming from.

The best part is, the second part of the link can be added on the fly.

You don’t have to login and setup another link.

All you do is just add whatever you want on the end of that link and it will automatically track everything.

It’s pretty slick and it’s dramatically helped me improve my marketing just by observing what marketing materials get the most clicks.

From the example above, do you think I’ll use the second subject line again instead of the first one?

You betcha!

But this was just one of MANY tests that I’ve done.  So you can imagine how quickly your marketing results can improve when you have these types of results in front of you.

The tool I use for all this was created by my friend Jay Jennings.

It’s called Sonic Sneak. (yes that’s a tracking link… I gotta know if you’re clicking it right? )

I bought it when he first released it and he’s since made a number of improvements (the biggest one is making it a web app that sits on your server – which I LOVE!).

The reason that was a BIG improvement vs. the desktop app is because now I can have my staff setup tracking links as well.  They just login to our admin area and away they go.

The bottom line is this…

Start TRACKING!

Every Email.

Every PPC Ad.

Every Twitter Message.

Every Blog Post.

Every Facebook Message.

The more you track, the more you’ll improve your marketing results.

My tool of choice is Sonic Sneak because it’s lightweight, easy to use and VERY affordable  (plus Jay is a REALLY nice guy!).

But whatever you choose, make sure you start tracking.

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