Yes, those are both very important. Of course someone has to open the email and click to our site. But the real value is realized only when that person takes the desired action once arriving – for example they purchase a CD or a digital download.

To illustrate this point, I invite you to take a look at this case study of two emails that were both pretty effective in driving clicks to an artist’s store page, but the test email designed by Kadlec Consulting delivered significantly higher results from those clicks.

In order to fully show you the power of this concept, I’m going to take actual percentages from an email campaign and apply them to three scenarios of traffic going to the site.

Clicks to the landing page:
100
1,000
10,000

In the actual test, there were two purchase links on the landing page – one for a CD and one for a digital download. To keep the math straight forward, let’s say the CD earns us $10.00 and the digital download earns $7.00.

In the actual case, we looked at how many clicks there were vs. the total amount of emails that were sent to first get a picture of which email was better at driving traffic to the store page. In the case, the difference in clicks was small enough to safely say both emails were equally effective in driving traffic to the store page.**

Where the emails differed was in what happened next:

Control Email: .68% clicked to buy the album
.68% clicked to buy the download

Test email: 4.17% clicked to buy the album
0% clicked for the download

Let’s look at how this plays out in potential revenue gain*:
Control     Test
@100 clicks:      $11.56        $     41.70
@1,1000 clicks: $115.60     $   417
@10,000 clicks: $1,156       $4,170

This comparison shows how an email that connects with fans can deliver four times more revenue, and also shows how that scales. More emails in the database means more clicks to your site.

But what was the secret sauce that went into the test email? The test email presented the artist’s CD to the fan as a benefit by showing how playing that CD could be solution to a problem the band’s demographic would likely experience on a daily basis.

If you’d like to know how Kadlec Consulting can deliver this kind of creative marketing to your campaigns – please <a href=”http://www.jasonkadlec.com/category/contact/”>Click Here</a> to contact me.

*Here is the breakdown of the math:
Control:
100 * .68%= .68 * $10 album = $6.8
100 * .68%= .68 * $7 download = $4.76
Total = $11.56

Test:
100 * 4.17% = 4.17 * $10 = $41.70

(warning this gets nerdy from here on out…)

**The actual open rates in campaigns vary not just by how appealing your subject line is but also by how your list was collected and how you treat your list over time.

In this test here were the actual open rates:

Control email: Clicks / Total emails sent = 5%
Test email:  Clicks / Total emails sent = 4%

Given the size of the test set, a difference of 1% was not statistically significant.

A future case study will look at how a Kadlec Consulting client had these rates over 20%!

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First – did you read the post on making your free download tab? If not, read that  first.

Even if you don’t use Topspin the steps to make a custom tab using FBML  tab are required for you to get the gift – and they are fully explained in the free download post here.

Ready? Go to your page. Click “Edit Page” then Edit your FBML application. Now, paste the code below into the same window you put in your FBML’d Topspin widget.

This code will create an automatic “invite your friends” call to action so anyone who sees that free download (or whatever you want there). This makes it  easy for people to invite some friends on the spot.:

In the code below look out for the PARTS IN ALL CAPS. Especially the URL part:

You’re sending peopleFBML to the wall of your fan page after they complete sending the invite, or click “skip.”

The Full URL of my facebook page is:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/dreamtempo/77553442285?ref=search&sid=660368930.1457835607..1

so in the code below, I’ll replace YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE URL with

http://facebook.com/pages/dreamtempo/77553442285?ref=search&sid=660368930.1457835607..1

Here is the FBML:

<fb:request-form

action=”YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE URL”

method=”POST”

invite=”true”

type=”Join YOUR PAGE”

content=”Join the YOUR PAGE Facebook Page!

<fb:req-choice url=’YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE URL’ label=’Join’ />

“>

<fb:multi-friend-selector

showborder=”false”

actiontext=”Invite your friends to join YOUR PAGE.”

exclude_ids=”<c:out value=’${appUserFriends}’ />”

max=”20″ />

</fb:request-form>

DOWNLOAD THE CODE CLICK HERE

** note – you’ll want to paste into plain text…if the quotes ” or ‘ look funny it may break when pasted into the FBML code window.

If you did it right, it should look like it does in this screen shot below — also check out the extra call to action to be sure people join up when hitting this page:

Here is the gift for all! A free download!!

This one is from me – I do produce some music. The style is dreamtempo…a little more laid back than downtempo.

If you like the sounds you can head over to http://dreamtempo.com and get the whole album for just $1.

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Using Topspin’s email for media widget is a great way to convert Facebook fans into email addresses. This is important to do because most bands I’ve worked with find that an email blast is far more effective way to get clicks than sending a message to Facebook fans.

Here are three ways to get the email for media widget rocking on your Facebook page.

Method 1: Paste the short link

The first method will work for your profile page, fan page and group page. It also has the advantage of being very simple and of showing up in the feeds of people who are following your pages / are friends with you via profile.

Start by going to your email for media widget, and click on the “Share” link, then click on the Facebook Icon. Log into Facebook if you’re not logged in already.

You should now see this screen:

If you just want to post the widget to your profile wall, then just type in your message and click the Share button. But it is more likely that you want to post this to the Wall of your Fan page or Group page.

To do that, just copy the short URL from this screen. In this example the short URL is:

http://t.opsp.in/CBuE

Now exit this page and go to your Facebook fan page and just paste your shortened URL into a Wall post. Facebook will just pull the widget in:

I said easy right?

The only problem with this method is that eventually the Wall post will get pushed down the page and will not be easy to see. So how about getting the email for media permanently on your Fan page wall?

Method 2: Use My Stuff from Gigya

This method is also really easy and requires no coding. The first step is to search for the application My Stuff from Gigya. If you are logged into Facebook, then try clicking here to jump right to their app page.

Now click the link that says “Add to my Page” just below the button Go to Application. The link you want is right at the bottom of this screenshot:

Select the page you want to add in the screen that pops up by clicking the button “Add to Page.” This will close the overlay window and return you to the Gigya app page.

So, now go to your Page and click “Edit Page.” It is the first link below your image on the top left side of the page:On the next page you’ll now see My Stuff in the list of applications. click on “Edit.”

You should now see a box that says: Add Code

Open another browser tab/ window so you can go back to your email for media widget. This time click the <share> button and click the button that says “Copy embed.”

Now you can return to Facebook and paste the widget’s embed code into the Gigya Add Code box.

Your embed code should look something like this:

<div>

<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” height=”80″ width=”300″ id=”TSWidget2469″ data=”http://cdn.topspin.net/widgets/email2/swf/TSEmailMediaWidget.swf?timestamp=1261071230″ bgColor=”#000000″>

<param value=”always” name=”allowScriptAccess”/>

<param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true”/>

<param name=”quality” value=”high”/>

<param name=”movie” value=”http://cdn.topspin.net/widgets/email2/swf/TSEmailMediaWidget.swf?timestamp=1261071230″/>

<param name=”flashvars” value=”linkColor=0xf2fafb&amp;linkOverColor=0×31b4c8&amp;baseColor=0×2c2c2c&amp;fontColor=0xb2e3ea&amp;pid=VWLDVASQ&amp;widget_id=http://cdn.topspin.net/api/v1/artist/30/email_for_media/2469?timestamp=1261071230&amp;theme=white”/>

</object>

</div>

Now click the “Add to profile” button. Gigya will take 30 seconds or so to “convert” Topsin’s embed code into a form that will look good on your wall.

Once it has finished, you should see the widget. Above the widget should be a link to “Edit Description.” Click that link and edit the description:

Now here comes the only sort of tricky part. The widget has now been added to your “Boxes” tab. But it is not yet on your home page wall.

To get it on your wall, go back to your Fan page and click on the tab “Boxes.” If you don’t see the tab, look for the right most tab that has >> on it and click on the >>.  Your boxes tab may be hiding in there.

Once you’re on your boxes tab, you’ll see “My Stuff” with your widget there.

Now all you need to do is click on the pencil icon at the upper right corner and then click “Move to Wall Tab”

And you’re done!

Method 3: Add Freedownload tab using FBML

Method’s 1 and 2 are great as you don’t have to mess with any code and they work fast. But I think the drawback is that with Method 1, you need to keep reposting to your wall and in Method 2, the widget usually ends up so low on the page you need to scroll to see it.

So I like to also make a tab at the top that screams “Free Download” Or maybe something even more enticing: “Bliss Awaits You Here” since we can name the tab whatever we want.

The last warning before we start up is that you need to have a place where you can upload an image. Your blog would work. I’ve never tried with Flickr / Photobucket etc – I just upload the image either via the blog or just by FTP into a folder on my web server.

Step 1 is to go get the Static FBML application and add to your page just as you did with the Gigya.

Step 2 is to paste your widget embed code onto a text file so you can work on it before finally pasting it into your FBML application.

Step 3 is to change your widget embed code from this:

<div>

<object type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” height=”80″ width=”300″ id=”TSWidget2469″ data=”http://cdn.topspin.net/widgets/email2/swf/TSEmailMediaWidget.swf?timestamp=1261071230″ bgColor=”#000000″>

<param value=”always” name=”allowScriptAccess”/>

<param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true”/>

<param name=”quality” value=”high”/>

<param name=”movie” value=”http://cdn.topspin.net/widgets/email2/swf/TSEmailMediaWidget.swf?timestamp=1261071230″/>

<param name=”flashvars” value=”linkColor=0xf2fafb&amp;linkOverColor=0×31b4c8&amp;baseColor=0×2c2c2c&amp;fontColor=0xb2e3ea&amp;pid=VWLDVASQ&amp;widget_id=http://cdn.topspin.net/api/v1/artist/30/email_for_media/2469?timestamp=1261071230&amp;theme=white”/>

</object>

</div>

To this:

<fb:swf swfbgcolor=”000000″ flashvars=”widget_id=http://cdn.topspin.net/api/v1/artist/30/email_for_media/2469?timestamp=1261071230&amp;theme=black&amp;highlightColor=0xFF0099″swfsrc=’http://cdn.topspin.net/widgets/email2/swf/TSEmailMediaWidget.swf’ imgsrc=’http://dreamtempo.com/images/widget.png‘ width=’300′ height=’80′>

The easiest way to do that is to copy the code above, then switch out

flashvars=”widget_id=http://cdn.topspin.net/api/v1/artist/30/email_for_media/2469?timestamp=1261071230″ with the widget_id from your embed code. It’s highlighted in red above.

The next thing you need to switch out is the location of your image. I highlighted that in green above.

Also note that if you use a widget with an image in it, you will need to change the width and height according to the width and height in your original embed code. Those values are highlighted in purple above.

Since this is going to be appearing on its own tab, I like to also include some additional text, like how a fan can post the free download to their wall.

The facebook Share icon doesn’t quite work as you’d want it to since Facebook is messing up the function a little, so just offer the shortened URL (Method 1) as the way to share.

Your final FBML tab should look something like this. Note that I’ve added some  <div> </div> tags around the widget and around the text. That is important to do otherwise it may not show up.

Here is my final code pasted into the FBML app:

<div>

Click the image below to activate the free download.

<fb:swf swfbgcolor=”000000″ flashvars=”widget_id=http://cdn.topspin.net/api/v1/artist/30/email_for_media/2469?timestamp=1261071230&amp;theme=black&amplinkColor=0xf2fafb&amp;baseColor=0×2c2c2c&amp;fontColor=0xb2e3ea”swfsrc=’http://cdn.topspin.net/widgets/email2/swf/TSEmailMediaWidget.swf’ imgsrc=’http://dreamtempo.com/img/widget.png’ width=’300′ height=’80′>

</div>

<div>

<br><br><br>

<p>

To post this free download to your wall – just paste this link into your wall post or status update:<br><br>

http://t.opsp.in/CBuE

</p>

</div>

Here is a screenshot of how it looks before I click the publish button:

Now we’re ALMOST done. The last step is to get the FBML Box/Application to show up in my tabs.

If you don’t have a lot of tabs it may show up for you already. But on my Fan page, I needed to click the tab with the + on it, then select my newly created free music bliss tab:

Once I’ve clicked on Free Music Bliss HERE the tab is added to my main Facebook page, but as the last tab on the right.

To move it over, I just click on it and drag it to the left. Facebook requires that Wall and Info are the first two tabs so now it is the third tab.

So here is what it looks like once the user has clicked the tab:

Let me know via comments if you have any trouble with any of these methods. I’d also love to hear how many fans you’re able to convert into email addresses.

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First, I’ll give you the prize, then we’ll talk about a few ways to deploy the contest.

THE PRIZE:

The prize is to immortalize one or more  of your fans forever by naming a piece of art after them. OK if your song is forgotten your fan may only reach demi-god status, but tell your fans the prize is immortality via art.

If you wanted to, you could name a song after a fan, or even write a song using the name of a fan. But that could be a little tough, so what about a remix?

The normal remix competition is to invite fans to put their own spin on one of your tracks. This works well because you could get a new version of your song for free. Pretty cool….if you already have a ton of fans because how many total fans will you need to be sure at least a handful will be able to make a decent remix worth rebroadcasting?

Ya, alot of fans.

So here is my angle. Just make your own remix. Make an acoustic version of a song you’ve already written and recorded. A live version. Whatever. Keep it simple. Now call it the “Fan Name Here” version.

Like: “My Awesome Song (Live for Jason Kadlec Version)”

Once you announce the winner – go ahead and give that song away, post a video of it on YouTube, or even put it up on iTunes and sell it. The benefit to you will really be in how you deploy the contest.

HOW TO DEPLOY THE CONTEST

I like Twitter as a way of deploying contests because Twitter can spread the message quickly and Twitter doesn’t “trap” links…meaning if you click the link, you don’t get auto redirected to an annoying “are you sure you want to leave” page.

So it works like this – you have a page on your site that you’d like people to go to. I’d make it a page with a free download if you haven’t already done *everything* to acquire as many emails as you can.

Make sure fans have to give you their email in order to get the free download. Topspin has a great Email for Media widget to do this, but MM Forms- a free plugin for Wordpress could set up a “good enough” version.

Now, on the page with the free download, below where the fan is going to put in their email, put your contest wording:

Thanks for getting the free download! Now, tell your friends–they get a free download from your recommendation and you could be IMMORTALIZED in art!

We’ll name a remix of this song after YOU. All you need to do is CLICK THIS and post a link to this free download to twitter.

Or copy and paste this message to Twitter: I love “Awesome Song” free download is at “Bit.ly”

We will select one person between now and the end of the week to win. When it is time to select the winner, we’re going to pick the most recent post…so tweet this often to improve your chances!

The winner will be announced on Twitter – so be sure to follow us: @ourtwitterhandle to see if you or one of your friends is immortalized!

….or some variation of this.

Also repeat the contest call to action and links in a follow up email, and or on the page that delivers the free download. For those of you who use Topspin, this means knowing how to use the email.php file included in “The_Pill.”

If you were to use MM Forms, just put the text for the contest in the email that has the link to download the track.

SECRET!

Here is a secret about posting links to Twitter…you can hyper link to twitter AND default in the tweet by putting the following after the twitter link: /home?status=your message here”

So a complete twitter link would look like this: <a href=”twitter.com/home?status=I love Awesome Song – get it here for free http://bitl.ly”>Click here to become immortal</a>

If you put that whole thing into the HTML editor (if you are using a blog software) and NOT the visual editor, then it will just look like this:  Click here to become immortal

CONTEST VARIATION:

Well if you think you’ve gotten every last email you can, or you’ve already run a free download contest and don’t have another free download, you *could* forget about Twitter and just say that someone who buys your record directly from your site will be the lucky winner. Make it the 500th or 1000th buyer or something. Even if you don’t sell 500…you could always make it up.

BIG DISCLAIMER!!!!!!

I’m not a lawyer! Contests are probably governed by laws that most likely vary state to state. If you try this or any contest you have now been warned. You might need to pay off  your government (I mean secure a license) to allow you to do a contest or sweepstakes. You may need to hire one of those guys who talks really fast and can write very very very small fine print in order to run any kind of contest. And you should *always* hire a lawyer before doing *anything* to make sure you or anything you are doing is legal.

OK, so now you can’t sue me if the man comes calling.

Have fun making one (or more) of your fans immortal!

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But I couldn’t help trying to improve it to make it great. The one thing it lacked was that it did not lack for information. It was all in there. Every last thing you could possibly tell someone about what was going on last month / this month.

To be totally honest with you (and with the artist should he read this post) is that I didn’t read the whole email. Why? It’s not because I’m not a fan, in fact his music is quite good. It was because his email looked like way too much work to read.

It was so long that just I read the first paragraph, tried to skim the rest and then moved to the next task of my day. Unless the point was just to read the first paragraph, then I don’t think the email succeeded in accomplishing its objective with me.

I’m sure mega fans who line up around the block to see their favorite artist would read every last word. But if that is the case, then I’m sure they would do this as well:

• They’d take a hook and click it.

So the email doesn’t need to be targeted to just your super fans. Instead you can broaden the appeal of your email with these two simple tricks.

Easy trick 1: Make a hook and link it

The first easy thing you can do is the hook link. Want to know more? Click here….

(that’s an example….it’s not a link) But if you’ve read this far you kinda wanted to click there right?

So here’s the deal, focus your email on one main thing. Take everything else and put it into a blog post. Write a good lead sentence that ends with “Click Here.” and link those words to that post where now you can fill in allllll that other info that most people would not have read in your email anyway.

Your super fans will click and read it. And because “curiosity killed the cat” you may actually hook more normally passive readers into it as well. They won’t tune out all that info when it looks to them like your email is a short novel.

And you will Track the Link won’t you?

Easy trick 2 Put WIIFM in your email!

The other super easy trick is to put WIIFM in there. “What’s In It For Me.” One of my clients and I bet which email subject line would get more opens and more click throughs. The looser did not have the word YOU in the subject line. The winner DID have a subject line with the word YOU in it.

Re-write those emails and see if you can take out every “I” and “we.” Find out how to write in the 2nd person. ( I /we is 1st person, they/them is 3rd person).

Do YOU want a topic written about something specific? It’s just a comment away. Leave a comment below and I’ll hook you up with some free info if I can.

If you want to help your friends out, why not click the Tweet this link icon below and share this blog post with them?

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The other day I had a great email exchange with a friend and former colleague of mine, Thomas Grogan of Grogan Social Scene. Then I added a bunch of posts to the Topspin Green Room about Wordpress for artist websites.

So I thought this week’s post could cover some basic tools that you may want to get a hold of. These are nice and FREE! tools as well.

Start with Wordpress. It’s free and it does make a nice way to create a way to manage content on your site without having to go into the HTML all the time. A Wordpress powered site doesn’t need to be a blog. Check out my latest project:

http://www.subswara.com

to see what I mean. I’ll dive into some Wordpress tutorials in the future…RSS the blog to hear about it or demand it in the comments! Or request another post if tools for building websites bores the hell out of you!!

OK! So to have Wordpress, you also need a server (and a domain name of course). Bluehost, Mediatemple and GoDaddy offer various hosting, domain registering packages as well as “one click” wordpress install.

Once you have a website ready for wordpress, you’ll need a theme. Or you may want to build your own theme from the ground up. I recommend starting with a simple theme that uses the Grid 960 CSS framework.

Quick diversion: What is HTML and CSS?

HTML is like the inside of your house. CSS is like the dressing on the outside. Not really…but if you don’t know what these two things are that’s a good place to start.

Sites are built out of blocks — eithter divs or tables, along with smaller components like headers, paragraphs and so on. Each one can have it’s own “style.” For example, on this website – the subject line of each blog post has the same style. They are all the same font, color height etc.

It would be a waste of time to have to put in the code to define that each and every time. That’s where CSS comes in. The HTML says “This is the headline of the Blog Post” then the CSS fills in – ok make it this tall, this color this font etc.

If I want to have other places use the same type of headline, I just create a headline “class.” For example, the titles of Pages or sections can all have the same style. I’ll just use the same class and assign it in the CSS.

If this is starting to make sense…then I highly recommend using the tool I use most.

The Best FREE Tool EVER!

Type “How do I _______” into google. Where the blank is “Use CSS” or “Make a static page my home page for Wordpress” or … or….

Bring out the GIMP!

Another FREE Tool you will want for building your website is GIMP. If you already own or “own” Photoshop then you’re all set. But if not then GIMP is an open source version that will let you make GIFs and PNGs with transparent backgrounds. KEY for making nice looking logos and graphics and getting some things into Fonts that are non web readable.

I’ve just found the open source version of Illustrator as well…it’s called Inkscape. If you are on a Mac, you’ll need an extra piece of free software called X-11. This let’s you save the hassle of booting into Windows to use these apps.

One word of caution though…the version I’m on of X-11, you use the PC CTRL key where you’d normally use the Mac Apple/Command key. Like CTL + C for Copy instead of Command + C.

The other tool that you’ll want that’s free is Google Analytics. Make sure you install that and get down with all the fresh data there.

So there you go. Do some digging on CSS and Floating Divs (trust me just search how do I float a DIV) and you’ll learn fast. Then check out http://960.gs…you can then stop worrying about floating divs…just make your divs add to 12 or 16 (depending on your big container). It’s still good to know what DIVS are and how to float them though!

Wordpress How-to’s

And for Wordpress magick…the codex is pretty amazing as is. Want to just pull up a custom field to place a buy button on your site?

Check out WP Recipes.
Want to create surveys, polls or even auto respond with a link to download your free song (if you’re not running Topspin) I like this plugin: MM-Forms.

Ok ! That’s the basic tools set. Go get em. Google search how to use em and have fun! Or tune in again as I will do some screen casts or similar with some how-to’s specific to Topspin and or artist sites.

Things got busy…hence the less than organized post. Thanks for reading/ understanding!

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Kudos to Social Signal for opening up their process to the world. As a four year “veteran” in the space, it is a big step for them to share their strategy for helping clients create and deploy social media strategies and marketing campaigns.

If you’re not new to social media marketing, their first planning doc that I’ve linked to may seem a little corporate or made for those who are pretty clueless about the space. However that’s not a bad reminder that many people are still not really familiar with the difference between a browser’s book mark and a social bookmarking site for example.

Their approach also looks to be geared towards engaging a whole department or team rather than just a few key decision makers…but kind of fun nonetheless to imagine these guys giving chocolate pieces to their clients who participate in the “jam session.”

I look forward to watching this story evolve however as they go from the overview and high level concepts into the specifics of execution (if they do indeed go there).

In the meantime, I encourage you to check it out. I’m sharing the link to a potential “competitor,” because like Social Signal, I believe that the more information there is available about Social Media, the more of a field will be created. The bigger the field, the more business there is to be done as well as the more best practices that will evolve that help us do our jobs better.

In addition, a senior colleague at Landor Associates (my first professional gig) once said that Landor would be hired and would maintain its customers with the quality of the execution of their ideas and the quality of their relationships with their clients. It was not necessarily the ideas themselves that held the key to winning and keeping a client.

My favorite source of social media inspiration has been Copyblogger. I highly recommend them as well. And of course should you decide that you want to dial your social media strategy in, buy you don’t have the time to fully DIY – I’d be happy to help.

Contact Jason Kadlec here.

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You know why? Because tracking response to email is a sure fire way to make more money.

Aside from that, it’s also a way to test how creative you can be in writing your copy, placing links, figuring out what to put in the email and what to put on the page that the link goes to.

Bring on the basics

To go on the email tracking expedition, you’ll need to:

1. Set up Google Analytics on your site. If you haven’t done this, do it NOW!
2. Bookmark this URL or just remember to Google Search URL Tool
3. Have an HTML email program – it’s part of the Topspin software but you can also use Mail Chimp, Constant Contact or Fanbridge just to name a few.
4. A little extra creativity!

The basics of what we are about to do is called “split testing.” Most HTML email programs – including Topspin’s will give you information like how many people opened the email, how many people clicked on links.

When you look at your Google Analytics, you see totals for how many visitors came to your site, how many pages they viewed and if you are using Topspin and you have Ecommerce Tracking enabled in your Google Analytics, you can also see what percentage of visitors purchased something and on average how much per purchase are you making.

So far so good! So let’s say you send an email out to your fans and there is a link to yoursite.com. When you check google analytics, you’ll probably see a spike in traffic on the day of and day after your email went out. So the spike is from people who got your email and then clicked the link.

But you won’t be able to track those people as separate from people who just went to your site. To Google Analytics, a person who clicks on a link you sent in an email looks just like a person who just typed your website address and went there directly.

This is why Google also offers the ability to create what I called “tagged links.” If you create a tagged link, then Google Analytics is able to separate those people from the general traffic to your site.

This means that now, you can see more exactly how much of that traffic spike was from your email AND you can see how much revenue can be attributed to the people you emailed.

Here is how to set it up:

Tag it!

Go to this URL where Google offers a simple tool to build a tagged link – but you may want to keep these instructions open as I’m going to walk you through what is going on when you are setting up your Tagged link.

So we’re out to track people who are clicking on links we put into our email. Let’s say the email is promoting our new album.

So We are the source of the promotion, and we’re promoting our album and we’re sending out our promotion via email.

Google requires at least these three bits of information: the Source the Medium and the Campaign.

We’re the Source, Email is the medium and the Campaign is the album promotion.

So in the tool, put “us” or your band name in the field labeled “Source” put “Email” into the field for Medium and put the name of your album into the “Campaign” field.

Now generate URL. You should get something like this:

http://mysite.com/?utm_source=us&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=albumname

where mysite.com would be your website address.

Now- let’s put it to use!

Here is where you go in Google Analtyics:

White belt: You just put the same link in every email. Like hey our new record is out you can listen here. Where the word “Here” is linked like http://mysite.com/?utm_source=us&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=albumname

Brown Belt: If you have more than one link in your email, you give them separate tags. For example you hyper link an Image in your email in addition to the word “here.”  What we’re doing is introducing another Variable — the source, medium and campaign are the same but now we want to know what happens to Image clickers vs. Text clickers.

Go to the URL tool and now generate two URLs – for the text, put the word text into the Content field. In the other put Image.

Your URL now looks like this:

http://mysite.com/?utm_source=us&utm_medium=email&utm_content=text&utm_campaign=albumname

and

http://mysite.com/?utm_source=us&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Image&utm_campaign=albumname

In Google Analytics you can compare data from the two. More on that below….

Black Belt: Carve your email list into two or three lists. Now write different emails to each list.

Maybe one email is long, the other is short. Maybe one is all text the other is just a huge graphic. Try lots of different things. Use the content parameter to let yourself know that someone has clicked on email A versus email B. You’re tracking not just how many clicks, but you’re really looking for what people do once they get on your site.

Your long email could have every link to your site like this:

http://mysite.com/?utm_source=us&utm_medium=email&utm_content=longemail&utm_campaign=albumname

Your short email would use a link like this:

http://mysite.com/?utm_source=us&utm_medium=email&utm_content=shortemail&utm_campaign=albumname

Ninja: Take that information and DO SOMETHING with it! If email A got more clicks than email B, but the people who clicked from email A didn’t buy as much. Then you need to come up with a theory as to why that is. Once you have a hypothesis of why it is, you create an experiment. Change something about the email, or the page you send a person to when the click. Use the tracking links to discover if your hypothesis was right. Did your change increase the behavior you are looking for?

Here is the making money part: If the behavior you are after is more revenue per visitor, then that is what you are testing for.

*note* In addition to installing Google Aanlytics you also need to enable E-Commerce tracking in your Analytics account. Just below the Google Logo, you’ll see a link for “Analytics Settings.” Click that, then click “Edit” on the next screen – it will be all the way on the right, middle of the screen in the column labeled “actions.”

Once you’ve done that, you go to the Traffic area in your analytics:

Click on Traffic Sources and from the sub-menu under Traffic Sources click “Campaigns”.

Now see that you have a little drop down just above where all your campaigns are listed that lets you drill down into things like Medium, and Content:

Then you can select for Campaign, or Medium or Content and see the traffic.

Now click onto the ECommerce tab:

Be sure you’re not just looking for volume (ie number of sales). Your volume could very well depend on timing. More people will click through and be excited the day you announce your record vs. a few days later. You want to look for ratios.

OF the people who click What Percentage do this or that? The percentage shows you how efficient you are. There of course is a whole lot more to get into, but those will be other blog posts… the feedburner subscription at the top right is a good option so you don’t miss out.

If you are becoming more and more efficient then the next time you have volume you’ll be able to get more out of it. That is where the more dollars comes from.

I skipped to the bottom, can you just wrap this up in a few words?

Yes! Install Google Analytics. When you send out email messages (or any online promotion) that has links back to your site – tag the links with the URL Tool (google search URL TOOL).

Establish some kind of baseline. How responsive are people to your emails? To your other links?

Create tests to improve your baseline. Test them using the links. Iterate. Improve more. Have fun, be creative. Try stuff that seems crazy…then check your analytics to see if you are crazy like a fox, or just crazy.

Happy hunting!

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I have a theory of why I think this is. It’s based off of my own personal experience and so I’m not claiming any data here- but here goes:

Basically it comes down to that I feel more protective of my inbox than I do of my Facebook/Twitter / etc. I also check my email box more frequently than I check my Twitter stream. (although I do have a “Junk” email box that I sometimes use when I don’t really want to give my email).

Furthermore, I also think that the private nature of email has an influence. If I sign up to someone’s email list, it is not necessarily public knowledge. It’s between me, and what I subscribed to.

Twitter, Facebook and other social media are built to publicize / update the world at large that I’m “following” or participating.

I believe this creates a different or additional motive for tweeting, following, or becoming a fan of something on facebook. In other words, my motive to become a “fan” of something on facebook is more to show the public my affiliation to something cultural rather than my desire to use facebook as a channel to receive information.

Last, I think I’m more habituated to actually reading my emails – so the message has a better chance to seep in, and therefore offers the marketer a better chance to get my click. Emails can also carry a better mix of images and text than a facebook update or tweet can carry. Also, email has the power of the subject to hook my attention, then the content of the email to win me over to clicking.

So to recap:

1. since email is personal and private it takes more of a reason to make me want to subscribe to something via email

2. email can be more rich in terms of how it can deliver information and it’s more likely to be read vs. missed like a tweet or other communication channel

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Tech tip:

Use twitalyzer to find out which of your followers has the most followers. Those are the people you should thank / retweet / respond to first. The olllllld 80/20 rule here.

Quick diversion- the 80/20 rule was discovered a long, long time ago in a Germany far far away where a botanist (or other scientist guy) realized that 20% of his pea plants were delivering 80% of his peas.

This guy then goes on to discover that it’s not just peas but most things in business and in life. 80% of results come from 20% of the effort.

Not saying that you should diss or ignore everyone else- just saying that if time is limited (and you should try and limit time spent social media-ing) then be sure that you at least start off that time scratching the backs of / stoking the egos of the people that can actually drive traffic.

I also like that Twitalyzer has some extra scoring. It’s not just followers that count. I could have way more followers by now if I didn’t clear out the spam robot accounts!

Idea:

Here is an idea you can use to still respond to all the other people who @reply to you, DM you or in otherways try to start a 1:1 conversation with you.

Create a humorous auto reply.

I’m not aware of a technology that will auto post the reply, but at least you can just bang through a bunch of DM’s with the same message:

Hey- thanks for the DM/@reply/etc. I’m super neck deep in ____________ (insert album recording, rehearsing, touring). To share the love- ____ (insert bit.ly/shortened URL here). Thanks – ______ robot. (blank is you/ your band name etc).

The key is to let folks know it’s a “robot” because it is likely going to sound a little canned. I think that some reply is better than no reply as long as you are honest and hopefully a little humorous that you are using an canned response.

Take it one step further by creating a series of these and cycle through different ones for different people. Who knows, maybe you’ll get more requests for 1:1 interaction just so people can see if there are other funny messages they can get.

Add some data by using different bit.ly links- track which style of message has which link and test which style of message is getting better click through (if any).

Y’all know about Google Analytics right? If not…I’ll make that a future blog post.

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