Are We There Yet? 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♂️

How do we know where we are going?

How fast are you getting there?

Do we stay on the same path or change direction?

We have set our goals… We know where we want to end up… We have put some things in place to help us get there… Thats all we need, right?

Let’s compare our business to taking a trip. We know that we are starting at our house… as an example, we will use Birmingham, Alabama. We also know that we want to end up, let’s say…in… Gatlinburg, Tennessee (We Love the Mountains!) It shouldn’t be too hard to get there. According to Google Maps, if we are driving, it will take 4 hr 57 min and it’s 298 miles. Wait, I also see that Google Maps shows an alternate route that will take 5 hr 25 min and it’s 305 miles. From what I can see on the map, it also looks like there might be some construction going on along the way.

We go through our check list… Phone ✔, Camera ✔, Luggage ✔, Kids ✔… and so on… Our luggage is packed, and we are now in our Vehicle, but we are still parked in the Driveway… We have everything we need to make the trip, but the real Journey hasn’t started yet. Granted, all the groundwork is laid and ready to go and that’s where we are.

Now, we pull out of the driveway and head toward our destination. Since we have GPS, Maps, OnStar, and Onboard Navigation in our vehicle, we should now be able to avoid road closures, hazards, and delays… We even have an odometer that can tell us how far we have gone, and with a little math, we should be able to figure out how far we have left to go.

Our Business’, unfortunately, doesn’t have built in Navigation that can automatically change our direction when needed. Mentors and Coaches are a HUGE help because they are ahead of us and have already made the trip. They should be able to give us information on routes to avoid, detours to take, and even tell us about a site or place we may want to check out on the journey. You have the choice to take their advice or not. What about our Business Odometer? How far have we progressed on our journey? Are we still on track to reach our Destination by the time we want to get there?

This is where “Tracking” comes in. Tracking in short tells us how far we have come, what routes are doing well, what routes are just “ok”, and what routes we might want to change. We can also make a pretty good guesstimate about where we are on our journey.

Let’s take emails for example… Emails are either Opened or Not Opened, right? That’s just what we see on the surface, it gets a lot deeper than that. Are you tracking them to see which emails get opened? Does it seem like your 3rd email gets opened a lot more than your 5th? What was your subject line and what did your preheader say? These are just a couple of things that you need to look at when “Tweaking” your emails (This is not to be confused with “Twerking”, which I can assure you, will never be covered in our Blog, just in case you were wondering 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️)

Do you have links in those emails? Which ones have gotten clicked on and which ones have not? Could it be, the link that you thought should have gotten clicked on the most, was in an email that very few people have opened? You could change the Subject Line on emails to see if it makes any difference. The fact is, if people don’t open your emails, they can’t see the value that you are trying to offer them. Tracking what is happening in your business is a MUST.

We have used a couple of different tracking systems. ClickMagick was the first one we used. The affiliate marketing program we were in at the time had its own “Keap” tracking system, but for us to keep a record of our own links, and to track what was happening, we had to associate our own tracking “Tags” to the main tracking links. Even though it did a great job, it was not very convenient to open another program, just to track what was happening with our links. The second one we used was more of a “built in” system inside of Internet Profits. Very convenient, and easy to use. This tracker works by adding your own unique tag at the end, after your affiliate number. An Example would be: “something/something/#####/?????“  The “#####“ would represent your affiliate number, and the “?????” would represent your unique tag. We would use something along the lines of “#####/em3TIE” (this tag would represent a link that was clicked in the 3rd email of our email sequence, and the link lead to “The Iceberg Effect”) We even went a step further, by adding a “1” and “2” at the end, if we had two links in the same email, for the same product. If we used “/em7QSC1” it would stand for… Email #7 Quick Start Challenge First Link. You can get as creative as you want, but it needs to be simple and easy for you to understand. 

I have talked about us using the “Affiliate System”. We already see SEVERAL HUGE advantages that this new program will offer. Let’s say that one of our affiliate offers is being discontinued (It can, does, and will happen) All the links that you have in your emails, that are attached to that one offer, are now dead links 🤮. What do you do? Of course, if you know what links are in what emails, you could open each one and change the link to match your new offer, delete the link totally, or rewrite that email to reflect a different offer. What if you had a “Value” that was attached to a “Field” and the “Field” was what you used in your email as your link…? I’m not sure how many of you use the “[FNAME]” when you’re writing your emails, to pull and ackknowledge your subscribers by their first name, but it follows this same concept. What if I told you with just a couple of clicks, you could change the “Value” of that “Field” and it would reflect that change in EVERY link, in EVERY email, where that “Field” was used…  Wouldn’t that be a Great tool to have?  For NOW, Let’s just say… IT’S ON THE HORIZON!

Harper Says:

I think it’s going to be AWESOME! With the emails that we have in our campaign, just think about how much time that a couple of clicks would save… And REMEMBER, the more detailed you refine your tracking, the better you will become at making informed decisions about the direction you need to take with your Business. We have covered a lot in this Post, and there is one thing left for Grandpa to do…

RAP it UP!