Is Anyone Reading Your Text Version?
Email Template Design - Justin Premick - May 29th, 2007 - PermalinkBy now, you’ve read a number of posts in this space about Text and HTML, their respective pros and cons and what to bear in mind when writing each.
The one thing you haven’t heard anything about is how to tell which version your subscribers are viewing.
Today, I’d like to show you a way to approximate the reach and effectiveness of your text messages.
“But… I’m Flying Blind In Plain Text!”
I know what you’re thinking: you can’t track how many times your plain text messages are opened!
And you’re right. You can only track opens for HTML messages. No matter how hard we wish, images just don’t work in plain text messages, and so that’s not going to get us anywhere.
But, you have the ability to track something else that can help you get a general idea of how many people are reading your text messages…
Clickthroughs.
Good old Click Tracking — it works in plain text and HTML and it’s easy to implement. And used creatively, it’ll give you an approximation of how many people are reading your plain text messages.
So How Do I Do It?
Start by creating your Text/HTML message as you always do.
Turn on Click Tracking:
Take a look at the link/s you have in each version of your message. Chances are, you’re sending people to the exact same URL in each version of your message.
Instead, you need to make the URL/s unique, so that you can tell who’s clicking on the plain text one, and who’s clicking on the HTML one.
Don’t Worry, There’s No Need to Create a New Page
That would be a pain, wouldn’t it? The good news is, this is a lot easier than creating a new page.
All you have to do is “tag” your URLs with something like #text or #html so that when you track clicks, you can easily see which one was clicked more, even if everyone ends up on the same page.
This is just like sending people to a specific anchor (location) on your page, except that since you probably don’t have an anchor called text or html on the page, your readers’ web browsers will show the full page starting at the top.
For example, here’s the clickthrough report for a recent broadcast:
Notice how the circled URLs are the same except for the tags at the end? That lets me see how many people clicked on that link in the text message, and how many clicked on the links in the HTML message.
Cool… But How Does This Approximate Opens?
Look at your historical open and clickthrough rates. Calculate your clicks-to-opens rate. This gives you an idea of how many people, out of those who opened your message, clicked on the links in the message.
You can do this as the # of clicks divided by the # of opens, or vice versa. For our purposes it’s probably easier to use # of opens divided by # of clicks:
Clicks-to-Opens Rate = # of Opens / # of Clicks
If you’ve written your text message to be similar to your HTML one, your clicks-to-opens rate should be ROUGHLY the same (remember, this is an approximation, not an exact science).
And your subject lines are the same for everyone regardless of whether they read your message as text or HTML, so you should be getting about the same percentage of text readers to open your message.
You know your clicks-to-opens rate, and you know how many text clicks you’re getting. Multiply the two together and you’ll have an approximation of how many opens your text message got.
A Couple Things to Keep in Mind
First, it’s good to remember that this tactic is not science, it’s an approximation. And your results can be affected by a lot of things, so take what you learn with a grain of salt.
Some advice:
The quality of your text copy vs. your HTML copy can skew your results. The more consistent that copy is, the more useful your findings will be. If you have a lot of links in your messages, don’t just take the overall click through numbers when calculating clicks-to-opens. Use the clickthrough numbers on the “primary” link/s in each message. Clickthroughs on ancillary links don’t tell you what you need to know here. Make sure the tags you use don’t match actual live anchors that you have on your pages. If you’re not sure what this means, you’re probably OK. Be consistent in the tags you use. It’ll help you read your reports faster.
One Other Way You Can Use This Tactic
You can test different link locations or presentations within a message. You’ll notice in the above report that we also tracked how many clicks were made on the AWeber logo in the HTML message, as well as the newspaper graphic that was included.
Can you think of any other ways you might use this?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 7:58 am and is filed under Email Template Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment response, trackback from your own site, or permalink.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Hi,
This article seems to say that typing "#html" or #text" at the end of a link to reveal who’s clicking text- or HTML-version links will not create an unclickable link. I’d think it would, but your sample chart shows that the link works.
If that’s true, I’ll try this testing. Anything that provides me with more insight into my newsletter’s effectiveness is a worthwhile process.
Thanks
May 30th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Shirley,
Links that include #(something) at the end typically are used to take someone to a location further down on your page (for example, go to the top of this page, then add #comments to the end of the URL, and you’ll be taken to the start of comments on this post).
However, if you don’t have an anchor called "text" or "html" or whatever you put at the end of the URL, you’ll simply start off at the top of the page.
May 30th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Interesting idea. Are people generally noticing that their HTML or text gets a better CTR? I havent tested HTML versions yet.
May 31st, 2007 at 6:47 am
The alternative method is to use specific pages that don’t exist in your emails and use a Redirect 301 in the htaccess file to send them to the page that does exist.
You can then look at the visits to the non existant pages in the server log.
It also has the advantage of giving much cleaner URL’s in the emails.
May 31st, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Thanks. really Good info. I am so used to using HTML that I do not know if there is anything special to put in text to make a URL click-through. Can you advise?
Thanks!
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Ditto Joe’s question, yet appreciate the education from your other posts.
Thanks to all.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:36 am
Hi I am slowly coming to grips with all this new material. I am optimistic that with your team help things will work out for us! Thanking you. Om mani pe-me hung!
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Justin, Thanks for your help. For my newsletter, the Do Not Lose Money Newsletter, I have wrestled with these issues of tracking and text vs html. Thanks for explaining great ways to track response. Tracking is so critical. Tracking your customers’ response is tracking their actual behavior. And actual behavior is a great predictor of future behavior like purchasing or not purchasing.
June 12th, 2007 at 4:12 am
Thanks for sharing this. Very simple. Never thought of adding #xxx tag at the back to track those clicks. I will use it not just for email campaign but also with other campaign as well.
June 12th, 2007 at 8:22 am
[…] Using the tracking service your email service provides, you can track which version of the link in the message is performing best to learn a bit more about your subscribers and their habits, as well as whether or not they’re reading your plain text message. […]