Now, you can simply use a naked link (For example, http://www.gurucs.com is a naked link) when posting your website URL in the emails that you send out, but when you look at your web traffic analytic program (such as Webalizer, Awstats, or Google Analytics) you may notice a traffic spike from a recent series of email pieces that you sent out and not know which email generated most click-thru to your site.

There is a quick and dirty way to hack your URL to embed link tracking information.

It’s really quite simple.  All you have to is insert a “?token=value” at the end of your URL.

For example, if I were to be promoting the $5 web hosting service by sending out multiple emails and I want to track which email generates the most response (click-thru rate), I would simple tag my URL with an arbitrary token and value in my first email:

http://www.gurucs.com/services/web-hosting/5-dollar-web-hosting/?email=1st

In my second email, I could use this link to track my open rate:

http://www.gurucs.com/services/web-hosting/5-dollar-web-hosting/?email=2nd

and so on…

This trick and also be used in other situations where you know the referrer links will most likely be coming from the same source (in this case they will come from email websites such as Yahoo, Gmail, etc.) and you need a way to differentiate the traffic source.

You may also tag on additional query string variables by separating the token/value pair with & sign such as:

http://www.gurucs.com/services/web-hosting/5-dollar-web-hosting/?source=email&provider=gmail

http://www.gurucs.com/services/web-hosting/5-dollar-web-hosting/?source=email&provider=yahoo

In the above example I could hypothetically be emailing the same email to 2 lists.  One with recipients who are using Gmail, one with recipients using Yahoo and these URLs will let me track the click-thru rate for each list.

Note for Awstats:

The URLWithQuery configuration must be turned on for query string for this to work:

URLWithQuery

Keep or remove the query string to the URL in the statistics for individual
pages. This is primarily used to differentiate between the URLs of dynamic
pages. If set to 1, mypage.html?id=x and mypage.html?id=y are counted as two
different pages.
Warning, when set to 1, memory required to run AWStats is dramatically
increased if you have a lot of changing URLs (for example URLs with a random
id inside). Such web sites should not set this option to 1 or use seriously
the next parameter URLWithQueryWithoutFollowingParameters.
Possible values:
0 – URLs are cleaned from the query string (ie: “/mypage.html”)
1 – Full URL with query string is used (ie: “/mypage.html?p=x&q=y”)

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Both services provide you with web-based autoresponder and email marketing service.   Both are very close in price (just under $20/month and cheaper per month if you purchase a 1-year contract).  Both offer very high deliverability.

Let’s talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of each service.

The Good

Aweber definitely has a nicer user interface. Links and buttons are laid out in an intuitive manner. It provides a very flexible and sensible web form creator.

In terms of web form creation, Aweber’s web form creator allows you to create in-line, pop-up, pop-under, exit pop-up, pop-over, and lightbox hover type of forms, whereas GetResponse only has in-line, and pop-up form types. Awebber definitely wins over Getreponse in this feature.

However, to make up for the shortcoming in the web form types, GetReponse does provide an API for you to subscribe your visitors via scripting (ie. you could automatically subscribe an user who also registers to your forum).

In terms of autoresponder features, both offer blog broadcast set up (ie. notify subscriber by email whenever you make a new post to your blog). However, in preset autoresponder series, GetResponse allows subscribers to advance to the next email in the autoresponder series. This feature could be useful if you want to allow your subscribers to advance to the next piece of information without having the users wait for your emails.

Something that Aweber lacks but exclusive to GetResponse is that you can actually purchase email leads via co-registration path. Email leads run from 32¢ to 45¢ per email and are not incentivized nor re-sold.

The Bad

Aweber starts at $19/month, whereas GetResponse starts at $17.95/month. Both gives you up to 500 subscribers for that price. The bad thing is that as you gain more subscribers, your monthly fee will go up as well.

To eliminate unnecessary fee, you will need to periodically filter your list, get rid of emails that have unsubscribed (yes, Aweber counts those against you).

The Ugly

For each of the mailing list in Aweber you are able to upload a suppression list (a list of emails address that have previously opted-out), whereas with GetResponse this is not possible.

In most cases you wouldn’t need a suppression list (since your list comprises of people who have opted-in voluntarily), but if you are doing any type of bulk-email campaigns such as emailing CPA offers to your list, CPA networks will offer you a suppresion list that you should load into your mailing list.

But, if you are not doing bulk-email marketing, then both Aweber and GetResponse should do just fine for your normal autoresponder and/or email newsletter marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

We actually use both services for various applications and websites.  But, if we have to choose just one service, then we like Aweber over GetResponse due to the ease of use, and the fact that it has nicer looking email templates.

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