The Only Way To Quickly
Know If An Ad Is Working!

The only way you can be sure that an ad is working is by tracking. This is where direct-mail can be much better than other means of advertising such as television. When you advertise on TV, you can ask the viewer to mention that they saw your ad on TV, but how many times does that really happen? Not very many.

With direct-mail, you can "key" each ad so that you can track its success or failure very quickly and effectively! You can know real soon which ads are doing well.

There are several ways you can "key" to track success. One is with a mailing list. If you are using names from a mailing list called "homeworkers," you can simply put an "HW" in the bottom right corner of the order form. Then, when the order comes in, you can see that it came from the homeworker mailing list. So, if you had the homeworker list and another list called "money-makers," you could track them both by using simple "keyed" codes that are placed on the order form.

Another way to track success using "keys" is with the sales letter. If you are testing different headlines, or testing a different price, etc., you can "key" the order form in some way so that you know which ad that order came from. Say you were testing two headlines. You could have a "#1" for the first headline and a "#2" for the second one. So, when you get more orders with the #2 key, you know that the second headline worked better!

Also, you might be tracking several things at once, and then you will need several numbers or letters. If you are testing several mailing lists, and you send the offers out at various times, you need to track both the time and the mailing list. So, you might have a "key" that looked something like "010297HW." This code means that you mailed the sales material on Jan 2, 1997, and you sent it to the HomeWorkers mailing list.

You should never mail something out without tracking it! You should always be able to tell where your order originated from. You never know when one list or one headline might make you an instant success, so you need to be able to track the order back to see where it came from. If you know where it came from, then you can make more money by offering your product or service to that same group of people who made you money once before!