Measure Your Marketing

How Does ConversionRuler Work?

ConversionRuler is an easy to install performance tracking tool that gives highly actionable data on any marketing campaign you have set up.

To see an animation of how it works, click here.

Specifically, ConversionRuler is designed to track and report the number of catalog requests, newsletter signups, and orders for any internet marketing campaign you execute, including email newsletters you send, online advertising you buy, partnership arrangements you negotiate, and pay-per-click programs you run.

The code is easy to install. You can get click-through, catalog signup and newsletter signup data by putting a few lines of code on just three pages. To get bottom line information on commerce sales you must paste a few lines of code and pass the information about the order. This is typically achieved by pasting the code on an order confirmation page that has access to the relevant values by the use of Active Server Pages, ColdFusion, PHP, or CGI scripts. It is also possible to use Javascript in some cases.

ConversionRuler records data as follows:

• On a landing page:
  • It looks at the click-through url to see if the visitor should be tracked (i.e., if there is a source parameter in the url) and, if so, it checks to see if the visitor has a cookie. If not, it sets one.
• On a conversion page:
  • It looks to see if the user has a cookie and, if so, links the action (catalog, e-newsletter, order) to the proper campaign and keyword

ConversionRuler basic works for campaigns that have certain parameters in the click-through url. To be accurate, it needs to be installed on every landing page for each maketing campaign.

The basic requirements for the use of our technology are:

1. You must be able to add code to your webpages.
2. To get reporting on the sales generated you must be able to write those order values to our code snippet after the order has been made. This is usually very easy to do, but it does require a level of access to your shopping cart that some websites do not have.

If you have problems installing the code, we can help. We provide integration services. Please contact us for rates.

Is it difficult to set up?

No, not particularly. Conversion Ruler was designed with ease of use in mind.

We have made the service as easy as possible to set up and use and the time required for implementation is less than 1 hour for most webmasters. The exact details will depend on your website, but a typical installation involves the following.

1. You sign up for Conversion Ruler and your account is created.
2. You log in to your account and generate 4 "code snippets"- a landing page snippet, a newsletter signup snippet, a catalog request snippet, and an order confirmation page snippet.
3. You paste the snippets into the pages of your site. Specifically, you paste the "landing page snippet" into the code of each your landing pages (if your site uses a universal include, this can usually be used). You paste the newsletter request snippet onto your newsletter confirmation page, the catalog request snippet on the catalog request confirmation page and, lastly, the order confirmation snippet onto the or Order Receipt page.

At this point you would get reporting on any campaigns that you are running. However, there is an additional step if you want to get more detailed information in your reporting (most clients do).

In order for your Conversion Ruler report to show financial information, i.e. order amounts, order totals and order reference numbers, you must put that information in the snippet on your Order Receipt page. The exact method for doing this depends on the technology you use for your shopping cart, but since the Conversion Ruler is typically on the order receipt page, the method is basically to output the values in the snippet in the same way that you output them in the receipt.

If you need help installing Conversion Ruler on your site, we can help.

If you have a particular installation question, feel free to contact our technical support team.

What does it cost?

ConversionRuler charges based on a subscription fee (starting at $19.99 per month), and then charges additionally for clickthroughs. Note that a clickthrough is not a page view or even the number of unique visitors to your web site.

A clickthrough is only recorded when you specify our landing URL format in your links. This means you can control (to an extent) how much traffic is recorded using ConversionRuler.

For example, this page is considered a clickthrough (and will count as a single clickthrough in ConversionRuler):

http://www.conversionruler.com/?crcat=internal&crsource=cr-faq&same=1

All subsequent page views are not counted as a clickthrough.

Please refer to our Detailed Pricing Page for more information.

How can I use ConversionRuler to track my pay-per-click advertising?

Pay-per-click advertising at places like Overture used to be the best buy in town. We used to buy thousands of choice clicks for a penny a piece, and we didn't have to track anything to know that it was a good buy.

But times have changed. Pay-per-click is no longer anyone's secret and bid prices are COMPETITIVE.

Is it still worth it? Nearly 100,000 ad buyers think so, but you need to be smart. Specifically, you need to understand that successful PPC advertising is about getting precise. You need to figure out ROI on a keyterm-by-keyterm basis. Conversion Ruler is set up to help you figure out what terms to bid on, what you should be willing to pay for each and to improve your pay-per-click advertising over time. Without this information, you are shooting in the dark. You might be paying too much for too little return on some keyterms and missing an important market opportunity with another.

Internet advertising has been heading away from CPM towards pay-per-click for years, and Conversion Ruler was architected with pay-per-click advertising in mind. Specifically, Conversion Ruler is the least expensive, most flexible and most reliable ROI tracking tool on the market for pay-per-click advertisers. The beauty of Conversion Ruler is this: It will track ANY click through on which you place tracking parameters. In other words, you don't need to set up any sort of campaign within Conversion Ruler before collecting data and reporting on it.

You do, however, have to setup your pay-per-click links properly, so that each has the parameters that ConversionRuler is looking for. The only required parameter is "crsource", but you can also use the parameter "crcat" to set a value for the source's category and you can also use the parameter "crkw" to specify a keyword or segment for the link. In the case of an Overture listing on the keyterm "dog toy" you might setup your link to look like this:

http://www.example.com/index.html?crcat=ppc&crsource=over&crkw=dogtoy

The landing page snippet on the page would tag the user and associate any future actions (such as catalog requests or orders) to the category "ppc", source "over" and kw of "dogtoy".

How can I use Conversion Ruler to improve my email program?

Email marketing is all about sending the right message, at the right time, to the right people. Well, how do you know if you are doing so? You need to measure. With Conversion Ruler you can:

• Determine what conversions you can attribute to a particular message.
• Understand what an outbound emailing is worth to your business.
• Determine the impact of new message creative or format.
• Determine how much time and money you should be spending on producing and delivering your emailing.
• Measure whether one list performs better than another.
• Compare subject lines.
• Monitor the impact that increased message frequency has on your bottom line.

How can I track financial information with the order snippet?

To pass financial information you need to be able to populate a couple of variables into the order snippet. This will generally require some coding in the technology that your shopping cart uses.

The cr_track call in your "order snippet" (generated by the Code Generator) should look like this for an order of $199.99 with order number 2369:

cr_track(3,'199.99','2369');

For more details, review our manual.

I use affiliate tracking software to track my marketing. Is this somehow better?

It's a different tool and it is certainly better for some things. The most prominent example is pay-per-click advertising at places like Overture where you might have scores of different placements to track. With affiliate tracking software, you'd have to set up a separate affiliate for each placement - this would take a lot of time. With Conversion Ruler, you don't have to configure anything in order to get reporting on a new campaign. Once the snippets are on your site, they will report on any incoming link that contains a "source" parameter. This makes the reporting on large numbers of listings relatively easy.

But Conversion Ruler is NOT a full-fledged affiliate tracking package. Though it can be used to track the impact of a particular inbound link or marketing partner, it has no functionality for managing the relationship with that partner, i.e. it does not calculate commissions, provide an affiliate interface (for affiliates to get banners and buttons, for example), etc.

I know someone else who could use ConversionRuler. Do you have an incentive program?

We have an affiliate program for businesses and individuals who promote ConversionRuler. Please contact us for terms and a comission schedule.

Can ConversionRuler track offline sales?

Yes, it can. Using our Cross-Code Tracking functionality, you can track catalog orders, 800-number orders, mailto: email contacts, and back-office transactions if you wish.

I am a web marketer with many clients. Do you have a preferred partner plan?

We are eager to talk with you. We have developed Conversion Ruler with people like you in mind. The Pro version, especially, is well suited to empowering professional web marketers with an easy to deploy performance tracking tool with flexibile and powerful site and user management capabilities. We think that you'll like the financial model, too. Please contact us so that we can discuss the possibilities.

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