My Optin rate is weird

Just got this email from an Information Marketing guru:

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Subject: My Optin rate is weird

Here's what I see over the last couple of days:

Monday - 19% opt-in rate
Tuesday - 21%
Wednesday - 21%
Thursday - 16%
Friday (today) - 7%

I have not changed anything since Tuesday so it's not the text, the form or anything else that I handle. Obviously, it's unlikely that the traffic shifted so much that the opt-in rate dropped from 21% to 7%.

So what else is it? Any ideas?

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The problem with looking at global day-by-day stats is that the numbers can be very misleading.

When it comes to tracking, you want to have as much granularity as possible. You want to track -everything-

If you're not tracking everything, the numbers don't mean much.

Consider the example below. A screenshot from Software Projects Affiliate Management system that shows a breakdown of sales, signups, conversions and cancellations, by affiliate, for one of our clients:



Do you see that last affiliate on the list?

His traffic is really lousy. 0.23% conversion rate and 72% cancellation rate! Yikes

Whenever this affiliate is doing a promotion, the daily conversion rate and opt-in rate greatly suffers.

That's why you should be tracking everything. A few pointers:

1. Track everything on an hourly basis. Day by day is misleading

2. Always look at the last 30 days and the same month of last year (if you have it), when comparing numbers

3. When tracking optins and conversions, track by source. You don't want to mingle the results of affiliate1 / affiliate2 or emailcampaign1 / emailcampaign2.