Article by: Bruno Klampfl

1) What is the problem with tracking squeeze page subscribers?

The problem with tracking squeeze page subscribers is that you need unique squeeze page for every advertising program where you advertise your squeeze pages. Why? Because each subscribe form (squeeze page) has unique tracking field. That field is hidden and you can only populate it in form making wizard. So every subscriber from that form (squeeze page) will have the same tracking ID, no matter from which advertising program that subscriber came from.

And if you use some tracking program, that doesn't really help either. Why? Because in order to track conversions, you must add hidden image on your thank you page. So, you must have different thank you pages (with different tracking images). That also means that you must have different subscription forms, because each subscription form redirects to only one thank you page. Also, you can use tracker redirects for thank you pages instead of tracking images. In that case you can have only one thank you page, but you still need different subscription forms (squeeze pages), because you must enter different tracking redirect URL in every subscription form. So, in both cases you need several different squeeze pages, with different subscription forms (unique for every advertising program where you advertise).

2) One squeeze page to track them all!

If you don't host your squeeze pages yourself and you can't edit source code, then there is no help (only to start hosting your squeeze pages yourself). But if you do host your squeeze pages yourself, then we can continue. So, your squeeze page URL is something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/somedirectory/squeezepage.html or maybe even .../squeezepage.php

For example: http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeSoloAds.php

If your squeeze page is in HTML (.html) then change extension to .php (your page will work the same). Then open your squeeze page with some editor (even Windows Notepad will do). Now find your subscription form code in there (look for <form with your editor search). If your mailing list or autoresponder service adds hidden tracking field to subscription form then we must find it (between <form> and </form> tags). For example GetResponse adds this to the code:

<input type="hidden" name="custom_ref" id="custom_ref" value="SOMETHING" />

SOMETHING is the value that you entered during form creation. If you didn't enter anything, then this field will be empty (value="").

Now, if your mailing list or autoresponder service doesn't add tracking field to your form during creation, we must add one. Go to your mailing list or autoresponder service and create one regular custom form field (like you have one for subscriber e-mail address and one for subscriber name). This field will show you where did your subscribers came from, so you can name it 'Tracker' or similar. Now complete form creation and add the code to your squeeze page. This new form field will look something like this:

<input type="text" name="SOME FIELD ID" value="" />

I don't know what name value will this new field have, you must figure it out (you can compare standard form code with this new form code that contains new custom field). Also, it can have more attributes like size="SOME NUMBER", id="SOMETHING", but we only need type and value. First change the value of type attribute from text to hidden. That way subscribers won't be able to see it or enter something in it. If there is no attribute value, just add value="" in there.

At this point we have hidden tracking field in our code (either it came with the form or we just created it). Now we must customize value attribute of this <input> tag.

Change value="" into value="<?php echo($_GET["FROM"]); ?>" .

So our two examples now look like this:

<input type="hidden" name="custom_ref" id="custom_ref" value="<?php echo($_GET["FROM"]); ?>" />

<input type="hidden" name="SOME FIELD ID" value="<?php echo($_GET["FROM"]); ?>" />

This concludes subscription form (squeeze page) modifications.

3) We are ready to track squeeze page subscribers!

Now we will take our example squeeze page: http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeSoloAds.php

and we will add this at the end: ?FROM=SomeAdvertisingSite

Finally: http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeSoloAds.php?FROM=SomeAdvertisingSite

That modifications that we made to subscription form now takes SomeAdvertisingSite value from URL and adds it to our hidden tracking field in squeeze page subscription form. You can replace this value with advertising program name, for example TrafficSwarm or EasyHits4U or any other advertising program that you use. This value will be added to you subscriber info and it will show you where your subscriber came from. So you would add:

http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeSoloAds.php?FROM=TrafficSwarm to TrafficSwarm

http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeSoloAds.php?FROM=EasyHits4U to EasyHits4U

You can use different tracker name than FROM, but limit your name to letters (Aa), numbers (123) and underscore (_). Also, make sure that there isn't some other <input> tag (in the form code) with attribute name which is the same that you want to use. If you use different tracker name in URL, you must use the same value in hidden tracker field (in subscription form code). Example:

http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeSoloAds.php?MyTracker=SomeAdvertisingSite

<input type="hidden" name="custom_ref" id="custom_ref" value="<?php echo($_GET["MyTracker"]); ?>" />

<input type="hidden" name="SOME FIELD ID" value="<?php echo($_GET["MyTracker"]); ?>" />

That's it! You can now track your subscribers with a single squeeze page. Just change ?FROM= value each time that you add squeeze page URL to some advertising program.

Example of tracking squeeze pages.

4) Even more! Tracking individual campaigns.

If you buy traffic, you might want to know which campaign (banner ad, text ad, ...) produced each subscriber. Using the same principle you can create one more custom subscription field to represent campaign ID. Example:

<input type="hidden" name="SOME OTHER FIELD ID" value="<?php echo($_GET["CampaignID"]); ?>" />

Then you can use:

http://splash-pages.co.cc/presents/FreeSoloAds.php?FROM=SomeAdvertisingSite&CampaignID=BannerDec4

This would show you that subscriber came from banner ad campaign that you bought on December 4th.

Be careful with URL signs: ? (comes behind .php extension and it means that there are variables in URL) and & (it separates variables in URL).

Happy tracking!