Rene Gnam's Direct Mail Workshop book has an excellent report on pg. 38 of response totals broken out by state across three lists. Automation Station (and several other on-line tools, including Google AdSense) have response tracking. Software must exist ...

Is there software that I can use to track and report on my response rates across campaigns and lists?

Since I use the same copy both on-line and offline, I type tracking results into a spread sheet then use a pivot table to get the combined response rates across different lists or time periods. This is very useful, but very time consuming.

All I've found on-line is for tracking e-mail campaigns, but I'm doing e-mail, direct mail, fax, and tracking the results of live sales people.

My house lists are in Goldmine, it's great because I have so many address tools, but e-mail lists are in phpList and auto-responders somewhere else. Has anyone else solved these problems?

What off-the-shelf products are available or are people using? I'm not interested in custom software because I want something lots of people are already using.

Sincerely,

Justin

Ps. I noticed the trade rags don't have any software reviews, is this something that isn't available? Any advice is welcome?

Pps. If you'll tell me what you're using, I'll share with you my excel workbook that works pretty good for client projects, complete with ratio's and costs.

Didn't get many comments from my original post ... maybe I should have asked, "How do you track copy and response?" (As mentioned, I've got some really ugly spreadsheets, Goldmine database, and my accounting system.)

Anyway, here are some tools I've found, but haven't yet tried because I'm like a deer in the headlights when it comes to getting the right package. Especially when what I've got works okay (but not well), however so crippled it is.

• These three seem to each only do one part ...
  1. Price It Right Every time
  2. Power Marketing Analyzer
  3. Response Doubler Software
  
  Currently look at but will require custom programing to connect to my core database ...
  4. Direct Response Marketing Software, Great copy & campaign tracking, plus costs related to products.
  
  An old standard, but doesn't relate copy & response to orders...
  5. Mail Order Manager (MOM), Don't really see any copy tracking, but great management of everything else. I'd still need customized reporting for RFM measures.
  
  6. Ecometry, Looks like it may be like MOM, but didn't have any samples of reports to see if it let's me track copy and response.
  
  7. MarketingPilot, Looks like it does everything but is way out of my budget, especially if I'm going to use it in multiple companies.

In the e-mail marketing world there are some great tracking tools, but interesting how that medium has advanced so fast -- It's really useful to have a tool that tracks across mediums, instead of just one.

Well, I hope this has loosened up your lips -- there are enough professional copywriters here to be using copy and tracking tools other than spreadsheets. So, How do you track copy and response?

Sincerely,

Justin

I use Assoc Trac

it's our affiliate software

BUT we can also use it to track ads. As it places on cookie on the potential client's computer that last for 1095 days.

VERY valuable to know which ads are pullings.

Yes, on-line it looks like a great tool to know what's pulling, but I actually take many orders off-line. It doesn't look like it has copy tracking or phone based order entry.

I have used Commission Junction for my affiliate program, it worked well for tracking ads, but again didn't support tracking source keys from off-line advertising.

Another tool in the on-line world with affiliate, order entry, and basic ad tracking for on-line is 1 Shopping Cart (which I've also looked at, but didn't support the offline copy and campaign tracking that I needed.)

Thanks for the input.

Best,

Justin

Here is a brief update on my copy-tracking software search. It's hard to believe so few are using direct response software to track their test results; this means very few are testing or many are not getting to this level of complexity.

I'm reviewing Mail Order Manager (MOM), they have a SOHO edition that starts at $995 but with the modules I need it will run about $3,590. This product works well with Quickbooks, but has some drawbacks:

• -- Only high-level tracking of a campaign. The product is really designed for catalogs. So if you send a campaign with a sales letter, lift letter, order card, ..., it's difficult to code sources to know which item brought in the order. (I tend to include complete order information on each piece, then try different combinations of pieces in split campaigns.)
  
  -- Limit access to system away from the office. On-line systems let you access them anywhere you have an Internet connection. For access to MOM on the road, I'll need to use NT terminal server and a virtual private connection into my office. This may be okay but may add another $2,700 to my start-up costs if I want multiple user access.
  
  -- Need custom software to build drill down reports. The reporting features of MOM are 1,000 times better than what I'm getting in Excel in terms of speed. But, I can't drill down like a pivot table. With a reporting tool, I might be able to get around this because of their open database structure (xbase or SQL).

Looked at Ecometry until I found out an installation starts at $80,000 which is a bit out of my budget. Sure, If I was running a million dollar a month mail order company, but otherwise the sticker shock got me.

If you're not already testing, tracking, and doing off-line mailings, please join me in this quest to find an entry level package that includes DR copy tracking features. Like the first day you found Quickbooks or another accounting package, you're not really in business unless you have the tools to make decisions like one.

Best,

Justin