Hi, I have a question here related to email newsletters and tracking clicks from them to websites and using Google analytics to track the clicks. I have already posted this question in an internet marketing G+ community and I have included the link to that below as some of the responses Ive had to that question have made me even more confused and Id like to know what the community here thinks about it.
Anyway here`s my quesiton:
I have a email subscriber list and newsletter that goes out to them every week, the emaisl are collected from a website related to blogging and freelance writing jobs and its pretty popular and gets about 30 new signups a day. I use Aweber for broadcasting the messages and the stats get better and better each month, this has been going on for over a year now.
In this weekly newsletter I have some PPC text link ads setup with a niche related advertiser, these links are very popular and each week many people click on them. I have just received the Google Analytics report of the number of clicks from the advertiser for April and the number of clicks is down by at least 60% compared to last month but the stats for the number of subs, list opens and clicks are all up compared to last month according to Aweber. Nothing has been changed in the newsletter at all and I cant figure out why this has happened. I have PPC text links (all followed and SEO friendly btw) for this same advertiser on the site too and the performance for them is normal with no real changes, its only the ones in the email newsletter that have this huge drop.
A new theme was put on the site last month but the layout is exactly the same as the old one and the only difference is that this one is mobile responsive, but the sites theme shouldnt have anything to do with what goes on in the newsletter so I have ruled that out. Some people in the question I asked in the other G+ community have said something about Google marking these links as spam but I really dont see how Google comes into pay here.
Im very confused as to why the clicks would be down so much, I guess users could simply just stop clicking them but that would go against the user behaviour for the last year or so...
Here`s the link to my question in the other page btw, I will try and upload some screenshots of the Google Analytics reports here too later
https://plus.google.com/u/0/111471759611886346381/posts/izRZrBJctu8
