Learn add tracking codes to your promotions.
When you place advertisements, coupons, or special promotions in a magazine as part of your marketing strategy, you want to put a system in place to track the responses to your ad. Adding a promotional (promo) code to your advertisements helps you track how many responses originate from the magazine ad versus one of your other marketing efforts. Once you compile the response rates, it helps you determine if the magazine advertising is worth doing again or may not be worth the cost.
Instructions
1. Establish a "key" to your promo code system. A promo code is typically a combination of letters and numbers separated by a hyphen. For example, the first two letters of your promo code might stand for the name of the magazine, the second set of letters will represent the product you are promoting, and the third set stands for the date of the magazine ad.
2. Create the promo code. The first two letters of the promo code stand for the magazine in which you're printing the promotion, so choose two letters to stand for the abbreviation of the magazine. For example, if the magazine is Bridal Guide, then you may use the two letter combination BG.
3. Write a hyphen after the two-letter combination.
4. Choose the product code and write it after the hyphen. Choose a two letter combination to describe the product or service the ad promotes. For example, if you are offering a discount on cake toppers in the Bridal Guide ad, then you may choose the two-letter combination CT to stand for cake toppers.
5. Write a hyphen after the two-letter combination that stands for the product or service.
6. Add the date for your promotion after the hyphen. You may run the same ad month after month, so the last four digits that make up the promo code for the magazine ad indicate which month the customer is looking at when they respond to the ad. For example, if the magazine issue is for November 2010, then the four digits may be 1110. You may also wish to replace the issue date with the expiration date for the offer. If the offer expires on November 2010, then you could still use the numbers 1110, but it would stand for the promo's cutoff date. In this example, the complete promo code would be BG-CT-1110.
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