Double Your Marketing Effectiveness With PURLs

A personalized URL (PURL) is a unique and personalized Web address created especially for each recipient of your direct mail or email marketing campaign.

Usually, you'll see a PURL in one of these two ways:
joesmith.mysite.com
mysite.com/joe.smith

When "Joe" (in this example), goes to the Internet and types in his "PURL" he be taken to a website that is personalized to him. At the same time, Joe's activity is tracked, and you can be instantly notified of his visit and any information he submits through the website.

In order for a PURL campaign to be successful, it must get three things right:
1) The List
2) The Offer
3) The Creative

When these three elements are successfully used with a PURL, you to will see your marketing results double! Lets take a look at each element individually.

THE LIST

Your mailing list is the single most important part of a successful PURL campaign. The perfect mailing lists are the lists that pull in the mind-blowing response rates you read about in the case studies. You know... the 30-40% response rates. These response rates do exist, I've personally seen them, and they all have one very important thing in common - the perfect list.

Your list should have 2 qualities:

1) The recipients know who the marketer is.
2) The recipients have given the marketer permission to advertise to them.

As you can imagine, these lists are typically created in-house, and take months, if not years to gather. The time and effort you put into creating your list, will be directly correlated to the success of your PURL Campaign.

Here are some ideas you can use to create your perfect list:

- Collect the contact information of customers at the time of purchase.
- Create a contest that entices customers to enter their information for a chance to win.
- Request feedback from customers and invite them to leave their contact information.
- Give your online visitors something of value in exchange for their contact information.

THE OFFER

The offer is the second most important part of a marketing campaign. People are always looking for an offer they can't refuse. There are two crucial aspects to get right in your offer:

1) A clear and simple message.
2) A compelling reason to respond.

The "clear and simple part is easy to get right." Keep it short and sweet - no more than 20 words long.

The "compelling reason to respond" requires a bit more thought. Brainstorm offers that you think would really grab the attention and be relevant for your audience. Add urgency to the offer with an expiration date, purchase limit, limited quantity available, or last chance notice. You want to make it a no-brainer to take action. If you are asking for too much information from the visitor, in exchange for something that is insignificant, your offer will be insignificant.

It's also a good idea for your offer should to be relevant to your product/service. Otherwise you'll end up with a bunch of un-qualified leads that are just after that free iPad, and don't give a lick about what your have to offer!

Finally, take advantage of buzzwords in your offer. "Free" is the most powerful word when, used appropriately, increases the effectiveness of your offer. Most people would prefer a free item, rather than one drastically reduced in price. Other buzzwords hint towards a steal, bargain, or a first chance at something.

THE CREATIVE

Here is the thing with creative - I have seen both full color, black & white, html emails, and plain text-emails all pull in amazing results. It is up to you to determine what is most appropriate for your audience, and the only way to find that out is by testing.

So I'm not going to talk about the colors, fonts, size, dimensions or layout options you have. Instead let's focus on the 3 crucial aspects of design that apply in all cases; Coherence, Aesthetics, and Focal Point.

Coherence

Coherency is crucial to establish confidence with the visitor. If your landing page design is different from that of your direct mail or email, there will be a disconnect in the visitor's mind. Disconnects are a bad thing! Visitors may think that they are in the wrong place, or worse, lose confidence in your brand. Either way, they will immediately click the back button.

Aesthetics

Make sure there are no unexpected line breaks, jumbled items, broken images, etc. It's important to check all browsers to make sure the page shows as expected everywhere. It's like have a misspelt word - the professionalism goes right out the window and your visitors are hitting the back button.

Focal Point

The focal point is where you eye is immediately drawn to when viewing the page. Without reading the visitor should be able to know the action requested of them. Creating a focal point it easy - use big bold colors (without being overly tacky). Please, please don't use little animated images on the landing page to draw attention! That is just annoying.

The PURL is not a magical pill that will turn your marketing campaign into an overnight success. Placing a PURL on a poorly executed campaign will still result in a poorly executed campaign. But when the PURL is added to a campaign that effective uses The List, The Offer, and The Creative, the results can be a home run.