My Digital Marketing Blog » PURLs

Use Direct Mail to Build Your e-Mail List

Kevin T — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:06:00 +0000

In many of today’s corporations, marketing channels such as e-mail, direct mail and other traditional media often exist in separate silos with each channel operating independently, sometimes even in conflict with the others. Some organizations do manage to maintain a consistent message across channels, but the individual channels often do little to support common goals.

1. Give prospects something to look forward to. A personalized e-mail sent before your drop creates anticipation by alerting your target audience to a direct mail offer on the way. Your prospects know to look for your piece and are more likely to recognize it when it arrives.

2. Provide another look, another chance and another response channel. With limited time offers, an e-mail sent after your drop can provide a brief reminder about your direct mail offer and the deadline, as well as give prospects a fast, easy way to respond.

42 percent of direct mail recipients prefer to respond online.

3. Put personalized power into response rates. A recent Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study revealed that 42 percent of direct mail recipients prefer to respond online. Instead of a one-size-fits-all mail piece and business reply card, use customized direct mail to invite prospects to visit a personal URL, or PURL, such as www.johndoe.greatvendor.com. PURLs provide a personalized introduction to your company and a unique marketing message for each prospect.

4. Gather PURLs of wisdom. While visiting “their” PURL site, prospects can also be encouraged to complete a survey revealing their individual preferences, wants and needs or to opt-in for e-mail communications. This data allows marketers to craft the more precisely targeted offers and personalized communications that can lift your response rates in both traditional direct mail and e-mail marketing.

Then use e-mail to optimise your direct mail budget

A coordinated effort using direct mail and e-mail could help trim mailing budgets. Send an inexpensive postcard to alert clients or prospects that personalized offers and information are available and can be accessed electronically. Clients can then log in to a secure personal URL (PURL) to retrieve information or elect to receive the message by secure e-mail. Most will appreciate being given the choice too, knowing its a ‘greener’ option..

P.S. Want to lower your company billing costs? Read our article on the topic here

Shocking 1700% Revenue Increase

Kevin T — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:25:23 +0000

One of the most exciting personalised marketing campaigns I’ve read about is Taser International’s PURL campaign utilising personalised Print, Email and Website.

They provide us some real-world numbers of how cost-effective new PURL marketing can be compared with traditional methods of sales lead generation.

In a large campaign over many months, they expertly compared the effectiveness of traditional print advertising effort against a cross-media PURL Marketing system.

Results summary:

Traditional Print Advertising – Total responses = 37.
Cost per lead: $2,520.95
PURL marketing – Leads = 1399 (26% av. response rate).
Average cost per lead $128.08

These figures leave most marketers speechless. And for the client, it provided a healthy 1,700% revenue increase.

We’ve discovered here how a combined cross-media campaign using personalised print, email and purl website landing page, together with it’s expert tracking and salesperson follow-up, is more effective (200 times more in this case), than the traditional way of sales and marketing.

Source article by Heidi Tolliver Nigro

Introducing PURLs – The New Treasure

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:50:39 +0000

What may be hotter than Web 2.0? Personalised URLs (PURLs).

42% prefer to respond to a promotion online – Let’s make it more inviting and easier for them

The concept has have been around for several years, but only now with improved tools is it exploding and taking one-to-one marketing and lead generation to new heights. It encourages the growing numbers of people who prefer to respond to a promotion online, regardless of whether they heard about it from a friend, in an email, text, direct mail piece or personalised brochure.

PURLs are purpose-built web ‘landing pages’ with a strong call to action. They’re rapidly becoming the gems of the net. Key benefits:

Up to 10x higher click-through rates

Ensures a much lower cost per sales lead

Integrates Direct Mail, eMail & Mobile with the net

Provides real-time statistics about consumer behavior

PURLs don’t come in gift wrapped boxes or sold individually. They are most often sent as part of a direct mail piece or in an email. In this age of variable digital printing and mail merge, each recipient can receive an individual PURL in a company bill, sales letter, newsletter, postcard or other printed material. It is also easy to generate dynamic emails with a link to each person’s PURL in the message.

Still confused?

This quick 5 minute video below by small business marketing coach David Frey introduces purl technology very well. He also details some of the amazing results he and others have already achieved. To use his own words “it blends the power of personalisation, direct mail and the internet into one seamless marketing campaign”

The uses of PURLs are limited only by your imagination.

David’s example, although impressive, is still the most basic of purl options. There’s numerous ways to put purl campaigns together using print, email, even mobile phones! The uses of PURLs are limited only by your imagination. They can be used to obtain email addresses, to update or verify consumer information, for surveys, customer satisfaction feedback, special offers, coupons, as triggers for certain events such as a reminders to renew a subscription and more… One aspect which I think is a key part of the strength of personalised URLs is its ability to link and track marketing efforts across multiple media.

Taking off in the US Market

According to a recent US survey – 87% of corporate marketers are going to leverage PURL campaigns as part of their marketing initiatives in 2009! According to the survey:

Multichannel integration, analytics, and data gathering capabilities ultimately drive more targeted, cost-efficient marketing programs"
87% of marketers intend to use digital solutions such as PURLS in ’09 to link direct mail to other marketing channels." –Jupiter Research Feb ’09

We can learn much from and take heart from the US experience. To setup your own mail/email + purl campaign email zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek