Marketing with a PURL Campaign - Picture this: you just came home from work and grab your mail on the way into your house. There’s a thank-you note from your cousin’s wedding, a magazine your spouse likes to read, and an ad for a company you’ve never heard of. Normally, you’d just throw it out with the other junk mail, BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT. You see your name in the heading, promising a better solution to a lingering problem you've been trying to solve.
You keep reading, and see a URL at the bottom that has your name in it. So you log on, and see a personalized webpage on the company’s site with all the facts you need to get a quote or buy their product, ALL DESIGNED FOR YOU.
Does this sound too good to be true? Ads like this containing PURLs, or Personal Uniform Resource Locator, are becoming more popular every day. PURLs are personalized URLs, or web addresses, that can be utilized in direct mail campaigns to better connect with your audience directly.
Personalizing Advertising - An "ad campaign" is a company trying to tell customers about their products, and campaigns that use personal touches like PURLs or Variable Data Printing change an ad campaign into more of a conversation with the customers by addressing and involving their interests.
People love to be catered to and addressed directly. It shows respect and allows a greater trust to form between people. Customizing a campaign to tailor to each person gives you a much better chance of making a personal connection with each customer. That personal connection is more likely to convert into a sale or action than a cold call, and those people are much more likely to remember and visit a site with their name in it.
Better Customer Engagement Tracking - A PURL campaign is unique in that you can easily track the level of response you are receiving from potential customers. With traditional mail campaigns, you may only be able to gauge response from your ROI. With a PURL campaign, you can also track those that have used your site or opened their PURL, where they went on your site and more. Even if the campaign is unsuccessful, you can gain valuable insight by seeing where you’re losing customers along the way and adjust accordingly.
A PURL campaign matches the high ROI of variable data printing with the cutting edge demographic and consumer studies that have come with better technology. Whereas email campaigns are often lost to spam filters and basic ad campaigns muted in the sea of advertisements we see every day; a PURL campaign is sure to stick out in a prospective customers’ head. PURL campaigns have been shown to have a higher response and action rate as well as a high ROI. Coupling a PURL campaign with a variable data printing mailer is a great way to fully maximize your ROI and engage customers and clients in the process.