Imagine you are walking down the beach and find a nearly perfect shell, both sides still intact. As you hold it in your hands the shell begins to open and you see a beautiful, shining pearl. What an exciting discovery! Now imagine the same excitement when you open your mailbox and find your favorite business has sent you access to a customized website for their products and services. Your very own PURL! (Personalized URL).
What Exactly Is A PURL?
A PURL or Personalized URL is a customized online link, taking customers who receive a direct marketing piece in the mail or via email, to a landing Page created uniquely for them. For example, you can send an email marketing campaign to Sally Smith with a website link featuring her name and feature products and services she has purchased in the past. This kind of digitalized marketing tool customizes marketing content directly to the individual customer. Putting this direct access in your customers’ hands is like walking them through your place of business with all their favorite items on display. It is unique based on their buying patterns, lifestyle activities and purchase history and so on. A PURL helps your business keep track of a customer’s likes and dislikes so you can continue catering your marketing practices to their preferences.
What Are The Benefits Of Using Personalized URLs?
There are many benefits to taking the personal approach to digitalized marketing campaigns using PURLs. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to the personalized URL is the increase in response compared to conventional marketing campaigns. Customer response to a marketing campaign using PURLs is nearly double the response with a traditional mail piece. Surveys show customers appreciate being able to respond using a web link versus having to mail a postcard back in to the company.
Another benefit of using PURLs is the money a business will save on postage. PURLs cut the expense by more than half of what it costs to cover traditional print mail pieces with a postage-paid response card.
Being able to track the purchasing activity of customers is another benefit to using PURLs. When a customer goes to their personal landing page generated by their PURL and begins to look around, make purchases, play video tutorials and more, businesses receive data about the customer in real-time. This kind of quick turn-around makes faster follow-up and future campaign personalization possible.
What Options Do PURLs Offer My Marketing Campaign?
Your business can incorporate the PURL tool into your next marketing campaign in several ways. If you are sending out an email marketing piece, the link to the customer’s unique landing page can be ‘live’ as part of the messaging. All they have to do is click and they are taken to their very own customized page.
If you are sending out promotional cards in the mail, their name and link addresses can be printed on the piece and they simply have to type the web address into their browser and they will be taken to their page. This eliminates the costly return postcard which often gets forgotten, tossed aside or even thrown away.
There are many options for getting optimal results using PURLs. With immediate follow-up, like an automated email, customers are more likely to make the purchase, do business with you or ask for more details. These follow-up calls and emails can include extra savings, referral perks, confirmation of their visit or inquiry or simply a ‘thank you’. All of these options go one step further to increase your business and satisfy your customers.
United Mail wants to help you get the best results from your marketing as possible. If you would like to know more about how we can create a personalized URL campaign for your business, give us a call at (502) 443-1611 today.
By Cricket Hater
