PURLs - Not Just a Fashion Accessory
You may be too young to remember a time when people posted “No
Solicitors Allowed” signs on their front doors. If so, try to remember the
last time you answered a phone call marked “private” or “unknown.” And
how often do you click on an e-mail from an unknown sender? Door-to-
door salespeople, telemarketers, and spammers have largely gone to
the wayside due to the National Do Not Call Registry and today’s more
sophisticated spam filters—not to mention today’s more sophisticated
customers. The reason is simple: people do not welcome unsolicited sales
pitches.
Enter personalized marketing solutions. The larger companies in certain
industries such as credit, automobile, and banking have been doing it
for years; think of all those credit cards you’ve received in the mail with
your name already on them. By marketing directly to prospects with
personalized information such as identity or job title, these companies
have been able to more than double their response rates. But small- and
medium-sized companies do not always have the budgets to deploy
these types of campaigns. To help bridge this gap, Web-based marketing
tools called PURLs, or personalized URLs, are now available. With this
innovative solution, small- and medium-sized companies can now
deploy promotions and campaigns and enjoy the same results as their
larger counterparts.
This white paper will examine what a PURL is, how it can be applied, and
the results that PURLs can produce for B2B marketers and businesses of
all sizes.
What is a PURL
Stated simply, a PURL is a personalized URL. A PURL is a URL
created with customer data, such as identity. For example, a PURL
could be www. nameofcompany.customername.com or contain other
personalized information based on the name of the promotion or the
target’s identity, demographics, and other profile details derived from
the customer profile. When a recipient accesses their own PURL, they
will be taken directly to a Web page that describes a specific offer or
promotion in greater detail. In many cases, this Web page will prompt
the user for more information or take the recipient to an online ordering
page. Subsequent communications with the user can be personalized
based on this information supplied by the customer.
PURL technology is one of the latest tools in Web-based marketing.
PURLs are often used in conjunction with direct mail to boost response
rates and provide better reporting methods. More and more companies
are shifting from a traditional marketing mix of radio, television, and
print as marketing budgets dwindle and companies are being asked (or
forced, as is the case in the current economic environment) to do more
with less. Also, traditional marketing campaigns such as direct mail are
difficult to track. Companies may see a rise in business after a direct
mail campaign but are not able to track specific segments or channels to
better direct their efforts and improve conversions.
With PURL technology, companies can track a customer’s activity in real
time. This information can be used to tailor future communications with
the customer to ensure a more personalized and relevant experience,
thereby generating more qualified leads and increasing sales. And
because marketers know instantly when a prospect enters a PURL,
marketers can collect qualified leads and craft subsequent, one-on-one
communications with this prospect in real time with relevant data.
Additional content on each PURL such as age, income, geographic
location, survey results, or answers to targeted questions is driven by the
customer.
Every link that a customer clicks on provides more information to
the marketer; it enhances the database profile on the customer being
marketed to. But marketers should be aware of asking for too much, too
soon. Research shows a dramatic increase in Web form abandonment
rates between forms that have six questions and those that have seven.i The
more steps required to make a sale, the lower the results. PURLs help
decrease the amount of steps that lead to sales, resulting in better ROI.
Companies of all sizes and industries are turning to Web-based
marketing solutions such as email and PURLs to increase their ROI.
These solutions can be deployed without IT involvement, saving
tremendous costs in time and money. With the PURL solution offered
by OnDialog, companies can quickly and easily create marketing
communications published in HTML format that is prepopulated with
user information. It is imperative to communicate with your customers
via multiple channels. A PURL delivers timely, relevant, one-to-one
communication that connects on a personal level and supplies datadriven
content to prospects.
PURLs Can Be a Marketer’s Best Friend
Traditional marketing approaches represent higher costs and less
effective results. To combat this, companies are turning to integrated
marketing solutions that include Web-based tools such as PURLs to take
their companies to the next level. PURLs are primarily used to promote
products, increase sales, work in tandem with direct mail, create a “call
to action,” and provide a strong online response channel.
It’s a well-known fact that approximately 43% of customers prefer to
respond to a direct mail piece online.ii But one of the biggest mistakes
a company can make is sending this prospect to a home page. By using
PURLs, marketers can create an instant connection that begins with a
personalized URL and continues with prepopulated forms that contain
data supplied by the user.
PURLs present a powerful way to cut costs and drastically improve
response rates and conversions. But what kind of results can companies
expect from this Web-based solution? Centex Homes, a Dallas-based
home building company, is a prime example of a company who uses
PURLs to its advantage. Centex is one of the leading companies in its
sector and has grown consistently since it was founded in 1950. But
recently the company decided that enormous budget cuts were in order.
To be specific, Centex’s marketing executives needed to trim their overall
ad budget by nearly 70%.
Centex was marketing to 11 different segments. Not knowing exactly
how each segment was responding to their various marketing efforts left
the company in the dark. After seeing the industry shift to Web-based
solutions, Centex decided to integrate email marketing, landing pages,
and PURL technology into its marketing mix. After deploying a PURL
online campaign, Centex saw its response rates jump 3 to 5 times higher.
They were also able to trim their annual ad budget from $7 million to $2
million—realizing their goal of a 70% budget cut. Before implementing
PURL-based campaigns, Centex was unable to directly track responses
or provide timely information to its sales force. Armed with powerful
new Web-based solutions, Centex not only has improved its ability
to instantly track online responses but is now able to capture relevant
information about recipients, which leads to more qualified leads and
sales.
The Results and Benefits of PURLs
By now we can start to see the tremendous benefits of using PURL
technology in an integrated marketing campaign. For example, PURLs
allow companies to deliver relevant content to customers, which in turn
increases customer interaction. Customers today demand personalized
information; their online experience with you needs to be personal.
PURLs also help to generate qualified leads, which leads to increased
conversions (by up to 40%) and increased customer loyalty. It pays to
build relationships with and market to your most profitable clients.
Taking Unisys as a prime example, their top 50 clients generate 80%
of the company’s revenue.iii One of the benefits of a PURL built with
OnDialog is that its forms are prepopulated with user’s data. This
extends personalization beyond the URL and onto the Web page.
PURL technology also supports testing of multiple pages and contains
advanced email integration and campaign reporting. OnDialog’s PURL
solution, for example, provides useful reporting tools that enable
companies to track and measure marketing efforts quickly and easily.
This provides the instant and actionable Web analytics that executives
are clamoring for today.
Conclusion
Increased brand awareness. Increased lead retrieval. Increased response
rates—three to five times higher, in some cases. These are just some
of the benefits that PURL technology can provide to companies of all
sizes. Above all, PURLs improve response rates, conversions, and cost
savings—all without the need for expensive Web programmers or IT
support.
When marketers can capture relevant customer data, it enables them
to understand their customers better. PURLs allow customers to
communicate with your company on their terms. By adding PURL
technology to your marketing mix, your company will trim marketing
costs, increase ROI, and be able to have a continuous dialogue with a
loyal customer base.
About OnDialog
OnDialog provides marketers with the most effective solutions anywhere
to design, develop, and deploy PURLs, landing pages, and microsites—
without IT support. For more information about OnDialog’s automated
marketing tools, please visit our Web site at http://ondialog.com or call
866-830-6635.
Resources
i“Improve Lead Capture, Conversion: Replacing Landing Pages
with Personalized Microsites” by Sundeep Parsa.
Retrieved from
http://www.marketingprofs.com/8/improve-lead-captureconversion-
turn-landing-page-into-microsite-parsa.asp?sp=1 on October 28, 2008.
iiDirect Marketing Association.
iiiAccording to Ellyn Raferty, the VP and general manager-worldwide marketing.
Retrieved from
http://directmailadvertising.blogspot.com/search/label/PURLs on 10/28/08.
