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On July 14, 2014

How Personalized URLs Can Drive Direct Mail Responses

You can achieve countless benefits by using personalized URLs (PURLs). One of the most significant benefits is relevancy. You can provide direct mail messages that are relevant to specific prospects when you use PURLs. This is much more useful to your potential clients than inundating your entire mailing list with messages that are not relevant to most of them. Your message will be more effective and stand out when you send out custom mail with pertinent information to people who are interested in what you have to sell and say.

 

What Are PURLs?

Unique domain names personalized for each recipient are known as PURLs. With this method, a personalized page on your website is given to each client you reach with a PURL. How does this work? Let us look at an example.

Let’s say as a recruitment tool each year State University sends out brochures to high school juniors and seniors. The brochure could just have a generic URL in it, like http://stateuniversity.edu/ (not a real URL). Or, the university could have PURLs for the potential students.

If the brochure were sent to John Doe, he could already have a domain that pairs his name with the university on paper and perhaps in his head, for example JohnDoe.stateuniversity.edu. To perspective students, this shows that State University is so interested in this student going to their school that they created a webpage for him. John is much more likely to pay attention to the brochure and visit the PURL.

This strategy does not just work for college prospects. It can be used by any business that sends direct mail.

PURLs are much more effective when the personalized domain name also has custom information that speaks directly to your client. This shows the client that you have taken the time to not only create a webpage for them, but you have also learned about them.

 

How Successful Are PURLs?

With PURLs, you can bank on improved response rates for your direct mail campaigns. With the typical direct mail approach, you are lucky to get a two percent response rate. These rates increase substantially when you pair them with PURLs. It is not out of the question to expect increases of double or triple the response. Personalized techniques are employed in the marketing of all of the best companies these days.

You can only track people who already have some interest in what you are selling with old school forms of tracking codes, such as special toll free numbers and coded BRCs. And, you cannot tell precisely who these people are. However, you have the ability to conduct real time tracking that lets you know who is responding to your direct mail, and you can prod them into making a purchase with properly executed and developed PURLs.

As you can see, PURLs are the wave of the future for maximizing your response rate for direct mail. Take advantage of this one to one marketing dialog technique today!

 

  • By Hal.Cohen  0 Comments