PURL FAQ’s

So, a little more information about PURL’s today.  When talking about PURL’s one might say “I want to know why I would want to use a PURL in a marketing campaign.” The answer to that question is simple.

1. If you want to target an audience that is defined such as by age, gender, or any list for that matter then this would help you.
2. PURL’s will increase your response rate by double in most cases. The reason is that you have real time responses and there is no error. With PURL’s there are “Microsites” that are developed based off of your own website that you can create or your design team can develop. Once this is done, you have the ability to completely control the responses that are coming in. An example of this would be my Twitter PURL’s. What I do is create “Microsites” that have a unique PURL for every tweet that I create. Next, I create unique tweets that engage the audience to click on the link within Twitter. Once people click on the Tweet I can immediately go into my software for my Microsite CMS system and watch everyone clicking on the microsite to see what pages within the microsite have been hit.  I always place a form on every “Microsite” to entice people to a call to action so that more is done.
3. When talking about Direct Mail the best reason for using a PURL is simple. With a PURL now your customers have the ability to feel more connected with you as being PERSONALIZED.  The PURL reads as www.yourwebsite.com/customername so the customer is immediately drawn to the mailer because they think “hmmm how did my name get it’s own website?” They go to the website and then they see a website that has their own name on it again that says “Hi Tom (or whatever the customer’s name is), We’ve got this special widget for you today at a steal of a price. If you buy today it’s marked down to $10 instead of $50.  Immediately the customer thinks – “Wow, they really know me..I need this!” 

If you have a good list managment process, and have been keeping track of your customers, then you will know exactly what your customer needs are and will have sent them the exact widget they wanted. You can purchase a good list from many different sources these days for next to nothing. I can talk more about that later. But again, I am just giving you little bits and pieces for now to wet your appetite with PURL’s!  Use them often, use them wisely!