You can use a PURL (personalized URL) in anything these days. I use them in my email campaigns, my magazine ads and even in my tweets on twitter. I thought I would talk about the benefits of using them in a magazine ad over using a phone number today.
In the old days you might have used a 1-800 number on your magazine ad and that’s fine and dandy, but let me ask you this… “how’s that workin’ out for ya?” Not to be mean, but uh – I bet you my mortgage, I’m getting more response than you are…See, the reason why I am so positive that you can get faster response using a PURL is simple. If you use a 1-800 number, you are ahead of someone who is just putting an ad in a magazine. At least you’ve taken the initiative to put something so that the reader can contact you.
HOWEVER, what if you put a PURL in the ad in addition to that 800#? Then, you would have REAL TIME results that you could track! You would know where in the “WORLD” that person was when they clicked on the link, what pages they visited while they were on your site, if you put a form on the site, then you can ask for more detailed information from the reader like their name, address, email address, etc – and NOW you have developed your database so you can market even better as well as you can potentially close a sale to this now VALIDATED customer!!
PURLS make sense! Also, using a PURL on a magazine ad will reduce the time that you have to wait on those analysis reports from your marketing people. Now you can just do a few clicks from your website and find out quickly how well the PURL campaign went.
It's The Future Marketing 