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Personalize Your Marketing Campaign with PURLs

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A personalized URL, or PURL, is a special URL with a customer’s first and last name attached to your domain name. PURLs are also known for having personalized landing pages where targeted customers are greeted by their name. For example, the PURL for John Doe might be www.yourcompany.com/JohnDoe where ‘John Doe’ would be variable for each person in your campaign. The page then greets John Doe by his name making it a more personal experience. Content on the page can also be personalized with things like offers, products, images, and sales contact info.

The premise of personalized marketing revolves around the idea of making marketing more personal versus traditional generic “one-size-fits-all” marketing. This involves implementing a customer database where variable data like first names, last names and addresses can be utilized to prepare personalized marketing collateral like mailings, emails and even PURLs. The customers each get a marketing piece greeting them with his or her names and then a personalized URL to their own landing page. The PURL landing page usually contains a questionnaire form to collect information from the customer that will be useful for future marketing campaigns. For example, the form may ask the customer what their favorite kind of pizza is. Now the customer can be sent even more personalized marketing material that can tailor to their favorite kind of pizza.

West Press recently launched a PURL campaign for an upcoming event called ‘Game Night Madness.’ Each guest in the campaign was mailed a flier that greeted them by their first name and invited them to attend the event. The flier also included a link to the guest’s personal URL so that they could RSVP for the event. When guests arrive at their personalized landing page, they are asked for some basic information like email and phone number followed by a series of fun questions. Finally the guests are asked whether or not they will be attending the event, and if so, who they plan to bring as additional guests. Questions like ‘what is your go-to happy hour drink?’ will help West Press gauge the amount of beverages and what types to purchase for the event.

One of the advantages of using PURL campaigns is that you can track the progress of each individual customer. You not only get the information they enter into the form, but you can also track what percentage of customers completed the form. Tracking statistics like how many customers visited their PURL is one of the beneficial aspects of personalized marketing that help you gauge the response rate of a given campaign.

Let the web development team at West Press help take your PURL campaign where it needs to go. Contact West Press or your Account Executive at 520-624-4939.