West Press Blog

Using PURLs provides wisdom for and about your customers

We Make it Easy

Let’s Work Together!

Looking for a way to personalize content for your customers? Then PURLs are definitely for you.

PURLs (Personalized URLs) allow you to create contact-specific URLs to help drive offline activity online as part of a marketing campaign. You can easily include a contact’s PURL on a direct mail piece and send the potential customer to a personalized landing page to help increase conversion rates.

For starters, you need a reliable mailing list to create your PURLs. Once they arrive, they find a page that maintains the design and tone of the direct mail package with a personalized greeting and pre-populated fields that help drive an immediate response. They learn more about your offer and can respond to it, request more information by email or mail or make a purchase.

PURLs do more than help your customers find products or services that could appeal to them. Using one in a direct mail campaign can help you track the conversion rate to see whether your efforts worked.

A PURL consists of your microsite, landing page vanity URL and a PURL name. The name is unique to the contact.

Here’s an example:

PURL name: http://www.example.com/mypage/johnsmithA358LM

Microsite: http://www.example.com

Vanity URL: mypage

PURL: johnsmithA358LM

When John Smith visits this site, it displays customized elements and automatically links the page view to his contact record. That’s how you know whether he stopped by the site. Let’s hope he made a purchase, too.

West Press is here to help you each step of the way when you want to integrate your print and online marketing efforts. Contact our office or your Account Executive at 520-624-4939 today.