PURL’S: Where Did We Go Wrong?
Articles pertaining to the use of personalized URL’s, or pURL’s, in marketing campaigns always capture my attention. As the brand manager for the digital paper segment, I know this topic is of interest to our printer and designer customers and as a marketer, I personally want to learn how to use these tools in our own campaigns.
The personalized URL campaign statistics you read promise vast improvement in the response rate, as high as 45% vs. the traditional 1-2%.
Well… we conducted our own multi-channel campaign, with pURL’s, earlier this year and the results were disappointing, to say the least. I am wondering: where did we go wrong since we seemed to do everything right?
Our goal was to send a group of digital printers a kit featuring our new digital paper line and invite them to our website to become part of our Digital Space. For our campaign, we:
- Created an exciting informational kit showing our digital papers in action.
- Purchased a targeted mailing list of key decision makers in over 1200 digital printers.
- Constructed personalized cover letters with contact information for our local sales manager and a pURL address—and also placed personalized stickers on the envelopes with the recipient’s pURL.
- Utilized a savvy and creative digital marketing service provider to create and conduct the campaign.
- Incorporated a survey into the pURL’s to learn some things about paper usage— what is missing in the marketplace, etc.
- Enticed respondents to complete the survey with a free digital paper sample pack and copy of our Design Digital Print book.
- Followed up with a reminder postcard two weeks later—if there was no response.
- Set in place a plan to identify the respondents as hot-leads and pass on to the appropriate sales manager.
Of over 1700 kits mailed, 60 recipients went to their pURL’s and only 30 of them followed through with the survey and signed up. Therefore, the response rate was 1.8%—not exactly in the range of the response rates about which I have been reading!
Some thoughts/questions we had on why the campaign was marginal: should we have offered a larger “prize” for taking the time to do the survey and sign-up on our Web site? Was our survey too long and therefore annoying? Did we not “cut through the clutter” because our target audience is inundated with promotional materials? Are business-to-business campaigns typically less effective than those targeted to consumers? Maybe, all of the above?
Perhaps the success or failure of a personalized URL can be summed up in one word: relevance. Is paper really the most important thing on a printer’s mind right now? Probably not. I would imagine he or she is much more interested in the macro issues: figuring out how to drum up more projects, controlling costs and redefining the business from printer to “marketing service provider.”
Whatever the answers may be, I would certainly not turn away from doing another customized campaign. I believe in the power of personalization—and the campaign wasn’t too expensive to difficult to execute. We will definitely try again and hopefully I will be back to share our success.