PURLs may not look great around your neck, but they can sure light up a direct mail piece. PURLs not to be confused with pearls, stands for Personalized URL. What is that you ask? PURLs are personalized website landing pages that are created specifically for each prospect on your mailing list. These personalized landing pages are changing the way marketers are doing direct mail and offering a level of customization that goes well beyond that of variable data.

You would expect such a targeted marketing tool with a fancy sounding name to be expensive, however you are in for a surprise. In fact PURLs are cost-effective, especially when you consider the return on investment (ROI) they offer. A typical direct mail campaign can expect a 2 or 3 percent response rate, while campaigns that make use of PURLs have reported a 20 to 30 percent increase in response rates. This drastic increase in the response rates are in part due to the nearly 33 percent of people who respond to direct mail by going online, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

When a direct mail piece is sent out using PURLs, the printed piece will have an URL containing the prospects name and will look something like www.kopytek.com/johnsmith. When the prospect visits the page it will open directly to the information that they are seeking, specific to them. At this point there is an opportunity for you as a marketer to capture more information on your prospect. It is possible to ask them additional questions to better target your prospect in the future.

Also PURLs allow you to capture analytics on your prospects and track their behavior. For example let’s say that we send three prospects a direct mail piece that employs PURLs, hoping to sell them white socks. Prospect A logs on to his computer and goes to his personal landing page, explores our website further and purchases a pair of white socks. Prospect B logs on to their personal URL and surfs for awhile, but doesn’t make a purchase. And Prospect C never logs on.

Now we know that Prospect A likes our socks, we can contact him in the future. Prospect B, is interested except something didn’t click and Prospect C will never buy socks, maybe we take him off the list. Now that the campaign is over we can go back and call Prospect B and offer them a special on another type of sock possibly leading to another sale.

Just remember the degree of personalization created, depends on the amount of data and info you know about your prospects. Keeping a clean mailing list, which includes their shopping habits, will make it possible for 20 to 30 percent response rates using PURLs. Even with such high response rates, PURLs are only beginning to come to the forefront of direct mail. By actively engaging your prospects it allows you as a marketer to recognize every prospect as an individual. And, as the marriage between web and print strengthens, printers like Kopytek will continue to be able to help marketers save money with innovations like PURLs.