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The desire to feel special is a natural human emotion, and people want to be treated as individuals, rather than merely another target on a mass marketing bombing campaign. The problem with a lot of marketing is that it fails to make people feel special, but simply dumps the same message as wide as possible to hit as many targets as it can.
Simply pouring money into unrefined email blasts and bulk mailings is a clumsy and expensive approach, because we now have the technology to engage prospects in a one-to-one marketing dialogue that’s more relevant and personalised for each individual.
With a recession looming, the competition for customers is only going to increase.
So, to engage people’s attention your marketing needs to appeal more closely to their interests than the rest. And the evidence shows that integrating direct mail with digital is the best tactic for getting more personal with prospects.
Direct mail makes the introduction
Despite what some internet fanboys (might) think, print isn’t dead and will be the touch point of choice with most prospects for many years to come. In fact, a Pitney Bowes survey found that 73% still prefer to receive product announcements in the mail compared to reading them on a screen.
With this in mind, direct mail is the best medium for introducing prospects to online promotions. It’s effectiveness in launching a one-to-one campaign extends beyond merely the name on the label, because the website address it sends people to is personalised too.
People love to see their name in print, and few can ignore the curiosity of visiting a website featuring their name in the URL.
Personalised URLs look after the conversation
It’s when prospects visit their own personalised URL that the conversation really begins.
Not only does each mini site greet them by name, but also features products and services carefully arranged to match their interests. This customised approach already helps improve your chances of generating leads.
However, where a PURL’s power really lies is in its ability to listen as well as talk. Every mouse click and interaction is recorded and added to the feast of information stored on your database, ripe for future targeted marketing activity.
Cost effective, quick and a high response
In a recent BDA campaign for Siemens we experienced first hand how effective an integrated, personalised campaign can be.
A letter was sent to prospects promoting Siemens’ ‘A Meeting of Open Minds’ breakfast seminar along with their own personalised URL. On each individually addressed website, prospects could interact with a ‘cost calculator’, to see what savings they could make, and then book their place on the seminar.
Recording the interests of prospects, by how they interacted with the site, was estimated to save two weeks of telemarketing and generate leads at half the cost of conventional marketing activity.
The personalised one-to-one approach was also so effective in attracting interest that Siemens had to run two additional seminars to cope with demand.
Personalised campaigns get you closer to your target
The tracking provided by personalised websites enables you to get progressively closer to every prospect. From initial acquisition through to retention, with each subsequent campaign you can fine tune your offer to appeal to the interests of each individual.
Numerous case studies have shown that integrating direct mail with digital campaigns is the way to go. Recent research by the Royal Mail found that over half of consumers prefer a combination of the two, and that integrated campaigns could increase customer spend by 25%.
The technology is now available to deliver one-to-one campaigns that are relevant, targeted and provide a much better response from consumers.
So are you going to continue bombing your prospects with mass untargeted messages? Or are you ready to get closer with personalised URLs?
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:27 am
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
September 17th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Obviously many would love to see personalized urls but it is too costly to be implemented. Imagine if you have 1000 leads.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:55 am
[...] the preferences of each prospect. This can be achieved by capturing data on customers (e.g. with personalised URLs) and then using it to customise future [...]
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Hi Ainuddin
Thanks for your comment.
Personalised URLs (PURLs) are not as costly to implement as you might imagine. Most are generated using a customer database and a web page template ‘on-the-fly’ as the PURL is visited by the target individual. This means, as long as you have a large enough database, you can create thousands of PURLs containing individual specific content relatively quickly and cost effectively.
Many thanks
David
November 10th, 2008 at 10:57 am
[...] Listen to your customers’ interests and preferences using personalised URLs [...]
January 9th, 2009 at 11:51 am
[...] on big TV and outdoor projects. The measurability of email and other digital campaigns, such as personalised URLs, will hasten the shift of budgets from traditional to online [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 10:33 am
[...] – every print can be customised to include unique content, such as the customer’s name, personalised URL and relevant images. Personalising marketing helps improve the response rate because people are [...]
March 12th, 2009 at 10:36 am
[...] Personalise to improve response – customising your brochures with personalised URLs (PURLs) as part of an integrated campaign can increase the response rate because people love seeing their [...]
April 24th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
[...] of an initial direct mail promo to build interest before directing people to a website or a personalised URL to develop the sales process [...]
September 24th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
[...] Purls (personalised URLs) we can create websites customised for each individual prospect, and then use variable data printing [...]
March 8th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
[...] Labour were really smart, they’d be integrating their direct mail with personalised URLs leading voters to websites customised with policies to match each voter’s interests. Maybe by the [...]