Have you ever dreamt of offering unique web content to every customer? It may be easy with direct mail or email marketing, but what about your website? PURL marketing makes every marketer’s dreams come true. This marketing approach is based on a personalized URL (PURL) that displays a unique web page to every visitor. Such a page can include their name, tailored selection of products, or other relevant information. Personalized content will make visitors remember your web resource and increase the chance they will order your products or services.

Why do you need to customize web resources? Modern consumers are bored with similar web pages and lose interest within a split second. They expect ultimate personalization and tailored user experience across all marketing channels, including websites. When most web resources feature static content with almost identical calls-to-action, website customization can help you stand out from competitors. Thanks to the uniqueness of the PURL landing page, it’s very easy to attract customer attention and track marketing results.

Continue reading to learn:

• What is PURL?
• How Does PURL Marketing Work?
• How Can PURL Landing Page Boost Your Marketing Campaign ROI?

What Is PURL?

A persistent URL, personalized URL, personalized uniform resource locator, or just PURL are all the names of an intermediary URL that takes users to a personalized landing page. When somebody enters a PURL, the browser sends a request to a PURL server to receive the real URL of a web resource. This method makes PURLs persistent. In other words, they remain constant even when you switch to another host or otherwise change web infrastructure. Users enter the same address to see a landing page or microsite adapted to their needs and preferences (even if they don’t realize this).

How Does PURL Marketing Work?

You won’t be able to start a PURL marketing campaign without specialized software for marketing automation. But don’t get frustrated, such tools are easily available and simple to use. In addition, PURL marketing will have a positive effect on your overall marketing ROI and business success.

First of all, you will need to have a decent customer base. You can get one from list providers, data brokers, and using CRM systems. Of course, the last option is the most favorable since CRMs collect relevant and reliable customer data and regularly update it. You will be also able to manage customer information and benefit from integrations with other tools, including Inkit for direct mail PURL marketing. It’s a solid foundation for continuous analytics and multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Once you are ready with customer data, upload the mailing lists into a specialized cloud tool for PURL generation. The software will merge it with a domain to create a PURL for everyone mentioned on the mailing list. After that, you should integrate the CRM with an email marketing, mail automation, or another relevant tool to automatically provide the necessary URLs to the selected users. A PURL usually looks like a standard URL with some relevant personal details (PURL example: http://Sam-Johnson.inkit.com). As an option, you can also forward users to a PURL landing page with a QR code. They will scan it with a mobile device to land on your website in a few seconds.

5 Ways PURL Landing Page Benefits Your Marketing Campaign ROI

Marketing campaign ROI is one of the main pain points of any marketer and business owner. Although everyone admits the importance of marketing for business growth and customer engagement, marketing efforts are never easy to measure and calculate. In this respect, a PURL campaign can be an effective way to improve your marketing analytics and grow the return on investment for several reasons:

PURL Landing Page Benefit #1: Real-Time Data Management

With PURL marketing, you immediately receive feedback about user activity. Since every customer is tracked separately, you can measure how many people browsed the PURL landing page, what actions they took, and what percentage of the leads converted. This gives you better control over your marketing efforts since you instantly see whether your message yields the expected results. This advantage of PURL landing pages is critical if you are just starting a marketing campaign and want to estimate its ROI.

For example, you can launch two test mail campaigns based on different types of direct mail and designs. After you deliver the mail and process the results, it will be clear which kind of mail marketing benefits your ROI. The easiest way to do this is to integrate your CRM with a mail marketing automation platform like Inkit. Inkit supports variable data printing, so you can add a link to a personalized landing page on every mail piece. Moreover, since there are no batch limitations, you can send as many test mailings as you need.

PURL Landing Page Benefit #2: Increased Conversion and Response Rates

Variable content allows you to adapt the message and use triggers that make customers more likely to convert. This results in higher conversion and response rates, which, in turn, increase the return on investment. Here is one of the common PURL marketing approaches: When a customer visits a personalized landing page or a microsite to leave a request, your sales team gets the corresponding notification. They will be able to immediately send a follow-up or call the person directly. A study shows that if you contact the customer in 5 minutes, you have a 100 times higher chance to qualify a lead than after 30 minutes. Thus, PURL marketing optimizes the work of the sales team and improves its efficiency.

PURL Landing Page Benefit #3: Target Audience Segmentation

With a PURL landing page, you create a feedback loop and can use these results to segment your target audiences. For example, if you deliver 100 leaflets with PURLs, and 10 recipients visit the PURL landing page, you can be sure that these people are interested in your product. It’s worth moving them to a separate list to provide such leads with more specific and relevant variable content. You will also get useful data about the recipients who ignored your mailing. A closer study of their behavioral patterns may be helpful to attract their attention in the future. This way, your PURL marketing will become better planned, and you will be able to allocate your budget with maximum ROI.

PURL Landing Page Benefit #4: Personalization

It was found that personalization increases ROI by 5-8 times. Everyone likes feeling special when the web content is tailored to their needs. In addition to that, PURLs provoke curiosity. For example, you can greet a user with a landing page or microsite that mentions their name or other relevant information. You can also use variable data printing functionality to deliver customized mail pieces with a unique PURL to every potential customer. Remember to keep the balance and don’t overuse personal details without the necessity. The disclosure of confidential information without the user’s consent can undermine your business reputation. Another option is customizing the offer and message on your web resource. This will engage those users who don’t want to waste time on studying your assortment and would love to see the best offer right away.

PURL Landing Page Benefit #5: Lead Nurturing

PURL marketing helps to collect leads, nurture them, and build solid customer relationships. It’s also particularly effective for loyalty programs. For example, you can add PURLs to emails or mail pieces and forward people to their loyalty page. Since rewards programs make 77% of consumers more likely to purchase and 63% to modify their cart for maximum bonuses, such a marketing approach will have a positive effect on your ROI. Moreover, PURLs marketing can significantly speed up order placement, since contact information will be pre-populated once prospects visit the PURL landing page. The simpler the checkout, the better conversion rates you have.