Today I came across a post by  Heidi Tolliver on The Digital Nirvana site called Guaranteeing the Success of Personalized URLs http://thedigitalnirvana.com/2009/02/guaranteeing-the-success-of-personalized-urls/comment-page-1#comment-723.  I thought the post was interesting and worth a follow up.  The article has good information as does the comments posted.

I’ve been involved in quite a few Cross Media Campaigns which included PURL’s as a phase during the touch campaign.  Some have been successful. The biggest challenge is the content that is delivered with the PURL.  The content has to be inviting and make the user want to go the extra step and click on the PURL. Offering someone a chance to win something just isn’t going to cut it most of the time.  Sure, it might get people to click on the URL and enter, but in most cases, this isn’t your goal.

Your goal is for people to show interest in your product or service.  You want to start a relationship with these people, start building your connections and contacts, build your business.  Having someone click the URL and only enter the giveaway isn’t a way to do this.  Your message with the PURL has to attract them to the site because they want to learn more about you and your company. 

Make sure your message is targeted to the contact. Make sure that you state your message clearly and the advantages if they contact and use you over other people. Give them something to make them think and look forward to hearing/learning about after they click on the PURL and contact you.  How can they save more money by contacting you, what are the benefits of your service over other similar services, etc.

PURL’s can work as a marketing tool and work well.  The success can be measured by the success of the content.

The time has come and you’re ready to begin your Cross Media Campaign. Where to start?

A campaign can be designed and executed to meet any organizations needs. Below are items you’ll want to ensure you have covered before embarking upon your campaign:

• In order to have a successful campaign you’ll need to determine your desired end result. What is your overall goal? Who are you targeting and for what purpose? Is it to increase membership, subscribers, advertisers or attendance?

• Make sure that your email design and content are targeted to your audience. First impressions are important. The design and message should make the recipient want to take action as soon as they receive the email.

• Spend time reviewing your database. You want optimum results – your data has to be good. Do you have a complete database with all records? Does your data need to be cleaned? (Duplicates removed, invalid and incomplete addresses corrected or removed?)

• Plan your attack – when using cross media plan which mediums will be used within a specified time frame. As an example, if your goal is to reach people quickly, within a reduced time frame, start with a personalized email that includes links to either a website or PURL. After a few weeks, follow up with a direct mail piece for those that have not responded to the email.

• Track usage – give yourself a benchmark time frame. As an example, 2 weeks after the email was distributed, check to see how many opened the email, how many continued to take action from the email, etc. The tracking mechanism should track click rates, actions the user took, date of the action, etc. This will provide you with the information that you need to determine if you need to adjust the time frame for the various pieces and will gauge your overall results.

As mentioned above, Cross Media Campaigns are designed to include multiple pieces of medium. For information on variable data printing and the many advantages of this, visit the VIPGuru’s Blog – Variable Information Printing (VIP) at: http://vipguru.blogspot.com/.