One of the most critical elements of a successful Personalized URL (PURL) campaign is the offer.  It’s critical that you give your customers/prospects a good reason to respond to your message.  Typically the offer is a small gift, or entry to a competition.  Whatever it is, it should be attention grabbing and relevant to your audience. You want to make it a no-brainer for the recipient to take action.

But one “offer” that is commonly overlooked is an event.  This month’s PODi free case study features an AlphaGraphics campaign that used Personalized URLs to invite people to an event.

AlphaGraphics sent 331 invitations to the anniversary party, received 82 responses (24.8%) and welcomed 56 guests (16.9%) to the party.

They even took it a step further by personalizing the party favors to the guests, depending how they answered the survey questions on the Personalized URL.

After the event AlphaGraphics received several requests from clients to create similar campaigns for their own initiatives

Events are a powerful, and often overlooked, way to generate big responses for your Personalized URL campaign.

Did you know that it’s possible to use Photoshop’s Variables to add PURLs and QR Codes to your promotional pieces? Well you do now!  And believe it or not, it’s actually easy!

It can be very expensive to have a printer pull in variable content into your promotional pieces. By using this technique, you can bypass this expense entirely and save hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Learn more about how you can Add PURLs & QR Codes with Photoshop.

As I begin to focus more of my time on marketing Purlem I plan to increase my participation and engagement in social media.  My goals for doing this is to both establish myself as a thought leader in the 1:1 Marketing world, and to also increase the reputation and reach of the Purlem brand. (Well… ultimately its all about developing new business).

Inspired by the article How to Build the Perfect Facebook Fan Page, I took to integrating some of the ideas presented here to Purlem’s page.

One of the ideas that I liked the most was Red Bull’s use of their “Welcome” page.  A semi-transparent page with a call to “Like Our Page,” hints to like th page to access more of the page’s content.  I took that and used a similar effect on Purlem’s page.

By the way..  you can easily add a welcome tab to your Facebook page with the Tabpress app.

Hopefully this will increase the number of likes we receive from first time visitors to our Facebook page.

For fans, Purlem’s new “Welcome” page displays the animated computer intro from Purlem’s home page. More importantly it has the  call to action buttons to sign up free and view the video intro (which links to our What are Personalized URL’s YouTube Video).

Although I think these are great improvements to our Facebook page, I don’t expect a thousand new likes overnight. I expect the real challenge will be engaging fans with interesting content (which I have some great ideas for).  Stay tuned!

John Cassidy over at Duplicates INK was nice enough to share some of the PURL campaigns they have been working on.  If your looking for a company to really help take your PURL campaign to the next level I’d highly recommend Duplicates INK.

2011 Liberty Campaign
The 2011liberty is still active and is doing well so far 3.2% response rate and 80% survey completion rate (Data Enrichment)

LandStealsnc Campaign
Landstealsnc.com deal the purl had a 4X lift in response rate from Static

I just finished reading The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a New Generation by Jay Elliot, and if there was one thing I took away, it was Steve’s ability to create emotional connection between his products and customers.

Have you felt it?  I think of the way I feel when I purchase a new mac, or any apple product for that matter.  I hate to admit it… seems almost sinful to have an emotional connection  with any material thing. But there is no doubt about it… it’s there.

So as a business, the next logical question to ask- How can I get my product to have an emotional connection with my customers.  I want to do that!

Jay Elliot does a great job of pointing out parts of Steve Jobs’ business philosophy that have led Apple to what it is today. I think we can all learn a lot from Steve Jobs’ approach to business, and apply some of his principals to our products to create a similar emotional connection with our customers. A few of the principals I took away and will try to apply to Purlem are:

Be insane about the details
There were several parts of the book that spoke to Steve’s intense focus on the details.  One was about how Steve was working with designers of the the new iTunes store,  and spent three hours deciding where to put a single link.  Or how he demanded the newly installed imported tile to be torn out of one of the first Apple stores because it didn’t look quite right.

Its mind-boggling that a CEO of a large corporation like Apple would spend time worrying about details like this.  But it obviously works for him, and helped create to that emotional connection we all strive for.

But can a small business really worry about these types of details?  I mean we have more important things to spend our time on right?  To give the details this level of attention would be impossible!

We’ll that was my first response too.  But I guess if I really dig deep, I know I can make time to focus on the details.  I mean,  if it is a pre-requesit for creation products with emotional appeal, it has to happen.

Focus on making your product easy to use
A story mentioned a couple times in the book was when Jay (the author) received a Model-A Ford for his work on his family’s ranch.  It was very interesting to think that when Ford released his first car, people had no idea how to use them!  I mean common.. everybody at the time was riding horses around! There were no mechanics or driving schools.  Yet, he was able to release the product and make it so easy to use that any fool could drive and repair it.

The Ford story was related to how Steve Jobs handles product development.  To make every product so incredibly easy to use, that people don’t need a manual.  The convention at the time was to write technology manuals at the 5th grade level.  Steve said nope… and the 1st grade level.  In his opinion, they should not be needed at all.

I think about Purlem-  The technology around Personalized URLs can sometimes be difficult to grasp.  From the beginning I have tried to focus on making Purlem easy to use.  In fact, I see that as being our competitive advantage.  But I know we still have a long way to go.   I will always keep the Ford story in mind, and strive for that product where no manual is necessary.

Apply great design to everything
Steve Jobs was known as the “head artist” for Apple.  He knew that the product’s design and interface was as important as the technology itself, and was insistent that the design be perfect.   The design is what makes the product sexy (for lack of a better term), and is the icing on the cake to creating an emotional response.

Steve once asked his design team to act as if they were a new apple product just being purchased.  Walk me through what it is like when I first hold the product, he said. What do I see when I open it, when I turn it on.  Every part of the product, from packaging to the technology itself had to have great design surrounding it.

So again, coming back to reality, is it possible for a small business like yours to integrate this level of design into your products? We’ll yes and no.  Sure, design skills can be learned and refined with time and practice. But those really awesome designs, like the products Apple puts out, come from very gifted designers.

In my opinion, anybody with enough time and practice can create decent, respectable, designs for their products.  But I do think that once you can justify spending money on one of those ultra gifted designers, they will help to propel your product to the next level.  Like Steve says.. always hire the absolute best talent you can find.

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Its hard to imagine that a product like Purlem could create an emotional response.  I mean its a B2B product.  People are probably slaving away at work when they are using it.  Its not like a new ipod or iphone that you can touch and play with. Regardless if it is possible or not, it’s an amazing goal to strive for.

I can’t believe I posted the video looking like this. But hey, its cold here!  I have to wear a hat on my runs!

I’m not sure if anything will come from this… But creating these landing pages was a quickly executed idea and only took $30 to purchase the three domains.  Lets see if I can begin to rank for these keywords, and hopefully convert some customers with the landing pages.

The Landing Pages
http://whatispurl.com
http://whatispersonalurl.com
http://uniqueurlmarketing.com

Ed Mayer was an international authority on direct mail and direct marketing from the mid-1930s. He developed the 40/40/20 rule that has been a staple for the direct marketing industry ever since.  The rule states that 40 percent of your direct marketing success is dependent on your audience, another 40 percent is dependent on your offer, and the last 20 percent is reserved for everything else (including the purl).

But from my experience from seeing a large number of successful, and unsuccessful, PURL campaigns, is that the new rule is more like 60/30/10.

Audience/List (60)
Having a highly targeted audience is crucial to Personalized URL (PURL) campaigns.  So what is a “highly targeted” audience?  Ideally it is a list of prospects that are already familiar with your business and have given you permission to reach out to them.  This is the audience that will pull a 30%+ response rate.  If you don’t have the time or resources to acquire this type of audience, your response rates will be significantly less.

Offer (30)
The offer can also make or break your Personalized URL campaign.  Giveaways, sales, rebates and bonus will give the recipient a reason to visit their PURL.  Try to approach the offer from your customer’s perspective. What do they think will be valuable? Don’t give away the farm, but make it significant enough to drive responses.  But wait! There’s more!

Everything Else (10)
Everything else is the design, medium, and copy that you choose to deliver the message. Yes, this is where PURLs fit it.  With your PURL campaign, your medium will likely be a postcard and related Personalized URL landing page.  The design and copy for both these mediums to be related. Simple is usually better, and the design should make the call-to-action obvious. But the rules for “everything else” ends there.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that PURLs will not make or break a campaign.  Sure, it can give a campaign a significant boost, but without the right audience or offer, your PURL campaign is sure to fail.

Just finished reading “Landing Page Optimization” by Tim Ash.  I was looking for  some specific examples of what makes a good landing page, and how I could apply these best practices to Personal URL (PURL) pages.

What I got from the book was “You have to figure it out for yourself through testing.” Okay, okay.. I guess that’s true, but not really what I wanted to hear.  I was looking for the “magic bullets” but didn’t find any here (and maybe that’s because they don’t exist).

The specific advice and examples the book did give were very obvious and commonsensical.  But I guess it is good to be reminded of the essentials.  Here are some examples:

• The landing page should be focused on the “maybe” visitors.  The “yesses” will always buy, and the “nos” never will.
• Appeal to the emotions of the “maybes.”
• Remove the clutter.  Only show parts of the site that will drive conversions of the “maybes.”
• Be gunuine and use genuine photos.
• Place important objects above the fold.
• Use inverte pyramid format for copy writing.
• Visitor’s make judgements quickly.
• Coherency is crucial to establish confidence with the visitor.

In regards to testing the landing page, Tim recommended starting by focusing on the pages that can provide the biggest bang for the buck.  Within those pages focus on the top left and center areas of the site for possible improvements. Again, nothing new here.

The last few chapters coverers statistical analysis and sophisticated testing techniques and plans. Although interesting, it is not a realist approach for a  business with a limited budget and time.  You could spend months with this stuff.  How about just act on what you think will work, test, and build on your success.  (I’m not a fan of plans).

If there was one thing I took away from the book was to know who your visitors are and focus on developing content and direction to each “persona.”  For example, Purlem has different groups (personas) of visitors.  There are the small business owner, marketer, and printer.  All have a different goals and needs.  My site does not do a good job of providing content for each different persona, so maybe this is something I can focus on.

Came across this billboard in the Denver airport yesterday.  Thought it was a great use of QR codes.  Maybe these will catch on in the States sooner than I expected.

Use DirectSmile to create attention grabbing PURLs!