Approximately 37,000 direct mail pieces were sent to STAPLES Business Depot customers.  One half of the list received a a letter with personalized content and the other half received a started letter without any personalization.

In the personalized letter, the recipient was offered a gift based on their past purchase history, a description of the loyalty program they were currently registered for, and a coupon that was related to past purchases.

The rate of coupon redemption for the personalized piece was 50% greater.  The average purchase amount also increased by 18% from the personalized piece.

Download the PDF Case Study provided by Xerox

Objectives:
We wanted to create a customised landing page and individual purls for each of our contacts as part of a discounted price we were offering to selected clients. We aimed to distribute these purls through email to over 8,000 clients, so that they would read www.salessummit2011.com/firstname.lastname

By uploading the same contact list into both Purlem and our email distribution software and tagging the link in both as the above, we hoped this would allow us to send the correct purl to each contact on mass.

Then, when they clicked through to the site, it would read:

Hi #firstname#, we have a special message for you…

We hoped that the use of purls customised with each individuals name would encourage them to open the email and click through to the site. We wanted it to stand out from other promotional offers they may receive and we hoped the purls and customised landing page would encourage people to make a purchase with us.

We also wanted to be able to track exactly which recipients had visited the site and how many times they had visited it, so that we could compare these to our own records of purchases made through the purls. This was for two reasons, firstly so that we could see how well the purls were working and how many purchases they were leading to, and secondly so that we could offer those who clicked through but didn’t buy a chance at a discounted fee.

Target audience:
Our target audience was mostly sales professionals, sales directors and business owners who we have already distributed either emails, newsletter, blog posts or sales tips to previously. We are in constant contact with most of these clients via some form of online contact throughout the year so they are current or previous clients of ours and are aware of who we are and what we do.

Results: 
We had some real problems trying to copy our original landing page into the Purlem landing page, as the text, images and layout ended up all over the place and it took us a long time to correct it. I have to admit, I didn’t find Purlem to be the easiest software to use and had to have the help of both a web designer and a member of the Purlem technical team help correct the design issues, but this may well have been due to the fact I am not fluent in web design as others who use the software will be.

We also had quite a lot of trouble using the purls in our form of email distribution software, as the tags didn’t quite match up and our lists were not edited in the way that they needed to be in order to be uploaded to Purlem – so it meant lots of messing around editing lists and contact data in order to get it right.

However, thanks to the help of the Purlem technical team (Martin Thomas in particular) we did manage to get all of the design issues sorted out and the purls did work as we wanted them to in the end.

We had a really good click through rate (5.75% of 8525 contacts) and we did have some clients go on to buy following the purl distribution, so we were pleased with the end results and we are intending to use Purlem again on a future project.

Hopefully it will be much easier the second time around, as the situation described above was the first time we had ever used purl software and that might be why we encountered so many problems initially.

Personalized URL (PURL) Landing Page

Personalized URL (PURL) Email

Case Study provided by MTD Training

Objective:
To acquire at least one new heating and plumbing company in seven of Roto Rooter’s core markets.

Results:
This was our most successful company acquisition campaign to date. We mailed 800 heating gand plumbing companies with sales over $1MM. Overall 30 companies responded (3.75% response rate) — half of these responses came from the personalized URL. We successfully acquired 4 businesses from this campaign.

Roto-Rooter Direct Mail Letter with Personalized URL (PURL)

Roto Rooter Personal URL (PURL) Landing Page

Case Study provided by PLG Consulting.

The following is a PURL Case Study was conducted by the guys at Pharm Fresh Media. Special thanks to Steve for allowing other Purlem users to learn from such a well executed campaign.

Background

Client is an independent pharmacy buying cooperative with over 750 members. Client is made up of six regional groups who pattern and mimic each other in terms of compliance and behaviors. When an opportunity is at hand, they are able to successfully leverage the buy point of all six groups. Client is known for their tough negations and their transparent, low cost operating model which secures their members the lowest in-clase buying program and maximizes their rebate checks.

Program

Client contacted Pharm Fresh Media to assist them in attracting qualified pharmacy owners/decision makers, who were attending the trade shows, to an “offsite” resonation by Client. At the presentation, prospects would learn about the history of Client, its strengths and most importantly, find out how becoming a member of Client would benefit their pharmacy. The event would take place in a private meeting room in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas and attendees need to pre-register the attend. The event was one hour and had three different day/times to attend.

Objective

Achieving 100 pharmacies in attendance would be considered a run away success.

Strengths

• Client is well known for their straight forward, low cost, low overhead way of doing business.
• Client has a strong reputation. A brief search of reviews and discussions regarding their services returns many positive comments/pages.  Members are often brand advocated, refuting false or inaccurate claims from disgruntled or uneducated reviewers/posers.
• The last Vegas trade shows are some of the best attended trade shows.
• Client was giving away an amazing incentive: each attendee would receive an iPad2 at the conclusion of the presentation.
• Client would dedicate staff to follow up with PURL.

Challenges

• The nature of Client begin a cooperative of six regional groups all with separate names/marks dilutes the main Client brand and recognition.
• Current website lacks substance/content and is dated.
• Mail list for campaign was a combination in-house list and web crawler list. Out of 3187 addresses, there were only 2429 unique names. our assumption was that in many cases, it was not known which pharmacy the owner worked from (in the case of multi-store owners), so mailers were sent to all stores. Approximately 352 addresses were without owner names in which case we substituted the pharmacy name in place of “first name” or “last name.”
• It was not known how many of the addresses mailed to were actually attending either tradeshow in Las Vegas. Based upon NCPA tradeshow attendance vs the size of their membership, it could be assumed that 10%-15% of addresses mailed to were attending the tradeshow giving us a maximum possibility of attracting 365 pharmacies if we had a 100% success rate.

Campaign: Pharm Fresh Media’s Role

• Three direct mailers: a die cut, invitation style mailer with a personalized “golden” ticket; a pop-up iPad2 folded over card which mailed in a clear plastic envelope and an oversized postcard. All three mailers used variable data to personalize the piece to the recipient.
• An email blast
• A two page Personal URL (PURL) website
• A 14 page information website
• Business card sized referral cards for the day of the tradeshow
• iPad2 Skin-it graphics

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)
www.johncassidy.2011liberty.com

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

Some other Demos
www.marty-thomas.happyinksuites.com
www.marty-thomas.inksuites.com
www.marty-thomas.yourinksuites.com

First Rate Mortgage Inc (http://www.firstratemortgagecorp.com) recently used Purlem to send out a PURL Campaign to 20,000 recipients. The list of FHA Loan prospects was gathered through Targeted Credit data leads.

The Postcard, seen below, was sent to the prospects.  The strictly text-based card is an interesting approach.  As Kevin Wade at First Rate Mortgage points out, it looks like a voter registration card and it pulls in some good response rates for them. (Not to mention lower printing costs!)

The PURL Landing Page is actually a series of pages made up of a few questions each.  Made to gradually lead the prospect deeper and deeper into the site. Everybody that responds to the PURL is given a deal based on selected criteria.

First Rate Mortgage has been sending postcards to prospects for years.  But now, for the first time using PURLs, they experienced an additional 1% in their response rate.  A significant increase considering the number of postcards that are sent out.

Congratulations First Rate Mortgage Inc on a successful PURL campaign!

First Rate Mortgage Personalized URL Postcard

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First Rate Mortgage PURL Personalized URL Landing Page

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First Rate Mortgage Purlem Results Page

Below is a collection of Personalized URL Case studies I have found through various sources on the internet over the past year.  Great for sparking new, creative ideas for your PURL campaigns.

Finland Fitness Club – See how a Fitness Club in Finland used Purlem to get a 22.3% response rate.

Variable Thinking’s PURL Cast Study Collection – 11 Different case studies from Variable Printing projects.

University of Alabama PURL Case Study (PDF) – A look at how the University of Alabama used Personalized URLs to increase Football season ticket renewals.

Gor-Tex – A case study of how Gor-Tex used PURLs to generate a 16% increase in sales.

VMI Foundation (PDF) - See how the VMI Foundation used PURLs along with both email and direct mail to increase the effectiveness of their fundraising campaigns.

Mindfire Case Studies (PDF) - The Response Rates of Personalized Cross-Media Marketing Campaigns

CEA Marketing Case Study (PDF) – A look at how the Golf Course waterfront resort used PURLs with both their direct mail and email campaings.

W.L. Gore PURL Case Study – More of a story on how W.L. Gore & Associates integrated PURLs into their marketing campaigns.

Rosemont College (PDF) - See how Rosemont College used Personalized URLs in a campaign to Alumni.

PODI Best Practices in Digital Print (PDF) – See how two companies successfully used PURLs with their Postcard campaigns.

Florida Country Club – A look at how a Private Country Club in Florida used Purlem to generate interests for prospective members.

Purlem goes international with this personalized URL (PURL) case study.

A Fitness Club in Finland used Purlem to track the responses of their marketing campaign to old gym members.  (Members that were once members, but have let their membership expire).  The goal of their campaign was to simply reach out to these members and offer them other membership options that would fit their lifestyle.

A postcard was mailed out to these members with a PURL on it. The PURL would direct them to a website like seen below.

Traditinally a postcard would get a 1-3% response rate.  But when they used the PURLs, they had a 22.3% response!  Below is a chart of the responses for this campaign over time:

Client: Private Country Club (name is confidential)

Campaign Goal: The client already has a list of prospects and their emails from a previous on-site promotion. Now the goal is to collect the mailing addresses and golfing habits of these same prospects so the country club can continue to send them relevant solicitations in the future.

Strategy: Send a an email with a Personalized URL (PURL), that will direct the prospects to a website that welcomes them by name. The call to action will be a “braded gift” from the country club, received after filling out an online survey. When the prospect visits their PURL, they will be guided through a series of questions regarding their golfing habits. At the end, they will be asked to insert their mailing information so the club can send the gift.

Execution: The email sent to the prospects was sent in plain text and contained the following copy:
Dear Mike,

As a past guest of __________, I would like to present you with a free “” of the . We have created a short photo tour of our spectacular courses. To view the tour please go to:http://____________.com/Mike.Jones

Results:
440 Prospects received the email
157 Visited the PURL (35.7%)
110 Completed the survey and submitted their mailing address (25%)