Yesterday I launched a remarketing campaign powered by Google adwords.  Remarketing lets you show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web.

In other words, if somebody visits Purlem’s home page, and leaves without making a signing up, they will begin to see ads for Purlem as they browse the web.  The goal is that repeated exposure to the Purlem brand will remind them that we exist and hopefully encourage them to sign up.

I first heard of remarketing from Ajay, and later from a post by Kissmetrics - How To Use Google AdWords To Reach The People Who Didn’t Click On Your Ad.  

To create your remarketing campaign, see Adwords Help page - Reach people who visited your site.

For the last several months I have been slowly chopping away at creating a book about PURL Marketing, and today, it is complete!

The reason for writing the book was to provide marketers with an actionable, step-by-step guide to create PURL campaigns. I have found that there is so much content out there touting just how great PURLs are –  Case studies, research, statistics, all show just how wonderful PURLs are (or can be).

But there is nothing out there when it actually comes to creating a PURL campaign.  I have a theory on why that is the case…  The “other guys” want you to think that it is hard to create PURL campaigns so that they can charge you an absurd amount of money to do it all for you.

Well I have a secrete… PURL Campaigns are not hard to execute!   You can do it yourself and PURL Marketing can be your guide!

I just finished reading Why Churn is SO critical to success in SaaS by David Skok. I have always been aware of Churn, and it’s impact it has on a business that has a monthly revenue model, but it is something that I have largely neglected to pay attention to over the years.

Mark MacLeod, Partner at Real Ventures, points out that the churn rate is the most important metric for the long term success of a monthly revenue business. The lower the churn, the more revenue you will generate from each customer.  This increases the customer lifetime value, enables you to invest more in customer acquisition, which helps you grow faster!

I thought that David’s blog was one of the most intuitive posts on the topic I have seen, and it inspired me to take a look at Purlem’s churn rates. The results were very interesting…

As the chart below shows, a year ago Purlem’s churn rate was 30%!  This is saying that for the month of May, 2011, 30% of paying Purlem users cancelled their account.  Not good!  Mark MacLeod says that from his experience churn rates should be 5% or lower to have a true long term money maker.

The good news is that today, Purlem has a Churn rate at 6%!  I huge improvement from a year ago.  I credit this to both the instantPURL and Landing Page Editor that we released in the past year.  Both features helped those “non-techy” users to still create PURL campaigns and engage with the application.

My goal is to get the churn rate below the 5% as Mark suggests.  Actually, I think it is achievable to have it down in the 3-4% range. This is what I’m going to be doing to try and reduce Purlem’s churn:

• Follow up with cancelled users
  I was much better at doing this when Purlem was in it’s infancy.  Recently I have not been following up with cancelled users at all.  So time for this to change.  I now have an alert sent to my inbox every time a user cancels with the email and phone number.  For each user I will attempt to reach out to them and ask why they have cancelled.  Hopefully this will help me to have a better understand for why users cancel, and take actions to help prevent it in the future.
• Add more API integrations
  I have a hypotheses that by adding more API integrations with email marketing and CMS platforms, the application will not only get easier to use, but will increase the “stickiness” level.
• Target larger users
  There are many users that use Purlem on a temporary basis.  This is because they are smaller companies with only a couple campaigns a year that use PURLs.   By starting to target larger users, it churn rate could potentially decrease because they will have a steadier stream of campaigns to use with PURLs.

Heading out to our home in Breckenridge, CO with my parents.  This is what I call a mobile office!

Last night I shared a drink (and some delicious oysters) with Ajay Goel - founder of JangoMail. JangoMail is an email marketing platform that Ajay has grown into the multi-million dollar company it is today.

When networking in the Chicago startup scene, it often seems like a “lifestyle” business is sometimes laughed at.  There are so many people looking to become the next Instagram.   They laugh at people with meager goals of earning a good living, while maintaining a “well-balanced” life.  To them, it’s billions or bust.

I think this is why Ajay and I connected.  We both started our companies as single founders, never took on investors, and have an appreciation for a well balanced lifestyle.  Ajay has brought JangoMail to a level that I aspire for Purlem to reach, and he did it in a way that I deeply admire.

I met with Ajay yesterday to bounce some ideas off him regarding Purlem’s growth.  I explained to him that people currently find Purlem by going to Google, and searching for something like “PURL Marketing” or “Personalized URLs.”  They are already aware of the technology, the benefits it provides, and are simply looking for the right provider.  These users are typically print providers or marketing agencies (the traditional verticals for PURLs).

Ajay helped me to realize that the real potential of PURLs doesn’t lie in this traditional market.  Really, anybody that users email marketing or direct mail could use PURLs.

The challenge will be that to successfully sell to email marketers, I will have to…

1. Explain to them what PURLs are
2. Define the benefits of PURLs
3. Show them what options they have to execute their PURL campaigns

… and only after these are completed can begin selling Purlem.  Essentially, we’re introducing a new technology, and will need to approach marketing in this light.

So that will be the challenge moving forward.  I guess it’s time to get my marketing hat out and figure out what the best way is to introduce PURLs to email marketers.  This is going to be fun…

QR Codes come up in conversation with prospects and customers quite often.  Usually the conversation starts with something like… Do QR Codes work?  My answer – It depends. (I know, I hate that answer as well!)

A recent study by comScore found that 6.2 percent of the total mobile audience, scanned a QR code on their mobile device.

Let’s assume that 44% of your audience has a smart phone, and you send out a Direct Mail or Email Marketing blast to 1,000 people.

1,000 People receive your marketing piece
44% have a smart phone
———–
440 People with smart phones
6%  Have scanned a QR Code in the past
———–
26 People will potentially scan the QR Code
2% is an average Direct Mail response rate
———–
0.5 People will likely scan your QR Code 

So for every 1,000 people, you can expect 0.5 to scan your QR Code.  From my experience, this seems to be about right.  Obviously every campaign and market is different.

Learn more about adding QR Codes to your Direct Mail piece using Purlem and Adobe Photoshop.

Despite the dismal QR Code responses, they do one thing extremely well.
QR Codes are perfectly positioned to showcase that your company as “cutting-edge” and innovative. QR Codes may not get direct responses, but if you want to brand your company as innovative, then using QR Codes is a great tactic.

My brother is getting married tomorrow. We had the rehearsal dinner yesterday, family party tonight, and wedding tomorrow.  It’s a three day event!  It is great to catch up with family that you only see once every couple years.  I am truely blessed with a great and loving family.

All the family time doesn’t leave much room for work.  Today, I have a 1 hour work day. I have to hunker down and attack what’s most important.  My routine is pretty consistent – wake up and while still in bed skim through/delete/unsubscribe emails, read blogs, look at my stocks, and finally a little Facebook to see what everybody has been up to.  Then its onto the computer where I answer the emails, and finally I use OmniFocus to help focus on what’s import ant actually make progress towards my goals. I’m always surprised when I really hunker down, just how much I can get accomplished in an hour.

The ability to take these 1 hour work days to focus on what is really important in life is a nice benefit of having my “lifestyle” business.  Yes, I said it, I have a lifestyle business, and I’m proud of it.  You better believe that my computer still comes with me wherever I go…  My wife now calls my computer my “mistress.”  Yes, it/she be at the wedding.

When I first started Purlem I remember saying -

I hope people know that when they cancel I take it personally!

Now, of course I was just trying to be funny, but there was definitely some truth in the statement.  Purlem is my baby, and when somebody cancelled their account, I couldn’t help but to feel a little rejected.

Eventually I had to understand that canceling users are inevitable.  In fact the pay-as-you-go model that Purlem has is beneficial for people that have changing needs for a PURL application.  They can upgrade, downgrade, and cancel whenever – and it is one of the reasons they decided to go with Purlem in the first place.

It’s always a pleasant surprise when I get an email from a user after they cancel their account.  Below are some of these emails I have received recently.

Thank you to everybody that has sent a personal cancellation email – it helps to deal with the loss

Just wanted to drop you a line because I just canceled my Purlem accounts.  I wanted to let you know that it’s not a reflection on my satisfaction with Purlem; in fact, I was very satisfied with your product and service and would use it again (if there’s a need) and recommend it to others.

I just wanted to say thank you for a great service. I will be back in a short amount of time to use your services !
Thank you for good support and guidance during this period of time.

I will highly recommend purlem to anyone in need of a solution such as yours. Great value and prompt service.

I love how super simple the setup is and it will have a fit for some of our clients for certain.
I’ve been pulled to another project and didn’t want to bill the client for something they weren’t going to use just yet.

PURLEM has been a Great Service, I would not have ever offered PURLS to our clients if PURLEM was not available. Currently, I just don’t have time to offer this to our clients due to the complexity of these print/purl orders and the resources required. Truly been a pleasure to work with you Marty!

P.S you should do something about better marketing your services as I never heard of you before and think this has a tremendous potential if more people knew about it.

Your service is awesome. We just are not using it right now. I will reopen in a few months when we have a handle on everything.
I have cancelled our Purlem-account today.
Just wanted to tell you, that I have been very pleased with your help and service.
We need a break to consider our “marketing strategies”, but if they include the use of PURLs in the future, we will definitely come back again.

Our purl campaign ended this month and our customer was pleased with the functionality. While they hoped for a better response rate to the mailing the feature and function set worked well. I will definitely recommend using your software again on our next purl campaign, just not sure when that will happen.

By the way, I’m sorry I had to cancel.  The client I thought was going to use your system decided to bail out on using Purls.  As soon as I find another client who is interested in PURLs, I should renew.

I’m very satisfied with Purlem so far. I will recommend the service to my customers.
I’m a freelance web developer and I do not need the service for myself. I will be back .-)

Your system works great, but it wasn’t meant to be for me right now.
Thanks for all your great support. I will highly recommend you to others and will write a review of the software to post on my site (and possibly elsewhere).

Canceled, not mad or anything at all like that.  The mail house we use gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse if we use their PURLs so we are going to give it shot. If it doesn’t pan out, we will be back, I like your system Marty. Just wanted to know that and more than anything, I appreciate your hands on approach in helping us.

I often hear marketers express frustration having to deal with multiple tools when executing their integrated marketing campaigns.  Sometimes I’m asked for advice on managing multiple platforms, and I say – We’ll I guess that’s why you have a job!

The biggest problem comes from keeping contacts and results in sync across the multiple platforms. A marketer can have an application to manage their contacts, send out emails, create landing pages, manage social networks,  etc..

Here is an interesting study by eMarketer that shows the Average Number of Tools Used by US Marketing Professionals. A majority use between between 3 – 6 tools.  Okay, somewhat manageable.  But look a the 13% that use 10 or more tools!  What a nightmare!

I have been aware of this problem for a few years now, but it seems like it is starting to reach an all time high.  I imagine that APIs will be the solution to this problem. APIs allow applications to communicate and share information with each other, thus eliminating the marketer’s need to manage multiple tools.

I think that the Contact Management Systems, (such as salesforce, infusionsoft, and highrise) are best positioned to be the central “hub” for the API.  These applications can then reach out to all of the other marketing tools out there to communicate any updates, additions, results, etc.  Marketers would then only have to login to their CMS to see the results from all all their marketing tools.

This is a direction that Purlem is not taking lightly.  We are going to focus on developing our own API, as well as tying in with the CMS applications already out there, to make the process as seamless as possible. Together we can get rid of this problem for good!

A couple of days ago I had a great conversation with a good friend and mentor Erich Moor. Erich is always staying on top of new marketing trends, and I have him to thank for introduce me to PURLs.  If Erich didn’t come into my life, Purlem simply would not have existed. Thanks Erich for changing my life!

In our conversation he brought up a very challenging question – What is really working for marketers today? There are so many innovations in marketing, how can we take advantage fo what is out there?

The question prompted me to do a little research to find out where people today are putting their marketing dollars.  I came across study from Forbes’ Report: Bringing 20/20 Foresight to Marketing. This gives a nice oversight on how marketing dollars are shifting, but really no surprises.  We all know that online and mobile is hot, traditional print and broadcast is not.

When looking at what is actually working today, we can follow the money. The chart above makes it obvious that companies find value in online, social, and mobile marketing that focuses on customer acquisition and retention.

Online, Social and Mobile marketing allows marketers to know more about their customers and prospects than ever before.  I think we can all agree that advertisements will not become less targeted and less relevant as time goes on.  As the marketing dollars and attention shift to these online mediums, so will the targeted and personalized nature of the ads.

Going back to the original question… how do we take advantage of these new marketing trends?  As a marketer, your probably going to start with a Google search to see what types of marketing tools are out there to help manage your new marketing plan, and your probably going to be overwhelmed with what is out there.

It is easy to get caught up in new technology and think it will solve all of your marketing problems.  But the truth is that successful campaigns still depend on the basic principals of successful marketing (Product, Price, Promotion, Place).  The tools that are out there can only help to enhance a successfully executed marketing campaign. There is not a tool out there, nor do I think there ever will be, that will magically pull in new customers.

So where does one invest their time in moving forward.  The most important thing is to continually learn and understand the basic principals of successful marketing.  Don’t get overwhelmed by the number of new products and services that are out there.  Sure, stay on top of new products and trends, but view them as only tactics that can be used to give your marketing efforts a boost.

Secondly, I would say invest time in looking for creative ways to continually create more targeted, relevant and personalized ads.  Experiment with some of the tools and tactics out there that help you execute these types of campaign.  It’s when you combine these tools with a successfully executed campaign magic happens.