Before I started Purlem, I had a problem – I had entrepreneurial seizures all of the time. (Hats off to Michael Gerber from coining that term). An entrepranurel seizure is when a person has an idea, and drops everything to ignorantly pursue their dream.

I remember the day when my wife very kindly shook me and told me to focus on one thing. It was a much needed wakeup call (thanks Kate). That one thing ended up being Purlem, and I focused on that relentlessly for the past 4+ years.  The days of my entrepreneurial seizes have thankfully come to an end.

Given my experience with Purlem, I feel as if I can be much more strategic when it comes to properly handling new ideas that come my way.
Business plans are replaced with a business model canvas. Financial statements are replaced with a quick napkin sketch to show how the business can be profitable. Planning is replaced by action.

Every idea has a set of assumptions:

• I believe I can get 100 people to purchase my widget.
• They would be willing to pay $10 for my widget.
• My target customer is woman between ages 25-30.

The first step to pursuing an idea is simply to prove that your assumptions are right or wrong.  Instead of writing a business plan around your assumptions, get out of the office and prove them. One of the best ways to do this is to setup interviews with your target market. Interview as many as possible and learn from them. Then, from what you learn, create a minimum viable product, and see if you can actually get sales.

If you assumptions prove to be right, then you can start to pay more attention the the how the business will actually work. If your assumptions are proven false, then you didn’t waste your time chasing a dream.

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.

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!

Given the increasing popularity of coffee shop workers.. I have always thought it would be a good idea to create a “private” or “urban country club” type of coffee shop. Something in-between a public coffee shop (with no outlets), and a co-working space.

To which Arik Responded:

Great idea. Even if shops just offered a private room, I think that would be a big win (and I know some do).

As a work-at-homer myself, I find myself going to work at a coffee shop at least once a week to get some work done.  In Chicago, most coffee shops are packed with telecommuters.  Good luck getting a seat, let alone a power outlet! Receiving phone calls and using the bathroom also pose a problem.  Do I pack up my computer to leave my seat?  Ask the person next to me to watch it?  In other words, the current coffee shop environment is not ideal for telecommuters.

Another option for telecommuters that want to work outside of home is co-working spaces.  These spaces have become increasing popular over the last couple of years.  Here are some Chicago co-working spaces:

• http://coworkchicago.com
• http://www.1871.com
• http://officeportnetwork.com
• http://www.enerspacechicago.com

I gave this whole co-working thing a try.  My biggest problem with it… It feels like work!  It’s an office.  It’s exactly what I wanted to escape from. I also feel like I need to socialize with people in the work space, and it takes away from my work.  I know that a lot of people enjoy the co-working thing, but I have a feeling that I’m not alone here.

As I mentioned in my comment on Arik’s post, I think it would be ideal to have something in between a public coffee shop (like Starbucks), and a co-working space.  Call it a “private coffee shop.”  I’m not sure exactly how it would work.  Maybe a small monthly fee like a 24 hour fitness.  Or maybe members actually buy into equity like a private country club. However it would work, it would still feel like a coffee shop, but would be better suited for the telecommuters.

Recently, two “coffee shops” have opened with a business model very similar to what I’m proposing:

• http://www.speakeasyindy.com
• http://www.topicsusa.com

The fact that these companies are starting to pop up supports my hypothesis that there is a need in the marketplace for this type of business.

There is also plenty of room for growth in this market. A recent study - The State of Telework in the U.S.  found that more than 16 million people already work remotely at least once a month. Based on the historical growth rate reported by WorldatWork (roughly 12% per year), without any acceleration, that number will reach the theoretical maximum of 50 million people by 2018.

Finally.. I have a thought about how somebody could continue to prove the idea before actually jumping in.  Create a landing page for the idea, print out some business cards, and start handing them out at busy coffee shops.  See how much traction and emails the landing page gets.  If you get thousands of emails interested in the concept, we might have something worth pursuing.

So what do you think.  Good idea?

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.