Todd Schnick , Intrepid, LLC

The average consumer is bombarded with thousands of messages and pieces of information each day - through the mail box, by email, the internet, television, radio, billboards, hot air balloons, word of mouth, etc.

The lesson? You NEED to stand out from all the clutter! How? By having your tactical marketing stand out from the rest!

This isn't easy. In fact, it's a real challenge. But what if there was just such a tool that would generate not only new prospects for your business - BUT qualified prospects - AND be different and unique? Would you be interested?

PURL campaigns are just such a device to help you find QUALIFIED prospects - and stand out from the clutter! What is it? A PURL is a communication - either in email form or direct mail form - that has a personalized call to action - which drives the reader to a personalized website. In fact, that's what PURL means - Personal URL.

Direct mail response rates - traditional direct mail response rates - are considered strong if you can achieve a 2% response rate. If you can achieve this - consistently with traditional direct mail - you should invest in direct mail - as often as you can.

But, what if you could do a piece of direct mail and achieve a response rate of over 10%? Would you be interested? In fact, could you even handle a 10% response rate (but that's a question for another day…).

Such a tool exists. And it is simple to execute! PURL campaigns, while they are growing in popularity, are still not used too often. But that's the magic! You will distinguish yourself! In fact, in all the years I have lived at my current home, I have received only one PURL mailing…

Here is how it works:
You send the initial communication - which is either a piece of direct mail or an email. (For purposes of this discussion, we will assume a piece of direct mail - which is the more common application for PURLs).

Like any piece of direct mail, it must be sent to the right target, contain a compelling offer, and a strong call-to-action. Without these, your campaign will fail. But the difference here is the call-to-action is the PURL - which offers a personalized website for recipient to visit.

As you probably guessed, people are obviously curious to visit a website that contains their personal name. They can't help but wonder what the page looks like. Curiosity is an important driver - just so as you recognize that you still need a compelling message sent to appropriate targets. But, no doubt a personalized website is pretty cool - and you should take advantage of that fact!

Once they get to the initial landing page, the prospect is greeted with another personalized message. Welcome Todd! This continues to draw them in, and interests them in reading and learning more. It is here that you have an opportunity to add more power to your message with different ways of personalizing. You can talk about the town where they live, the type of car they drive, or the kind of interior design options they have expressed an interest in. (Obviously, the more data going in to the campaign - the better).

For instance, if they are in the market for a certain type of hardwood floor, you can tailor the PURL landing page to insert a picture of the style floor they expressed an interest in sometime back.

After you have kept them riveted with personal messages, you then take the most important next step - further qualifying your prospect. To do so, you can offer incentives - such as registering them for a free iPod, customer discounts, free dinner, etc.) to take the next step.

Once you have incentivized them to take the next step, you move to the next phase of the PURL landing page - key data collection. Understand what additional information you would want to know from a prospect, and ask it. The data you collect here accomplishes two goals - provides valuable information for your sales team to use in their follow-up - and two, demonstrates how serious of a prospect they are. Remember - the goal isn't to collect more prospects - the goal is to find more QUALIFIED prospects.

The final phase of the campaign is to have your prospect verify their contact information - and then to select and request a specific follow-up action. That could be requesting a phone conference, a face-to-face meeting, participation in a webinar, participation in a comprehensive survey, a free consultation, etc. The possibilities are endless.

At the end of the day, the goal is to identify more qualified prospects. Traditional direct mail is less expensive, but results in lower response rates. PURL campaigns are more expensive - but see a dramatic increase in the amount of qualified prospects you will collect - all while helping differentiate you from all the clutter.

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