Margie Dana

Using Print to Drive Customers to the Web
with a Real Gem: pURLs

Companies-formerly-known-as-printers who use online technologies to complement their ink-on-paper offerings are helping the industry inch forward.

In the old days, printers did everything - the design, the typesetting, the proofreading, the job creation, and of course, the printing. In the past 20 years, customers took everything back but the printing. As a result, printers have been adding products and services like crazy, including mailing and fulfillment, promotional items, CD replication, and digital asset management.

The industry is re-inventing itself. Down the road, you won't recognize the printers of yore.

Progressive printers and other communications firms are going further by integrating their products and services with new (digital) media.

Consider the pURL. No, not the knitting stitch purl, the "personalized URL" pURL. It's a fairly new technology that integrates printing with the Web. I know a couple of local firms who offer pURLs as a service, and for a more detailed explanation of this technology, I spoke with David Trombino, CEO of TecDoc Digital Solutions in Hudson, MA (www.tecdocdigital.com).

The whole goal of a pURL is to collect information. Creating a pURL begins with special software. (Trombino's firm uses Mindfire.) Using the software and a client's database information, a firm like Tec Doc Digital creates personalized web pages. They then create a direct mail campaign (or an email campaign) to drive each prospect to their pURL, and the fun begins.

The objective of a pURL is to further improve your ability to target/improve relevancy in future communications with your database contacts. So you must begin with a good, solid strategy, not the creative. Your goal is to get permission to communicate with each pURL visitor in the future.

A typical pURL campaign is short, maybe only four pages. The welcome page has the same type of imagery as on the direct mail piece. The visual theme of the pURL is very specifically related to the email or print campaign.

Your goal is to get email addresses right away. Once you capture emails - only with visitors' permission, of course - you have established a whole new way of marketing to your prospects. "Using pURLS allows you to get the customer to tell you how to sell to them," Trombino added. It's permission based. You're moving from print communications to email communications. You can add password functionality to your pURL for added security.

Let's say you get one of these postcards, and the product or service being pitched is something you can really use. You log onto the supplied pURL, supply your email address, and hit "Submit." You then get to a page with a short survey, which has been designed to capture information about you that will help the pURL originator serve you better. Some firms, noted Trombino, might create a pURL campaign just to improve the accuracy of their CRM data (Customer Relationship Management), or maybe they need to update contact information. A pURL campaign is a good solution for this.

Trombino's firm recently created its own pURL to determine its customers' primary marketing objectives. They sent out a postcard to drive people to their pURL. Once there, visitors saw some marketing options in a short survey. By determining customers' marketing priorities, Tec Doc Digital's next communication with each survey respondent would be further targeted. Goodbye mass marketing, hello personalized communications.

You can also create a "redirect" page on a pURL to actually complete a sale. For example, you could ask a few survey questions and based on the responses, redirect visitors to a page on your own web site, where they can see the products they've indicated an interest in.

The analytics are powerful and thorough, added Trombino. As soon as someone goes to a pURL, every click is captured. You can track how many people landed on the welcome page, how many completed the survey, how many clicked through to every page (and from where), and so on. Also, when a visitor hits the final submit button, you can then have a lead generation report sent within seconds to a specific sales support person for immediate follow up. It's a matter of setting the triggers up.

A successful pURL doesn't favor one industry over another. But it only works if you're a data-driven marketer - and, of course, if your market uses the Internet.

The bottom line is always… the bottom line. Studies by InfoTrends, PODI, and the USPS suggest that you can get response rates up to six times over those of generic, stand-alone direct mail campaigns by using data, personalization, and customization in an integrated web/print campaign that's relevant to the recipient.

Have you participated in or created a pURL? I'd love to get your feedback, so please share some with me at .

Thank you, David, for my pURL tutorial. David can be reached at (978) 567-6006.

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