At Dukky, we know that pURLs are a powerful marketing tool, and we increase their value even more by adding social sharing capabilities and powerful analytics.

This a roundup of case studies of direct marketing campaigns that have successfully used pURLs to increase response.  Some of these case studies are ours, but not all of them-my aim with this post is to create a resource for marketers who are interested in learning more about pURLs.  If you know of any applicable case studies not mentioned here, feel free to post them in the comments.

Clearview Mall- In this campaign, Dukky helped Clearview Mall get over an 8% response rate. Previously, Clearview Mall considered a 1% response rate to be something to celebrate.

Cafe Express- a 17% response rate using Dukky.

Bra Genie/Canada Flowers- Two email campaigns, one with a 19% response rate and one with a 26% response rate.

Variable Thinking’s PURL Case Study Collection- A collection of 11 case studies from variable printing.

University of Alabama- A good, in-depth case study of how the University of Alabama used pURLs to increase football season ticket renewals.

Gore-Tex- A look at how Gore-Tex used pURLs to generate a 16% increase in sales.

VMI Foundation- This case study describes how the VMI Foundation used pURLs along with email and direct mail  to create a more effective fundraising campaign.

CEA Marketing Case Study- Describes how a Gulf Coast waterfront resort created a successful direct mail/email campaign using pURLs.

Rosemont College:   A look at how Rosemont College used a pURL-based campaign to reconnect with alumni.

And a couple of slide shows:

The rising popularity of Social Networks have opened up to marketers an entirely new arena to pursue. In a recent study by Nielson Group they found , two-thirds of the world’s internet population visits a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all internet usage time, according to a study by Nielson group.¹ As new dynamics in this industry are emerging, the basic questions as to how to effectively merge traditional marketing mediums with social networks has not been answered……until now.

Consider this:

You are sending a traditional marketing email to your database (2,500 records).  This means the absolute maximum reach potential of your campaign will be those 2,500 customers.

With the integration of social sharing into your email marketing campaign you are not just gaining access to your current customer database, but you are now gaining access to your Customer’s Friend List. Whether their friends on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site, integrating this simple step into your marketing mediums will expand your reach exponentially.

With the simple theory of multiplication, your reach has the potential to double, triple, and beyond by accessing your customer’s friends, who also have the potential to share with their friends.

New Maximum Reach:   Exponential

Cost increase:   $0

Being able to integrate sharing on Social Networks into an email marketing campaign allows the retailer to reach customers at an unprecedented rate. Traditional Email Marketing doesn’t create communication between the retailer and customer, however, with Dukky’s Software integrated into a Traditional Email Campaign, the customer is engaged, leading to higher redemptions.

Three powerful things occur from Sharing on Social Networks:

1. 1. Company Awareness Increases
2. 2. Customer Base is expanded
3. 3. Friend-to-Friend Sharing is more powerful than Company to Customer sharing.

Local Companies

Bra Genie, a specialty bra-fitting salon, was looking for a way to promote their Holiday Specials and Offers to their customers and surrounding area. With no online shopping options on their website, all marketing goals are to increase in-store traffic. Their traditional medium, email marketing, was not generating the response they wanted or needed.

Campaign Objective: Increase store traffic for Holiday Sales

After the simple addition of Dukky’s Software to their email marketing, they saw a 19.27% response to their email marketing campaign with Dukky. Better than any other response before.

Dukky Analytics reported:

Email Database:   5,274 Records

Emails Opened:    2,056

Response Clicks:      709

Social Sharing: 44

Response from Social: 253 (from 44 of Response Clicks that shared)

Total Response: 1,104 (19.27%)

The Dukky Platform used Bra Genies compelling offer for “10% off the Next Purchase” to drive customers to a custom micro site.  From there, customers were taken through a survey and card activation process. This process was vital, not just to gather information about Bra Genie’s customers, but because the time invested created a psychological commitment between Bra Genie and the customer further reinforcing the end goal: Redemption.

Bra Genie was able to gather valuable data from their customers to help with future  marketing campaigns. They were able to gather Purchase Intent for that offer, gain information on if they should add an online store to their website, and hear from their customers about adding more products to their store and which ones were most desired.

Customers were then given the opportunity to receive an additional offer by sharing the offer with friends on any social network. Bra Genie reported 44 customers shared the coupons on social networks resulting in 253 additional responses from social sharing.

The 253 responses as a result of Social Sharing, increased the total response by 25%.

The proof is in the numbers.  As a result of the one-week campaign, Bra Genie was provided with real time data stats on their campaign through Dukky’s Analytics Platform. As customers responded and shared the offers, Bra Genie was able to learn about their customers, monitor the new customers from Social Sharing and respond to capitalize on those responses.

Thanks to Dukky, Bra Genie, a locally owned company, will never advertise the same again. But Dukky isn’t just for local companies.

WEB BASED RETAILERS

CanadaFlowers.com is a family-run flower shop located in Southern Ontario. They have developed a strong web presence over the past 5 years with Online Marketing, but were ready to take their company to the next level. Equipped with Dukky’s technology, an email promotion was sent out to customers in their database promoting a 3-week special offer campaign.

Campaign Objective: Increase Online Presence

The Process: An email offer for $5 off your next flower order equipped with a PURL (Personalized Url) was sent to 3,202 customers in an email promotion. The email promotion personally addressed the customer and provided a link for them to click on to activate their offer. PURL Example: www.canadaflowersoffer.com/johnsmith

Results: Canada Flowers had a 26.10% total response rate from their email campaign  with a total of 1096 responses coming from Emails and Sharing.  Of the total responses, 367 were the results of adding Sharing to their campaign resulting in 385 of their total hits.

Conversion: The campaign results in 230 conversions, a 7.14 % conversion rate.

The results from this campaign compared to previous periods, grew 450%.

Increase Traffic, Increase Rankings

As a result of an increase in traffic to their website, the email campaign had a dramatic effect on the organic rankings of the website’s standing with search engines. Canadaflowers.com increased from a ranking of 131 to 8 for searches for flowers. Dukky’s software drove traffic to the site, which had a powerful domino effect on the continual marketing of the company reaching beyond the campaign dates.

It’s all about Conversion

The goal of every marketing campaign is ultimately to turn your advertising dollars into revenue. Until now, no other marketing mediums provided the means to track and engage customers in order to maximize a retailers customer base through sharing on social networks. Dukky’s cutting edge software is leading the way in the industry to establish a new normal for conversion.

Using Dukky’s Spider PURLS, retailers can 1) Engage customers, 2) Encourage social interaction, 3) Promote Business Offers and Specials, 4) Gather highly valuable information, and 4) Track each step of the process. From the moment the email is sent, received, shared, and until redemption occurs, the Dukky Analytics platform allows you to watch your reach increase. Reach maximization leads to increased conversion, which ultimately generates higher profits.

Dukky’s Software was designed with two things in mind: Conversion and Results

Social Networks integrated into current Email Marketing Campaigns result in exponential potential.

SOURCES: 1) “Global Faces and Networked Places.” Nielson Study Group. March 2009

The Personal URL (pURL) is a direct marketing tactic. Currently, it just might be the most effective method to encourage someone to look at a particular website. This tactic holds a number of possibilities to bring Relevance to your Marketing efforts.

I say “might be the most effective method” because you can waste a lot of money doing pURL campaigns incorrectly. A pURL simply combines a website address with the name of a specific prospect. For example:

http://www.YourName.YourDomain.com
or
http://www.TedVinzani.RelevanceSells.com (not a valid link)

If your name was in that link, you’d wake up and pay more attention to the email, direct mailer, brochure, or whatever the marketing piece that included your Personal URL.

Though many people by now have seen a pURL with their name included, seeing this type of link still captures their attention, if not their imagination. It’s the kind of marketing prospects identify with.

pURL Success and a Conference

On behalf of a client, in the Spring of 2007 I attended a conference for marketing professionals in the insurance industry. My client developed a powerful portal that could be used by an insurance company’s field sale agents to perform their own local advertising and marketing, among many other things.

We had the names, titles, addresses, and email addresses of most of the conference attendees. We sent a mailer with the envelope addressed using a handwriting font, and their own pURL printed at a jaunty angle to the side. Inside the package we included a 4″ x 5.25″ card. Here’s side one of that insert card:

pURL Side of the Insert Card

Notice the simple message. (By the way, this site is no longer active.)

You see, the attendees to this conference basically do two things, brand and advertise the company, AND support the advertising efforts of the field sales agencies.

Field insurance sales agency advertising does two things: 1) generate leads for local selling and 2) recruit new sales representatives. My client’s portal did just that. In addition, the portal made sure the insurance company’s brand was protected in local advertising while preventing the field agency from violating state and national compliance regulations imposed on all insurance and financial services companies.

Our pURL took the person to a mock-up portal with their name and company prominently displayed. While there, they could look at and modify on the fly, personalized, brand protected examples of local advertising. Also, every ad mock-up generated by the portal had the individual’s own name, address, etc. prominently displayed on the mock-up. And they could change their information, press ‘update,’ and see the new info in the mock-up in seconds.

We wanted the attendees to go to the pURL website ahead of time, and a number of them did, but what we really wanted was for them to look for me at the conference for a conversation.

While at the conference, I had my laptop and wireless capabilities. I’d simply enter their name in the pURL format and show each attendee right there how the portal would work for them.

Why This Campaign Succeeded

• The target audience really was interested in lead generation and recruiting
• The call to action was the conversation, though going to the site was great
• Therefore, the message was relevant and the call to action was logical

pURL Failure and a Trade Show

My second example revolves around an industry event also. Actually it is not a failure for pURL technology, just a failure to market properly. No tactic is either good or bad, it’s all in the execution.

In defense of the marketing communications client I worked with, we had just been given marketing responsibilities for this health and wellness technology startup with just about a month to go before the event. This new product to us was one of those rare, absolutely new and unheard of technologies that created a new marketplace. It was sort of like how no one knew they’d want a home computer in 1979.

So, we were tasked with a tightly deadlined marketing project before we could do our market analysis. The event was a Wellness Coaching trade show and conference for personal trainers and lifestyle coaches working in this growing health and wellness arena. Most of these coaches trained individuals or small businesses.

The goal of the show for our startup company client was to have these coaches come by and sign up to be distributors and dealers. To that end, the pURL campaign was designed to bring prospects to the booth. Hopefully they would look at the technology on the website ahead of time and get excited about the potential.

A guru in the industry had just written a new book, and the hook was an opportunity for the pURL receiver to go to the site and enter a drawing for a copy of this new bestseller.

The database of attendees held several thousand names, and each one received an oversized, personalized postcard with their own pURL prominently displayed as well as the contest offer. The website was a topnotch design effort utilizing video and excellent graphics.

The mechanics of this campaign, the oversized postcard, the beautiful website we designed, were all strong – but not enough. There was a fundamental flaw.

Why This Campaign Went Flat

• Weak contest offer – the book was on sale elsewhere at the show for $25
• The technology was too new and complex to grasp in a website
• The target audience was not a good prospect – NO Relevance in Marketing

Remember, we’d just gained the account for marketing. The next few months frustrated my client who spearheaded the effort himself. We finally stepped back and started from day one – Who IS the prospect?

Turns out these coaches wouldn’t sell a $500/20% margin product that they didn’t understand to someone who could spend that $500 on their services. And selling their services made them 100% of the profits.

The target audience of this pURL effort was all wrong.

After I sales-prototyped the product, I ended up calling on the Heads of HR and the Chief Medical Officers of Fortune 500 companies.

————

In summary, you must give a qualified prospect a personally meaningful message if you want to benefit from Relevance in Marketing. Heck that’s what you need to do to sell anything well.

A pURL campaign can deliver a Relevant Message as powerfully as anything can – better than most tactics – if you follow those tenants.

Most personalization I see doesn’t really follow through on Relevance. That’s why I write these articles.