Breaking into a new market can be tough, even for an established business. You have to compete against existing businesses, carve a niche for yourself and learn about who your customers are. It’s no mean feat. But personalized URLs, also known as PURLs can make the job much easier.
Let’s say you’re the new outpost of a chain restaurant expanding into a new area. You realize that you need to understand more about your customer base, so you buy a list of a cross-section of addresses in the area. You decide to send them a coupon for a free sandwich or soft drink. All they have to do to redeem their coupon is to log onto a website using the PURL provided.
Since no one can resist the allure of free stuff, you suddenly have a wealth of people who are willing to complete a brief survey, tell you a little about themselves, even connect to their social networks so they can share the coupon with their friends. In a few short days, you’ve wound up with a treasure trove of information that would have taken you months and expensive customer research to develop on your own. Not only do you now understand the customer base of the area better, you have a brand new list of people who are interested in your product. In effect, it’s the perfect springboard to your marketing.
When you engage in a direct mail campaign, you should never look at the direct mail campaign as an end to itself, though of course in many ways it is. But when you combine those direct mail campaigns with digital marketing, suddenly your campaign becomes a focus group, a survey, a loyalty club and many, many other useful things you need to get your marketing off on the right foot. Always recycle the information you receive—find your most dedicated customers, the ones who always go to your PURLs right away. Identify those who don’t respond and try to discover why. Maybe it’s a messaging issue; maybe they don’t have home computers; maybe they have a vendetta against your brand. It’s hard to say, but if you never ask, you’ll never know.
For more information on how you can use PURLs, direct mail marketing or other techniques to break into new markets, call Premier Advantage Marketing. We work with restaurants, banks, credit unions, mortgage brokers and many other kinds of business to help them find and keep great customers. We’d love to help you get started today.
The post How to Use PURLs to Establish a Marketing Database appeared first on Direct Mail Marketing 101.
