Purlem Blog

Pricing Variable Data Printing

Martin Thomas — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:18:44 +0000

The technology that allows you to print a Personalized URL (PURL) on each direct mail piece is called Variable Data printing.

A couple years back I survey over 100 printers on how much they would charge for printing 1,000 variable data postcards with a PURL . The printers surveyed in this study can be seen at printvdp.com – and is a nice resource if your looking for a variable data printer.

Here are the project specs that were used for the quote:

1000 Postcards4x6
4x6
100#
Full Bleed
3 Elements of variable data (no variable images):
1) Persons first name (on the front side)
2) Personal URL address (on the front side)
3) Mailing address (back)
Data Source: Excel file containing all Variable Data
Art: Art provided in requested format

What I found from the research is that many printers have no idea on how to properly price variable data. For the exact same project, I received quotes ranging from $100 to $995! For the same exact project!

The average quote was $330.

So this is all to say – make sure to get a couple, if not a few different quotes for your next variable data project.

PURL Offers – What Works? What Doesn’t?

Martin Thomas — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 22:55:45 +0000

Getting the Offer right is a crucial part of a successful PURL Campaign.

In my post The 60/30/10 Rule for Successful PURL Campaigns, I argued that The Offer is responsible for approximately 30% of the overall success of a PURL campaign. Which begs the question – what makes for a good offer.

To attempt to answer that question, I evaluated The Offers from over 150 PURL case studies. All case studies were from The ULTIMATE PURL Case Study Directory, which I released last month.

The first thing I did was place each offer into one of 7 Categories:

Giveaway
Drawing
Giveaway & Drawing
RSVP
Discount
Learn More
Other

Then I averaged the response rate received across each offer category. The results are placed in the chart below. The results were more or less what I expected. A simple call to action of “Learn More..” was not very enticing only pulling an average 10.5% response. And combining a Giveaway & Drawing was more enticing that just one or the other. Af first I was surprised to see that the RSVP pulled in the highest average response. But after thinking about it, people that receive RSVP invitations typically know who the sender is. It is likely a very targeted and well qualified list. So it actually makes sense that it would pull such a strong response.

Offer Type	Avg Response
RSVP:	27.22%
Giveaway & Drawing:	25.95%
Giveaway:	19.71%
Drawing:	14.75%
Other:	13.66%
Discount:	11.55%
Learn More:	10.55%

Listed below are the actual offers from each category. Links are provided to the case study source. All links were working at the time the case studies were gathered, but some may break with time.

Hopefully this will be a good resource for you to brainstorm your next PURL offer.

RSVP

Giveaway & Drawing

Giveaway

Drawing

Other

Discount

Learn More

4 New Purlem Design Themes

Martin Thomas — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:52:49 +0000

Unleash your creative genius with our 4 new design themes just introduced today!

Easily make them your own by adding your images, logos, colors, fonts, and more. Adding video and other media is a snap. And they are pre-optimized for mobile so they will look great on all of your devices.

You don’t have to be a web developer to create beautiful PURL landing pages.

A PURL Word Cloud

Martin Thomas — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:27:50 +0000

After creating the Ultimate PURL Case Study Directory, I thought it might be interesting to create a word cloud from the data. So I copied out the content from each case study, and used TagCrowd.com to generate a word cloud from the most frequently used words.

Thought it was pretty interesting how good of a showing words like students, university, alumni, and college made. Think universities are having some success using PURLs as a recruiting tool?

The ULTIMATE PURL Case Study Directory

Martin Thomas — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:10:21 +0000

We scoured the web to bring to you the the most complete directory of Personalized URL (PURL) case studies to date. It’s the ULTIMATE PURL Case Study Directory, and it’s yours to Download for Free.

The directory offers more than 150 PURL Case Studies, sorted by industry and boiled down the essentials – The List, The Offer & The Creative. Providing you with a birds-eye view of what makes a successful PURL campaign.

The online companion – allowing you to search and sort through the case studies – can be found on our delicious feed:
https://delicious.com/purlem

It’s our hope that this collection of PURL case studies will provide inspiration for your next great PURL campaign.

Enjoy!

Alphagraphic’s PURL Campaign Proves the Value of an Effective List

Martin Thomas — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:15:24 +0000

In 2009 AlphaGraphics released their Rubik’s Cube PURL Campaign. The goal of the campaign was to generate new leads for each individual AlphaGraphics store. The first group of Alphagraphics stores had an average response rate of 23%. The campaign was so successful that AlphaGraphics corporate decide to rerun the campaigns for 31 other locations.

Do you know what happened with these 31 locations? The response rates ranged from 3-46%! Everything was the same – the creative, offer, sales follow ups, emails, EVERYTHING! The one thing that was different between each location – THE LIST!

Each Alphagraphics location chose their own lists to market to. In order to ensure the quality of the list, some sales representatives were responsible for covering the cost of the direct mail pieces. Putting the financial responsibility on the sales representatives gave them incentive to create the most effective lists possible.

Maybe it was the sales person’s fault? Maybe it was the geographic location? Or maybe, just maybe, some lists were purchased and others were generated in house.

I have a hunch that the Alphagraphics locations with the 46% response rates had a list of interested prospects that have previously shown interests and gave alphagraphics permission to market to them. What do you think?

Source: AlphaGraphics Solves Direct Marketing Puzzle with Rubik’s Cube Campaign

How to Track Offline Marketing with Campaign URLs

Martin Thomas — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:52:37 +0000

So you need to track your offline marketing efforts to see which ads are working and which aren’t?

Accomplishing this is really quite easy. The trick is to simply give each advertisement its own unique Campaign URL. For instance…

TV	mycampaign.com/tv
Billboard	mycampaign.com/billboard
Magazine	mycampaign.com/magazine

In this case, the TV, Billboard, and Magazines ads each has their own URL. When combined with Google analytics, these Campaign URLs will give you insight onto which ads are generating the most profit for your business.

Here are the 4 simple steps to creating your Campaign URLs…

1) Create Campaign Folder

First we want to create the campaign folder. To help get you started, download the landing_pages.zip file.

If you unzip this file, you will find that it contains a folder named TV. The folder name will define the unique part of the URL. For example…

If your folder is named TV, the URL will be mycampaign.com/TV
If your folder is named Billboard, the URL will be mycampaign.com/Billboard

Feel free to rename the folder to whatever you would like the unique part of your URL to be. I’ll still continue to refer to this folder as the “TV” folder.

Open the TV folder and find a file named index.html.

You can open this index.html file with a simple text editor such as Mac’s TextEdit, PC’s Notepad, or any HTML editor.

If your familiar with HTML, this doesn’t need much explanation. Simply replace the the Google Analytics code with your own, set the page that you want to redirect the visitor to, upload to your server, and your done.

If you need more explanation, read on…

2) Define the Redirect Page

With the index.html file open, find the line that says…

window.location.href = "http://mycampaign.com"

Replace mycampaign.com with the domain name that you would like the visitor redirected to.

You may notice that we’re using javascript’s setTimeout function. We do this to make sure that Google Analytics has enough time to actual register the visit, before redirecting. This is important, otherwise you may be missing out on tracking crucial hits!

Save the file.

3) Adding Google Analytics

If you don’t already have a Google Analytics account, set one up now.

Find and copy your Google Analytics Tracking Code.

Next locate the Google Analytics Code in the index.php file.

Delete the existing Google Analytics Code and replace it with yours.

Save the file

4) Upload to Your Website

Next you will upload the TV folder to your website. If your unsure how to do this, Godaddy has a terrific tutorial on Uploading Files to Your Website.

After the upload is completed test out your work by visiting yourdomain.com/TV (or whatever you renamed the TV folder to). You should be redirected to the final destination page, and the results should be tracked in Google Analytics.

A little hint – when testing, Google Analytic’s Real-Time feature is awesome. This way you can see your testing activity tracked in real-time.

Personalized URLs for Extra Credit

Campaign URLs are great for when your working with static advertisements. A static ad does not change – every person sees the exact same ad – think magazines and billboards.

But there are other advertising mediums that make it really easy to personalize the ad to each and every recipient - think email or direct mail.

Your already doing this with email. If you ever sent out an email blast, you likely greeted each person by their name – “Hi Joe,” or “Hi Sally,”. This is personalization in action. But now your going to take it to a whole new level.

The call to action in your email is probably something like…

“To learn more visit our website at Gizmo.com.”

A Personalized URL will take “Gizmo.com” and personalize it to each and every recipient. Such as…

JoeSmith.Gizmo.com
SallyAnderson.Gizmo.com
BillJones.Gizmo.com

You get the idea. Everybody, get’s their own Personalized URL. Personalized URLs take campaign URLs to a whole new level. Now, your not only tracking which campaigns are getting the most response, now you tracking exactly who is responded to your message, when they responded, and what actions they took. This, my friend, is extremely valuable information!

Utilizing Personalized URLs will significantly increase your response and conversion rates. Ultimately, that means more money in your pocket!

So when is it appropriate to use Campaigns URLs vs Personalized URLs? Here is a brief chart showcasing which advertisement mediums are best suited for each.

Campaign URLs	Personalized URLs
Magazines Billboards TV Press Releases Newspapers Flyers Online Banners	Postcards Direct Mail Letters Email

I know what your thinking… These Personalized URL things must be expensive. And you would be right… 10 years ago! But technology in the last decade has made Personalized URLs not only affordable, but extremely easy to use.

Variable Data Printing is the technology that allows printers to dynamically print the unique Personalized URL on each Postcard, Direct Mail Piece, or letter. This used to be an expensive process. Now, nearly every printer has the technology and can execute it for pennies.

Actually creating the Personalized URLs (also known as PURLs), also used to be very expensive and time consuming. Now, you can get started with 100 PURLs for free with our software – Purlem.com. And it is so incredibly easy!

Purlem’s Blog gets a New Look & Strategy

Martin Thomas — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:38:18 +0000

I have been blogging on Purlem’s blog since 2008 and published 271 posts.

I can directly attribute a total of 9 people that signed up to Purlem from the blog. There are also only 18 people following the blog on feedburner.

Something needs to change.

Now… there are a lot of other benefits of blogging besides the tangible results. I may continue to “ramble” on a different blog in the future to reap these other benefits, but I don’t think the diary style is working for Purlem.

My goal moving forward with Purlem is to be more strategic about each post. This will involve creating a content calendar, and spending much more time on writing each post. This will likely also mean that the time between posts will be substantially longer – once a week, once every other… I’m not sure.

At the same time, I think that mainting a personality behind a blog is extremely valuable.

Hubspot has a blog with great content – and seems to be working great for them. But it’s so cookie cutter that it sacrifices having a personality. Seem’s like everything can be accomplished in 8 easy steps!

I’m going to try and walk the line of offering great content while still maintaining a personality. I think it’s important for people that stumble across Purlem’s blog to realize that were much more then content pushers. That were real people that really care about our product, and not a bunch of content producers that are looking to make a buck. Moo.com’s blog is one that I think pulls this off well, and will be something I use for inspiration as I consider the direction to take Purlem.

Allow Website Visitors to Create their own PURLs

Martin Thomas — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:32:29 +0000

We recently released our API that opens the door for some really interesting integrations for PURL campaigns. One way people are integrating with the API is by allowing website visitor’s to create their own PURL.

One of the prerequisites to use Personalized URLs, is that you have to first know who is visiting the landing page. But with this workflow, you can ask the visitor for their information, then instantly redirect them to their PURL. This will allow you to collect valuable information from your website visitors while provided them with personalized and relevant information.

Executing something like this is very easy. To learn more see the tutorial - Inserting a new PURL contact through a form on your website.

Below is a very simplistic example of this feature.

QR Codes Still Rising

Martin Thomas — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:38:38 +0000

Many are still skeptical of the future of QR Codes. I’m actually one of the skeptics. When I ask friends or family if they have heard of QR Codes I generally get a blank stare. Even if I try to clarify by saying “you know, those square bar codes,” I get an “ohh yaaaa…?” as if there suppose to know but still have no idea.

But whether were believers in QR Codes or not, there’s no doubt there alive and growing. Pitney Bows 2012 QR Codes Report had some very significant findings…

QR Codes are fast becoming an essential addition to today’s marketing toolbox
On average – across US, UK, France and Germany – 15% of people have used a QR code – a ‘significant minority’
Of the countries surveyed, QR code usage is most prevalent in the US (19%), followed by UK (15%), Germany (14%) and France (12%)
On average, across the countries surveyed, QR codes have been used by 27% of 18-34 year-olds
QR codes placed in magazines attract most usage across the countries surveyed (15%)

One of the best implementation of QR Codes is to integrate them with a Personalized Landing Page. Purlem makes this extremely easy. See this tutorial on adding Personalized QR Codes to your direct mail pieces with Photoshop.