Printers’ Web Presence — It’s All About PURLs

AS PRINT providers look to transform their businesses from primarily print-based to a broader range of marketing services, the Internet is becoming an increasingly important part of their business model. For some, that means adding Web design as part of their creative and design offerings. For others, it means adding Web-to-print, whether for ordering static documents or for allowing customers to customize—even personalize—documents based on templates.

But while Web-to-print, as an umbrella category, has been getting a lot of attention, another Internet-driven application is rapidly gaining momentum—the ability to use cross-media technology to create personalized URLs (or PURLs), which send recipients of print or e-mail contacts to their own personalized landing pages or “micro-sites.” There, marketing messages can be targeted to each respondent and their responses tracked and reported in near real-time.

As a reflection of the rising popularity of these applications, consider the news that came out of the industry in just a one-week period:

On January 30, MindFire sponsored a Webinar on the topic, which attracted 500 top printing executives from as far away as North America, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia and Europe.

The same day, XMPie announced that 170 users from 90 companies attended its first annual conference—not bad for a group that is only a few months old!

Several days later, Printable Technologies reported that, through its acquisition of certain assets of Prospect Smarter, it, too, had now acquired PURL technology capabilities.

Lower Cost Barriers

What’s driving all this? From a printer’s perspective, these applications, at their most basic level, can be very plug-and-play. They allow printers to provide personalized marketing and help their customers expand and develop their databases without having to have the same kind of detailed database knowledge that other one-to-one print personalization requires. Better yet, the “get in on the ground floor” price can be as little as $5,000 (through the new Printable ASP offering) and $10,000 to $15,000 for non-ASP offerings, which require a dedicated server or mini-server to create and host the actual URLs.

Thus, PURLs provide an enormous opportunity for printers to expand their marketing services without breaking the bank—at least, on a capital investment level (staffing and other infrastructure issues aside).

Besides adding non-print revenue streams, these applications drive something printers covet—printing revenue. Once you engage a customer in a cross-media campaign, not only do you generate revenue from the program development and execution but, since these campaigns are often (although not always) kicked off using direct mail and may include follow-up mailers, you generally get a nice print revenue stream, too.

An Alphagraphics location in LaGrange, IL, recently installed PURL technology and found that its first campaign was in the $25,000 range. Quite a difference from the typical print job that normally passes through its shop. “These projects are much bigger in dollar value than traditional print,” notes Al Schnell, owner of the franchise.

“Most sales in our business are $300 to $500. So $25,000 is a significant sale for us. We are looking at 10 percent growth due to PURL-driven campaigns.”

PURL campaigns also allow print providers to more easily move into a marketing support role, even helping their customers develop and optimize client databases for targeted marketing. Reynolds-Dewalt, a marketing services and print provider located in New Bedford, MA, recently used PURLs to help one of its customers get out of a major marketing hole. Zeiterion Theater, a regional theater, had boosted its marketing budget and started booking larger acts. As a result, it was looking to increase its ticket sales, but had almost no data on its customers.

Reynolds-DeWalt turned to PURLs. It appended the theater’s existing (but limited) customer base with a mailing list of carefully selected prospects within the desired geographic region. Using XMPie’s PersonalEffect, it sent a mailing of 10,000 pieces, introducing the theater and asking recipients to log into a PURL in exchange for a chance to win three theater tickets. Once logged in, recipients were asked to provide information on the types of theater programs they enjoy, as well as provide their e-mail address and the e-mail address of a “lucky” friend. All of the information was automatically appended back into the customer database.

Measurable Results

The program was a success. Twenty-one percent logged into the PURL. Of those, 14 percent provided their e-mail addresses.

Marketers are responding well to these projects, in part because the results are measurable. Marketing departments are coming under increasing pressure to deliver numbers, so the ability to justify marketing decisions based on provable results is a big plug for print providers to take on sales calls.

Although many customers hold ROI numbers close to the vest, there are ways to estimate them. Landmark Impressions, a commercial printer based in Woburn, MA, recently did a campaign for a software encryption company that resulted in 35 onsite demonstrations of its product. Using the industry’s average conversion rate of 10-15 percent, Landmark Impressions estimates that the company will likely end up with two to three sales from the campaign. At an average $250,000 per sale, that’s a great ROI.

Even better is when you can stack up results to other marketing channels and PURLs come out on top. As reported by Barb Pellow of Pellow & Partners, a consulting firm in Rushville, NY, Direct Mail Express (DME) took its PURL capabilities to the Minnesota Timberwolves, a professional basketball team that wanted to drive sustained attendance by selling banks of 10 tickets.

The mailing provided a personalized invitation with a link to a PURL. Nearly one-third of recipients clicked through to the PURL. Of these, 95 percent referred a friend and 15 percent ordered the bank of tickets. By comparison, Pellow reports, DME did a similar campaign for another team that used only a 1-800 call-in number. The response rate was only 6-7 percent. These are the kinds of numbers that demand marketers’ attention.

Another major selling point for print providers is that the results can be almost immediate. If respondents are coming to the personalized landing pages from direct mail, they come in a matter of days. If they are coming from an e-mail campaign, it can just be a matter of minutes.

In the case of Alphagraphics, which created a PURL-based campaign for a manufacturer looking to create “pull through” within its distributor channel, the direct mail dropped on a Monday and, by the next day, 400 of the customer’s 1,000 distributors and 500 of the 10,000 end user prospects had already logged in through their PURLs. Within 24 hours, the program had already met its goal of a 5 percent response rate, and it was just getting started!

Although the technology used to create these applications is cross-media and PURLs, customers aren’t thinking in terms of technology. The terms that seem to be in vogue these days are “integrated marketing,” “cross-media,” and “multichannel marketing,” which speak the language, not of technology and workflow, but of customers.

Although these are complex and lofty sounding terms, the point is, it is a campaign that focuses on consistent, relevant contacts with customers across multiple touch points. In other words, using multiple media in a coordinated campaign to promote, reinforce and then follow up on a message.

R&R Images, a marketing solutions company based in Phoenix, recently conducted a campaign for Taser International, manufacturers of stun guns, that used all of these elements. Taser was looking to streamline its sales process to law enforcement agencies and cut down on its lengthy sales cycle. The company knew that if it could find how many offices each law enforcement department has, it could create a full-blown ROI for each department, creating a more compelling sales pitch.

So R&R created a PURL campaign with four different value propositions (direct mail, e-mail and fax, as well as national magazine advertisements), promising recipients information on how to save lives and money for their departments at the same time. To gain the information, Taser asked recipients to log into a PURL, where they were asked to input the number of offices they operated.

Immediate Followup

When the recipient clicked through to the next page, three things happened:

• The software created a full value proposition on the following Web page, with all of the ROI figures, on-the-fly, with information on how the weapon would save them money.

• The software sent an e-mail alert to the appropriate account rep, containing all of the data tracked from the officer’s visit.

• The data was sent to a template that created a 32-page brochure with quote and personalized letter that the recipient would receive within two to three days.

Account reps could also download a PowerPoint presentation containing the same information to be used on subsequent sales calls.

Not only did this campaign make full use of multiple media, it was remarkable in that, for each visitor, the micro-site was able to engage them for an average of a full seven minutes—longer than any of the other 30 to 40 campaigns R&R Images was operating at the time.

So how best to take advantage of the opportunities of PURLs? According to Pellow, there are some basic best practices that lead to higher levels of success:

• Creative must be consistent across channels. From the direct mail piece to the personalized landing page, it needs to look like it’s part of an integrated campaign.

• Base the program as if it’s a sustained dialog. Reach out to the customer, interact and provide fulfillment based on that interaction. Then interact again.

• Use these campaigns as an opportunity to test in real-time. Don’t waste opportunities. Test, test, test, and adjust the campaign accordingly.

• Share results among the members of the marketing team and use that information to work on the next campaign.

Currently, there are five suppliers of PURLs: MindFire, XMPie, Bitstream (Pageflex), Bluetree and, as of the beginning of February, Printable. PressSense is working aggressively with MindFire to integrate MindFire’s PURL technology into its variable data publishing software, and printers can expect other software providers to do the same. PI

PURL Supplier “Eats Its Own Cooking”

According to The Industry Measure, graphic arts firms see a variety of Web and design services as top sales opportunities for their businesses:

• “creative and design services”—28 percent

• “creating customer Websites”—9 percent

• “hosting/maintaining customer Websites”—6 percent

• “selling online template-based design and print services”—10 percent

• “customized Website for personalized/on-demand printing”—8 percent

In the case of PURLs, software vendors are putting their own money where their mouths are. When doing their own marketing, software suppliers like Bitstream and XMPie are touting successes using their own technology.

When Bitstream wanted to cut through the clutter at PRINT 05 and promote the capabilities of its Pageflex design software, it created a trifold invitation template utilizing variable text, variable images, variable color and design elements, copy fitting, and personalized URLs based on information from customers, prospects and business partners.

The invitation was personalized with the recipient’s name, address, Pageflex account manager and personalized URL. Customers and business partners received an invitation to stop by the booth and come to a special party. Prospects received an invitation to visit the both for a demo, a personalized raffle form they could bring to the booth, and a PURL that could also be used to enter the raffle. In all, 3,087 design combinations were possible.

In addition to the mailing, Bitstream sent out a personalized e-mail, populated with the same design elements as the direct mail campaign, to everyone in its contact database for whom complete mailing addresses were not available.

All of the components—direct mail invitation, HTML e-mails, personalized URL and personalized Web micro-sites—were created using the same project file. When customers and partners RSVP’d through their PURLs, the software generated a customized name tag for the party. The tag included four photos representing the individual’s “fun facts” gathered from the earlier mailing to use as conversation starters.

A personalized follow-up e-mail was sent to anyone who did not visit his or her PURL within a week of the initial contact.

Pageflex experienced a response rate of 48 percent. More than 300 prospects visited the Pageflex booth at PRINT 05 and approximately 90 customers attended the invitation-only party.

XMPie ran a very similar campaign using its PersonalEffect software to drive traffic to its booth at Graph Expo last year and to its Webinars.