Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Multi-channel marketing communications - all in one!
Don’t Fear the Data
Posted by 
on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 
at 9:25 AM 
in I was recently was reading a great discussion in The Digital Nirvana. The topic was personalized URLs and one-to-one marketing.
One of the posts was in regards to reasons why some personalized URL campaigns produce very low response rates. The reason listed in this post was the data — that clients were providing a list that only contained names and mailing address. In those scenarios, a personalized URL could be created. But then the only unique part about their landing page was the “Dear [FirstName]” line.
Well, one thing to acknowledge is that personalized URLs are not the best fit for every campaign. You need to consider the data you have, but also the demographics of the target audience, the timing, the offer, etc.
However, if you only have a list of names and mailing addresses, does this mean that you should never do personalized URLs?
The answer to this should be a resounding “No”!
For one, if you are trying to show off that you can do personalized URLs, simply sending out a simple postcard containing one may catch the attention of a customer that does have great marketing data… and they may be able to see the value you can offer by combining your marketing services with their data.
Also, with a bit of creativity, you can add a “personal” twist to what seems like the most mundane data list. Here are a few examples:
- Distance – We recently saw a campaign that was for a gym. The customer used an online program to calculate the distance from each recipients house to the gym. Then, they converted the mileage into steps. Thus, the postcard and landing page all displayed the following – “[FirstName] – you are only #xxx steps away from achieving your fitness goals”
- Location – This one would work best when you are doing a mailing that targets contacts across multiple states. Maybe you put the State seal on the appropriate mailer or landing page. Or perhaps you display an image or colors related to a popular sports team in that State.
- Gender – This one might be a bit too sensitive – but, we have seen campaigns where users displayed different images and offers based on a person’s gender (which was determined by looking at the Prefix field)
These are just a few examples of how you can use name and address data to add personalization to a campaign.
Here is one more way that you could demonstrate the personalization capabilities that you have:
- When the user gets to the landing page, let them know they are about to experience personalization in action… Sell it as an interactive tool.
- Have them answer a few basic questions. Perhaps, “what is your favorite color?”, “favorite food?”, and “favorite time of day”? These questions would be dropdowns – thus, there is a fixed amount of answers.
- Upon clicking Submit, present the user with a landing page that is custom, based on the answers they provided to those 3 questions.
(We actually have a “test drive” set up that works similar to this on our website… Check it out here: http://www.webfulfillment.com/ilinkno/lp.asp?L=118)
Tags 
