What is a PURL?

 February 19, 2020      Michael Bickerton

The old adage, “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t work anymore, not sure it ever did, certainly not in 2020. It’s funny, that many believe that because you’ve built a website, the traffic will follow and unfortunately that’s not the case. You just can’t expect that people will find you. Seriously if you’ve used Google, Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo, you know intuitively that there is so much information, that it’s not reasonable to expect that you’ll have hordes of traffic banging on your website.

That’s the case whether it’s for a B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumers) offering. It’s our experience at RAVEN5 that you need to give your audience a reason to engage and a reason to opt in to future email marketing opportunities. If you want engagement, we’ve found that an incentive (we call it incentivized marketing) is a great first step to build favourable brand impression.

We recommend a sweepstakes or a contest, a coupon (a physical coupon or coupon code), an information piece or an invitation to an event as these create great first impressions for consumers. Fact is, the offer should be available to both NEW and EXISTING customers. I never appreciate or understand a NEW customer offer while NOT rewarding EXISTING customers, it never made sense and it doesn’t make sense today. Consumers are savvy, they are smart, educated and interested in the product they are purchasing, so treat them with respect

Sweepstakes marketing programs from RAVEN5 are the OG. Our team has created and developed a custom marketing platform and the process can be driven by any and all marketing initiatives such as email, social, paid ads, direct mail etc.

We make use of PURL technology, a personalized URL to deliver extraordinary results. Upon visiting a typical contest or sweepstakes microsite, marketers can expect opt-in rates of between 20% and 30%. But, add a dash of PURL technology and marketers can expect improved opt-in rates at a 300% improvement. That’s right, entrants that come to a blank entry screen are 10% likely to move through the process and those that come to a personalized page are 30% likely to move through the process. That PURL (Personal URL) is a game changer when it comes to program results.

A PURL allows us to populate contest and sweepstakes opt-in forms with pre-existing data about the visitor, which speeds up the opt-in and completion process tremendously. Make use of your existing database containing the following:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Phone
  • Street
  • Province/State
  • Postal Code/Zip
  • Gender
  • Company
  • And more…

Additionally, our process engages consumers through data collection, gamification and social sharing.  The sharing rate through our specialized sharing platform results in a whopping 30% NEW prospects.

Depending on the value of your offer and the engagement factor of your current client and prospect list, you can anticipate developing and engaging up to 300% new and additional prospects who are genuinely interested in your product or service.

In any event, let’s recap, shall we?

  1. Driven by email, social, ads, print, carrier pigeon and more (any marketing initiative will do)
  2. Expect around 30% to 35% of consumer opt-in rates (we’ve seen 60%, we’ve seen 100%)
  3. Gather data using surveys (the more you know about your customers and prospects, the better)
  4. Download a takeaway such as a coupon or otherwise (a leave behind, pdf download, and resides for mobile)
  5. Social sharing via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and email (Instagram will open up soon)

Sweepstakes marketing (and contest marketing) is easy to implement and an affordable marketing option. The FIVE in one marketing alternative for marketer is a natural first step. The process developed at RAVEN5 allows you to attract, engage and convert new customers, fans and advocates to your brand to build and develop your social currency AT THE SAME TIME. Given the ever changing marketplace, your social currency may at sometime in the future be your most valuable corporate asset. (We’ll talk more about social currency another day, yet I encourage you to do some research on this subject).

If you build it, don’t forget to market it with The World’s First Sweepstakes Marketing Agency.

Michael Bickerton, RAVEN5 Ltd, Oakville, Ontario, February 2020

https://techterms.com/definition/personal_url

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