Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

Print/direct Mail Campaigns With Unique Url

Posted by etemistokle on 4/25/2008 at 4:55 PM ET 250 Points
Hi all,

First time poster, and appreciate any feedback. Quick background, I am responsible for the marketing/promotion of a national K-12 science competition for public, private and homeschoolers. As you can imagine I have a limited marketing budget. We do a small print and direct mail campaign targeting K-12 science teachers announcing the program each Fall and asking them to get their students involved in the program, all campaigns direct the teacher's to our web site. Each ad or direct mail piece contains a unique URL so we can track how many teachers come to the site based upon each piece, for example our direct mail piece is sent to 15,000 science teachers, it contains a uniquie URL abc123.com/DMPC, using our web analytics application I can obtain that 1,000 visitors typed that unique URL, and of those visitors 750 went on to sign up their students in the competition. Now I can do simple calcuations for my ROI and campaign performance.

My question is, are there any assumptions or data averages in the number of people who will only type up until the ".com" and drop off the /DMPC, in other words they do not type the full unique URL?

Thanks a bunch!
Eddie
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/26/2008 at 9:23 AM Accepted
    Use a subdomain redirect instead: dmpc.company.com (instead of www.company.com/dmpc) which can redirect to www.company.com/dmpc (should you wish, or create the campaign with this subdomain). This technique will dramatically reduce people simply typing company.com
  • Posted by michael on 4/26/2008 at 11:59 AM Member
    Or even better, you can give a unique site that is just a redirect/mirror site.

    This will cost you a whopping $9.95/year

    Michael
  • Posted by darcy.moen on 4/27/2008 at 7:51 PM Accepted
    Then again, you could use a print piece that includes and tracks a PURL or Personalized URL. I know of a couple companies that offer PURL's and can even incorporate the DM piece recipient's name into the URL. Now that would be cool, wouldn't it? Who could resist a directmail piece that showed

    www.sampledomainname.com/darcymoen/

    and

    www.sampledomainname/etemistokle/

    Would that cause folks to click? I sure would be curious.

    Darcy Moen
    Customer Loyalty Network
  • Posted by Neil on 4/28/2008 at 10:23 PM Member
    is there a way to have a coupon code in your pieces that enables people to get a discount if they type it in?

    Many e-commerce people use this method and it works not only to entice people to buy but also helps with tracking.
  • Posted on 4/28/2008 at 11:00 PM Accepted
    Eddie,
    Be sure you do not just purchase an additional URL and redirect. Google counts this type of "duplicate content" as a major problem, and will cause problems with your PageRank for Search Engine Optimization purposes.

    The correct method was suggested by Jay: code.company.com

    This method has become the industry standard in direct marketing, specifically because very few people will type in a meaningless code after your URL.

    Be sure you also do NOT hide the entire URL in your email -- some email programs disable links, so recipients would have no way to manually type in the URL to get to your site. Also, do NOT say "click here" in an email -- that is a spam trigger and may prevent your email from being delivered.

    Although PURLs and variable data printing are wonderful tools, they are relatively expensive tools for your purposes.



  • Posted by etemistokle on 4/30/2008 at 2:44 PM Author
    Hi all,

    I just wanted to say thanks for all the input. They were insightful and helpful for me to overcome my URL tracking problem. From what I have read I will work with our system administrator in creating subdomains for each campaign piece: code.company.com, I also like the idea of PURLs and will look into that as well.

    Again, thanks for the feedback.

    Eddie
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