Your survey is small but effective because (im assuming) most of the responders were providers not end users. The results tell me 2 things:

1. The Top 4 responses indicate that if the responders were educated properly about the full benefits of PURLS they would be interested

2. If presented with a cost, technology, and time effective solution they would most likely implement PURL, or at least take a hard look.

In most industries the PURL concept is largely unused not because of effectiveness but because its new and vendors don’t fully understand the process. Furthermore, the companies i see who are using PURLS are only using a tiny portion of the possibilities of PURL based system

In my view a PURL is a mouth to a funnel. What the solicitor does with the data after it runs through the PURL funnel is where the real oppertiunity: Newsletter opt in, continuity programs, lead in products, referral, email blasting, follow up, etc are only a portion of the up side i see to PURL based marketing….

Give it 5 years

This customized landing page approach may yield slightly lower response rate than a PURL program, we have found it does quite well when designed properly to request specific customer data/ demographics that are critical for a valued response.

We are also seeing that PURLs seem to perhaps be more of a fad than a solid trend that will forever change direct marketing programs or that they are just one of many tolls marketers can use out of a large tool box of choices. We all know that the best results may be derived from the most basic direct marketing pieces using the right list, the right message and the right offer.

Paul Edwards, CDC
CEO
FormStore/ FormStore Digital Connect
pedwards@formstore.com

Jon please take no offense but print buyers are not the target to sell these, anyone who is targeting these folks trying to sell PURL’s or any other marketing enhancing technology will fail. For good or bad these technology tools have landed squarely in the laps of printers and the ones who take the time to understand them and apply this technology properly are doing a lot of good for themselves and their clients.

It’s so interesting to hear the print buyer’s perspective. I think these types of comments are incredibly valuable to the printers who are trying to market these capabilities.

I think you’ve touched on a very important aspect of the challenge that really needs to be brought out, and that is the need to move beyond point solutions into a more integrated marketing solution so that you are managing the process (including all of the response metrics) from a single location. This means centralized data and asset databases, common business rules, and so on.

It used to be that Web-to-print, personalized URL, and 1:1 printing solutions were independent from one another, but over the past year, there has been MUCH more integration. Providers like interLINK ONE, Gluon, L2 Software, XPMie, and many others are offering solutions that manage all aspects of a marketing campaign, from print to email to wide-format, answering many of the challenges you’ve presented here.

One of the challenges on the provider side is communicating the vast changes in the technologies and capabilities to the marketplace. Perceptions are often based on early introductions to the marketplace, and even as the solutions become more sophisticated, flexible, and fully featured, the early perceptions remain. But the more print buyers, marketers, and creatives speak up about their concerns about these applications, the better.

Just a few thoughts – sorry to bash it but it’s such a “pretty silver ball” to me that I really wish we printers focused on our core – printing and other solutions that automate or ENHANCE the printing process. This is a much more logical (and believable) way to increase value. Try embracing, for example Web to Print – now that’s a solution that we do well that REALLY helps our customers! And, something a marketing person cannot go to another vendor to get!

I didn’t differentiate between personalized URLs for direct mail and for email. I was thinking direct mail, of course, but you’re right, respondents could have been thinking about either. The target audience for the survey was marketers using print, and the links were posted in print forums, forwarded by printers offering personalized URLs, and the like. So I would HOPE that they were thinking primarily about print, but once something is out there electronically, you have no control over the context anymore.

I would have to disagree that ” . . . the motivation isn’t strong enough” for personalized URL in direct mail. I think the bigger problem is that marketers and printers just don’t know to use personalized URLs and they end up using them inappropriately, so of course they are cost-ineffective.

When I look at campaigns that capitalize on the best uses of this technology, they are great — they do exactly what they were intended to do in that application. It’s just that, like all tools, they have a narrow set of best uses and best practices. Wander outside of those best practices, and of course, you’ll get poor results. It’s not that personalized URLs are ineffective. It’s that they are being used ineffectively.

With direct mail, the recipient has to type the PURL into a browser. It isn’t reasonable to expect people to do that without strong motivation–and, with most direct mail pieces, the motivation just isn’t strong enough.

PURLs will always have a far greater role in email campaigns (where a click is all that is required of the user) than in direct mail, in my opinion.

On the chance that someone might be interested in reading more about my opinion on this subject, there is an editorial about it at:
http://www.beyond-print.de/site/content/en/channel_news/news_0799.html

I did not ask respondents to choose a single reason. After all, the decision-making process rarely boils down to a single thing. Most choose two reasons for not using personalized URLs or, at the most, three. Hence why the percentages add up to more than 100%.