We are currently working on a strategic marketing campaign for a specialist insurance services company.
The company approached us to handle their direct marketing activity, through a variety of digital channels, including direct email.
We wanted to create a campaign with a difference. As the initial contact strategy was to be predominantly through email and SMS, aimed at 5,000 consumers per month, we had to get our creative thinking caps on to bring something to the table which produced great results.
We decided on building a unique micro web site for each contact. Then set about presenting a mini-story based around a comic strip, featuring the contact person as the main character.
The first product we were tasked to promote was Life Insurance. We created buying personas, which are effectively profiles of the people who will receive the emails. Once we stepped into the shoes of the customer we could then work out the details of the offer.
Personalisation of content is key to the success of such personalised URL campaigns. Whilst we were fortunate to have quite a lot of ‘opt-in’ data to hand, we were also very wary that such campaigns containing too much personal data can ‘spook people out’.
We opted to use some opt-in information such as; the local area the contact person resided in, gender, street name and their current make of car.
This information meant not only could we personalise the character’s name, street address and car, but the main character in the comic also changes, depending on the gender of the person visiting the page!
In order to add further impact to the campaign we used one of our campaign domain names: www.thisis4.eu to host each of these personalised websites on.
The first stage of the campaign is to notify each of the 5,000 contacts per month via email and SMS, informing them that our client has made them a very special web site, and why not go and check it out by visiting their own unique web site address at: www.thisis4.eu/name.surname.
The person then visits their own ‘individually created’ web site and views themselves in a paradox style comic. There are 3 call-to-action options available on page 2 of the micro site, including scheduling in a call-back or using the on-line Life Insurance quote and buy tool.
It’s early days yet to report any figures, however we’re extremely confident that we’ll get higher than average response rates on this campaign. Purely for the fact of curiosity – not many campaigns are utilising personalised URLs and landing pages at the moment – then we have the creative element to back it up. Studies have found that personalised URL campaigns typically increase response rates by 50 to 100%.
However, if you are considering such a campaign then please note: personalised URLs are not a quick fix to poor email campaigns. If you place a personalised URL on top of a poorly executed campaign, it will still be a poorly executed campaign.
Personalised URL campaigns can bring in around 40% response rates. However, it must be said that such great results are achieved with campaigns that have up-to-date contact lists, good use of creative visuals and a relevant offer.
If you would like to see how a personalised URL campaign can benefit you, then please get in touch
Tags: email campaign, personalised url
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