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.
Challenges
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.
The brands that will stand out in the coming years will be those who have harnessed the power of user insights and data to drive engagement and sales for their business.
Solution
We decided on building a unique microwebsite for each contact. Then set about presenting a mini-story based on 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 website, and why not go and check it out by visiting their own unique website address at: www.thisis4.eu/name.surname.
The person then visits their own ‘individually created’ website and views themselves in a paradox style comic. There are 3 call-to-action options available on page 2 of the microsite, including scheduling in a call-back or using the on-line Life Insurance quote and buy tool.
Results
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.
