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Print & the Internet: Better Together
July 1, 2007

Okay, time to even out the playing field. The last three blog posts from Richard have related to the Internet. But as I pointed out last time, it’s important to remember that as important as the Internet is, the Internet is an augment to—not a replacement for—the printed word. Even so, print is changing to remain relevant and important in today’s marketing mix.

Here’s one great example: personal URLs.

What’s a personal URL (PURL)? It’s a URL generated for every recipient in a marketing program.

Say the program is for GreenThumb Landscaping. It rents a list of homeowners within a 20-mile radius of its location, with each homeowner making at least $100,000 per year. It sends out a four-color mailer featuring an outstandingly landscaped yard and inviting recipients to log into their own, personalized Web page to see if they’ve won a free landscaping design consultation from GreenThumb and $500 worth of free landscaping services.

Each recipient’s mailer is printed with his or her own unique URL—www.greenthumblandscaping.com/marshagraves or www.greenthumblandscaping.com/bobpearson. When they log in, they are greeted by name and asked to take a short survey before finding out if they’ve won. This survey includes questions to help GreenThumb with prospecting, such as whether the homeowner plans to do any landscaping in the next 6 months, 12 months, “eventually, but we don’t know when,” or not at all. They might be asked what kind of yard they have (primarily shade, primarily sun, part shade/part sun), what types of plants they prefer, and whether or not they would agree to follow-up contacts from GreenThumb Landscaping.

This gives GreenThumb an extremely well qualified prospecting list and, with knowledge of prospects’ landscaping needs, allows it to refine its marketing efforts and prioritize its leads.

In the meantime, recipients learn whether or not they are winners in the sweepstakes. They can also browse GreenThumb’s Web site, where not only their responses, but also their movements can be tracked. Which pages did they click on? How long did they stay? What kinds of services did they seek more information about? All of this is important, not only for prospecting, but for helping GreenThumb refine its Web presence.

Because each respondents has his or her own unique URL, this gives GreenThumb the ability to precisely track ROI. How many recipients logged into their PURLs? What percentage of those translated into sales? What was the dollar value of each sale? Was it a one-time sale? Or did they turn into repeat customers?

Most marketing campaigns cannot provide this type of information. Marketers may be able to track the value of a customer once he or she becomes a customer, but the ability to tie one-time and lifetime sales directly to a specific marketing campaign is marketing gold. It tells you unequivocally how much revenue your marketing dollars generated.

(Tracking these kinds of campaigns can be extremely exciting. Because the response portion is Internet-based, it allows you to actually watch the leads as they come in.)

Going back to the premise of this post, while the Internet is a critical component of this process, it does not stand alone. It is the back end of a print campaign that rises and falls on the traditional value of print—great design, gorgeous images, snappy copy, and a fabulous incentive.

Not that it’s your father’s printing, however. While there are other workarounds for printing offset (such as inkjetting the PURL or running the mailer through a high-speed b&w laser printer in a second pass), these applications are typically produced on today's extremely sophisticated, four-color digital presses. 

This is a wonderful example of the print-Internet symbiosis. It's no wonder that, according to The Industry Measure's most recent twice-yearly survey of creative firms (ad agencies, graphic designers, corporate designers, comm'l photographers), IM Design & Production #23, "cross-media" projects are their number one sales opportunity, far outdistancing either print or the Internet individually.

On its own, print is a powerful tool. So is the Internet. Both have advantages and drawbacks. Now, marketers are developing applications that draw on the benefits of both, creating a marketing tool that is even more powerful than either used individually.
 

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on July 1, 2007 | Comments (0)