The good ol’ folks in the direct mail world have been living and breathing PURLs over the past few months. They’re supposed to be the “next best thing” when it comes to direct mail. Not sure what PURL stands for? You’re not alone, but we’re trying to change that.

A PURL is simply a personalized URL (www.briansumner.com, for example). The belief is that prospective students who receive a direct mail piece will be more inclined to check out a web site that has their name included, therefore turning into leads.

The results have been interesting. We tested PURLs on a couple of campaigns in the past two months and to our surprise, the non-PURL control pieces have outperformed the PURL pieces. And when I say outperformed, I mean the non-PURL pieces have more than doubled the response of the PURL pieces.

Any ideas on why the non-PURL pieces are flourishing and the PURL pieces aren’t? That’s a good question and we have our theories, but we’re going to continue to test PURLs in different methods to see if they truly are the “next best thing” in direct mail. In the meantime, we’re curious what you think. What is your opinion on seeing your own personal website on a direct mail piece? Will seeing this make you interested enough to check it out?