Direct mail is a time-tested way of reaching potential and current customers but is it enough in today’s digital economy? The answer is no. To reach customers today, the Internet must be leveraged as a direct marketing tool. When used together, traditional direct mail and Internet marketing are generating a much higher response rate than using one or the other alone.

By using Personalized URLs and PURLs that take each recipient to a customized web page, your response rates will significantly increase. A customized web page can serve many functions. Each personalized web address such as www.yourcompanyname/customer name can take recipients to a page with information about your company that is relevant and customized to them. Customized web pages are also a response tracking mechanism. If you offer a premium in your campaign, each person’s web page can be programmed to reinforce the offer personally and allow for quick and accurate response by pre-populating the page with the user’s information.

Since not all respondents will be web-savvy you would also want to include other ways to contact such as return mail or possibly telephone. You can keep track of your response rates by each category—online, return mail and phone—to determine the best way to reach these customers in the future. Those who used the web page would probably prefer email whereas the others might not.