This post is about strategically using existing simple data to enable personalization enhancing a customer experience that is relevant, contextual, and useful.

GO! St. Louis is the metro area’s preeminent sponsor of running events in St. Louis. While GO! sponsors events throughout the year, “Marathon Weekend” in early April is the organization’s flagship event with a bevy of races including a marathon, half marathon, 10K and 5K, among many others. The team at GO! has been a dream to work with, and my student and friend, Mark Spewak at Spewak Training made the introduction. Thank you, Mark! 

The Campaign Theme

This year’s Marathon Weekend features brand new course routes for the Marathon, Half Marathon, and new 10K race, respectively. These new courses feature scenic landmarks throughout St. Louis including Forest Park, Clayton, Washington University, Midtown, Lafayette Square, and Downtown to name just a few. Thus, a theme was developed for this year’s Marathon Weekend: Run Thru The Lou. Strategic Glue developed the theme and worked with local creative director and brand identity guru, William Tuttle on the logo. 

Personalization and Data

In terms of executing on the new campaign theme, Strategic Glue procured five years worth of registration data from previous GO! events. The data sets were segmented by previous event registrations. If a participant was already registered for the upcoming Marathon Weekend race, their name was culled from the list, so they would not receive an unnecessary, redundant email. 

The objective was for each contact record to receive a personalized email with a link containing a PURL (personalized URL), which would then take them to a personalized landing page that displays dynamic data based on an individual’s data. Our friends at Boingnet.com provided the PURL platform, which works very well. I’ve worked with Boingnet for 10 years and their people and technology solutions are terrific. 

A simple email was created in GO!’s Emma email account (Emma worked very well by the way!), which contained the PURL that linked the recipient to the previously-mentioned personalized landing page, which dynamically pulled variable data from Boingnet’s platform. The email eschewed lengthy copy or images and simply and prominently featured the recipient’s PURL.

Personalized Landing Page: 

The variable fields that dynamically pulled data from Boingnet included “first name,” “year of last race,” and “finish time” of that race. That was followed by copy encouraging the visitor to consider learning more about the races by clicking the CTA button below the copy. 

The “Conversion Goal” on the landing page was the click-through of a single button, which would take the recipient to a general info “Run Thru The Lou” landing page to learn more about Marathon Weekend. 

The Conversions Being Tracked

We are tracking three primary conversions: 

1. email CTRs (Click-Through-Rate) to personalized landing page
2. From personalized landing page to general info landing page
3. From general landing page to registration page

As the registration system is owned and controlled by a third-party unique to the running event industry, it was necessary to track multiple conversions. 

Personalization, Measurability, and Results

Based on different campaigns utilizing six discreet data sets, conversion rates FROM personalized landing pages to the general info landing pages have ranged from 15% on the low-end up to 44% on the high-end. We were able to track myriad metrics, but as it relates to personalization and follow-up potential, Boingnet’s platform shows the following for each campaign: 

• Name of contact who visited their PURL
• # of times their PURL was visited
• Time of last visit to the PURL
• Conversion (in this case arriving at a “goal” page, which would be the general “RunThruTheLou” landing page)

Sticky Point About Personalization

I’ve been involved with hundreds of email campaigns over the years – probably closer to a thousand by now – and PURLs never cease to surprise me. But, if we really think about the customer experience, a personalized experience makes much more sense than the typical email “blast.” While the PURL in the email is a critical component to eliciting click-throughs, the personalized landing page really exemplifies a better customer experience, which is evidenced by the conversion rates. 

If you would like to discuss branding, personalization, or anything else for that matter, please feel free to hit me at terry@strategicglue.com. 

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