How to create impulse buyers

by Margie Church

With the growing emphasis on electronic marketing tools, we pay particular attention to our clients' success rates when they use emails and PURLs in their direct mail campaigns. Can a credit union get members to act like impulse buyers? We think so.

Here are three typical examples of how our clients proved our theory.

1.  We learned that a PURL, email, and letter is the perfect combination for skip-a-pay campaigns. Our clients typically see an average of 10% PURL visits and over 80% conversions. In other words, hot leads. "I want your offer, and I want it now." 

2. Using emails to promote auto loans and credit cards also proved successful. We see an average read rate of 20% on these campaigns. Including a PURL gave an additional 1% lift rate.

3. We have clients that use a PURL with their new member mailings. The PURL reduces the "I'll think about it" behavior. The recipient can directly and conveniently sign up for new services or products when they receive their monthly letter. If your credit union needs to improve the number of products-per-member ratio, adding a PURL has delivered an average 1.5% response rate.

What's the typical cost per hot lead?

Let's say you sent 2,000 emails with a PURL. At our place, an email costs a mere five cents per address and so does the PURL. Your expense is $200 for this portion of the campaign. Our average response rate on any campaign is 2% on PURLS, giving you 40 visits. The average conversion rate (PURL submissions) is 70% or 28 hot leads, costing you $7.14 each. Seems like the expense is justified, don't you think?  

Emails and PURLs take dead aim at fast delivery and responses. Sure there'll always be people who prefer to come in or call, and there's nothing wrong with that. But using email and PURLs help ensure you strike while the iron is hot, and don't leave business on the table.

Pinpoint Direct Marketing exclusively serves the U.S. credit union market. We provide excellent, turnkey or a' la carte creative services at a great value. Click to learn more.