How do you know if the pitch you gave sunk in and if the person who said they were going to think about it, really did decide to follow through and donate? One of the easiest and most cost effective things you can do would be to create a vanity url to help you track the success of these face-to-face campaign efforts.

A vanity url can be either a memorable web address redirecting to a specific page on your company’s website, or an extension of the current domain (e.g 123.com/xyz).

You might already create vanity urls for your DRTV or direct mail pieces, but have you thought of taking them that one step further? What about creating vanity urls for your canvassers to use that are separated by region, province, city or even events?

If you could track which teams, areas or events ended up providing web traffic, you could begin to increase your response rates and cost per donor acquisition for these tactics.

By simply creating either a ‘calling’ card for each url (team) or by inserting the urls as part of the dynamic copy changes (i.e showing regional office contact information) for your brochures and leaflets, you might suddenly begin to know whether or not your public outreach campaigns are generating awareness, and better yet, donations. Many times canvassers simply leave information behind, or speak to someone who is busy, or in today’s society, simply untrusting. A vanity url provides you an opportunity to know which potential donors decided to check out your website on their own time and terms.

By having multiple vanity urls, you would be able to review your analytics data to not only see how many people visited your site by specific group (url), but what they did while there and how that behaviour compares to other website visitors (eg donors vs. online ads vs search engine visitors etc). Is there a specific page people from the vanity urls looked at? How does that compare across the urls? You could provide this information to your canvassers so they know what topics or types of information they might need to cover in certain areas – perhaps it’s different region by region. Is there one url that provides you with a high conversion rate? If so, this data then becomes a great way for you to connect with your teams on the ground and provide them positive feedback, or have them mentor those teams that seem to have lower conversion (close) rates.

Of course vanity urls are only good if people use them and this tends to be a highly controversial topic since recent studies show that more people may recall a vanity 800-number easier than a vanity url (if listening to or watching an ad). But considering how cost effective they are (especially if you use an extension of your site), why not take a chance? You may or may not get oodles of data, but you’ll definitely get more than you have now, and enough to get a better understanding of what’s happening after your canvassers have gone away.

What Vanity URLs Can Tell You is a post from: The Direct Approach Blog owner: Rebecca Atkinson (Muller)

Sure I have a bunch of people yelling at me right now about lost subscribers, Google Juice and so on. But that can be rebuilt, like friends, if my subscribers are loyal, they will follow again when they know I’m updating. I took the time for me to develop as a person and start a new chapter in my life.

I’d rather have lost the traffic than put out a product/post that was quite simply crap. I’ve had some time to reflect over the summer and have a few posts in the back of my mind waiting to come out.

I plan to start the fall on a fresh note and really focus my blog’s attention more towards email marketing and analytics, the areas where I truly believe my passion lies. Sure a social media or search or (name the niche) type online marketing post may pop in here and there, but for the most part, I want my relaunch after “coming out of hibernation” to be something that provokes thought, discussion and more importantly, provides honest advice and tips/tricks to maybe, just maybe help you better your email marketing or analytics programs.

I’ve answered the age old question of whether or not I’ll change my name profressionally and I think I will as quite frankly I have too much else on the go to think about which name to use when – so start thinking of me as Mrs. Rebecca Atkinson from now on.

Hope everyone had a happy, healthy and wonderously joyous summer. You can always email to get a link to pictures from the wedding and honeymoon at rebecca dot muller at rogers dot com (email will be last thing I change).

Coming out of Hibernation is a post from: The Direct Approach Blog owner: Rebecca Atkinson (Muller)

2. Considering a mobile marketing strategy? Then, Phil Barrett’s post on the CMA blog – 7 Things you Should Know about the Mobile Web is a must read.

3. With new tools and trends today that are going tomorrow – do you wonder,
What will be the next Twitter by Ian Muir over on Media Bulls Eye It’s a good review of several tools including Friend Feed as marketers are already trying to figure out the “What’s next?”

4. Sharon Hurley Hall’s Adding Glue to Online Relationships is an excellent discussion for those with virtual clients.

5. Brian Tenehouse on the CMA blog again (two months in a row!). This one has nothing to do with web marketing, but deserves to be here because it’s fun and a great reality check. I have to admit I couldn’t “Name that Spot”

What I love about some of these posts – is that I first found out about them on Twitter, so thanks to my fellow Tweeters who keep posting these, and please keep sharing great finds.

The Marketing Blogosphere – Must Reads from March is a post from: The Direct Approach Blog owner: Rebecca Atkinson (Muller)