PIN v. PURL – Is it all about the benjamins or is security paramount in this crazy online world we surf in?

If you are a marketer, chances are you’ve already faced this dilemma on at least a couple of occasions. It’s a question that has all marketing folk debating over best practices and which is better to use on their landing pages. So, for what it’s worth, we’ll explain why Personalized URLs or PURLs are gaining popularity, your users’ responses and their marketing dollars!

PIN vs. PURL: Personalization

Since PINs are a randomly generated individual number for each individual target you’re marketing to, each one is unique. But, there’s really nothing “personal” about them. They are an alpha-numeric gobley-goop of characters and numbers, assigned to the user by an algorithm that couldn’t tell apart apples from mangoes.

On the other hand, PURLs are built from attributes unique to the person (e.g. johnd or mjane) and it is this personalization that grabs the user’s attention and usually a higher number of responses.

With PINs, there’s the outside chance that certain numeric values may be confused with their alphabet counterparts like the 0s and Os, the Ss and the 5s. And confusion or friction creates unnecessary hoops that you don’t want your prospect to have to jump through.

PIN vs. PURL: Response Rates

PURLs are easier to remember and hence easy to enter. It’s easier for someone to remember www.responsecapture.com/nirmal than it is to visit www.domain.com and remember to enter XQ3T01N5 as their PIN (anyone that has tried CAPTCHA will agree with me here!).

Plus, using a PURL, the user is able to skip the login page which reduces the probability of them entering the wrong PIN and creating an extra hurdle that frustrates a visitor and potentially costs you a conversion. Conversions are king, after all.

PIN vs. PURL: Privacy Risk

This is where PURLs are exposed to data overlapping. PURLs make it easier for one person to guess another person’s PURL. You can, to some extent, alleviate this problem by restricting access using cookies. The risk with easy to guess PURLs is that your customer data becomes vulnerable. PINs on the other hand, given that they are alpha-numeric, are harder to guess and considered more secure than PURLs.

We Want To Hear From You

You can clearly see that PURLs do have a certain advantage over PINs and vice-versa. What’s Response Capture’s take on it? Well, as the most immutable law of marketing states: “It depends.”

Tell us what’s worked for you in the past. We’d love your insights! Click here to share your comments.