Personalised URLs (PURLs)

Key terms:

Funraisin hash - a unique reference stored against the form submission (donation form or registration form)

PURL - Personalised unique resources locater 

Most Common uses of PURLs in Fundraising & Events

 Appeal Pages - less friction in the donation flow with optimised conversions and results

• Pre-populate a donation form with personal details and suggested donation amount
• Show specific content within content blocks on the page that matches a supporter's previous area of interest - such as 'building fund', 'education', or 'medical equipment wishlist' etc
• Personalise the content within the copy of the page to make it more relevant to the supporter

Registration Forms - incomplete registrations converted to fundraisers

Pre-populate registration forms with the personal details of previous participants from your database, or use data captured during registration where the participant does not complete the entire registration flow. Using incomplete registrations in this way can really help boost your participant numbers - and fundraising.

How Does a PURL Work?

We'll keep this as non-techie as possible as it's not all that complicated once you understand the basics.

• Data is stored within fields in a database - Ok, maybe too basic 
• Those fields can have data uploaded to them manually via an import spreadsheet or they can collect data through forms such as a donation or a registration
• Once the record for a donation or an event registration is created we store a unique reference against the form submission that's called the Funraisin Hash eg: a580fe022c9388a8c966f162eed31e65
• You can use that Funraisin Hash the opposite way too - to tell a form or a content block to go and get data from that record in the database - then show the data stored in that field in the form or landing page using personalisation tags such as {d_fname} for donor first name etc

Personalised URLs for Appeal Pages

Using PURLs for appeals is the most common application. Being able to personalise a page for a specific donor, using their name within the content, and pre-filling the donation form with their personal details, relevant dollar handles and a suggested donation amount can really help optimise conversions.

Usually, the data will be pulled from previous appeals and campaigns within Funraisin, your CRM, and historical data from other fundraising platforms you've used to run appeals. This allows you to see if there are patterns in a supporter's gifts and show them the most appropriate set of dollar handles and preselect an amount that suits their giving pattern.

Analysis of the types of appeals your supporter usually gives to can also help to inform the choice of content that is shown on the landing page. 

 How to upload data for donation page PURLs

In the Funraisin admin:

1. Open the Donations module
2. Choose Advanced Options
3. Choose Manage PURLS
4. Choose the tab named Import List
5. Download the CSV template
6. Add your data: minimum details are First Name, Last Name and Email
   1. Include Donation amount (column T) if you want a specific amount pre-selected when the supporter lands on the page
   2. Include Dollar Handle Amount 1,2,3 and 4 (columns w,x, y and x) to personalise the suggested amounts shown to each supporter
7. Save data to be uploaded as a CSV file (NB: the structure of the CSV cannot be edited - no columns can be added or removed or moved before uploading back into Funraisin)
   
   Please Note: Your Uploaded CSV will need a campaign name which is the top field before saving the upload.
   
   
8. Within the Import List tab (same tab) use the file uploader to import the data - Name your upload file in the create new field. 
9. Save and you will land back on the PURLs Campaigns tab
10. Select the campaign you've just imported and then click on the green Download Imported button
11. This file will now contain a Funraisin Hash for each supporter for you to use against your appeal page
    
    

Creating your campaign PURLs

Now you've created a unique hash for each supporter, you need to build out your PURL.

Firstly, you'll need to have an appeal or donation page, e.g. funraisin.co/spring-appeal

The structure of each PURL for this example would be funraisin.co/spring-appeal?incid=2fbca918bf35c4cf2c3a07d10bf26ce5

One way you can do this is within Excel/Sheets:

1. Import your downloaded PURL CSV into Excel/Sheets
2. Column A will contain the unique hash
3. In a new column concatenate your appeal URL with the PURL. For the above example, I would type the following formula into a cell
   
   1. =CONCATENATE("funraisin.co/spring-appeal?incid=",A2)
   2. This would then create funraisin.co/spring-appeal?incid=2fbca918bf35c4cf2c3a07d10bf26ce5

These personalised URLs can then be used in your EDMs to supporters.

If using an email tool such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor you can also import the CSV and build our an EDM with funraisin.co/spring-appeal?incid=[hash] with the hash being the unique hash generated.

Always test how the page will look for a supporter before sending out.

Supporter experience of arriving on their own personal appeal page

Based on the data uploaded

 $200 Dollar handle automatically selected

 $200 populated into the donation amount field

 First name, last name and email address added to the donation form

 Using the donation tags in the copy of the page

Reporting and tracking

When a donor follows their PURL and makes a donation, this will create a donation record and categorise it as donation type = import. Donation type can be pulled into your donations report as a field.

Within the PURLs section of the donation module, for each campaign, you'll be able to see how many donations have been made. In the below example, four PURLs were created, and two donations have been made.

In simple terms, to build a PURL for incomplete entrants, you simply need the registration flow URL they begun, '/?incid' and their member hash. e.g:

funraisin.co/register/fun-event/defaultregistrationform/?incid=5c0065c34e724030d01220cac6fe9beb

However, reach out to the support team for help on:

• Creating a report of incomplete entrants and generating their PURL
• Importing previous entrants into a new event and generating a registration PURL

If you’d like further help please pop in a support ticket from your admin and our team will assist you.