Four Tips to Boost Cardiovascular Marketing Direct Mail Response

Direct mail is not dead.

Don’t get me wrong. I love email and online marketing as much as the next digital guru. But those of you who know me well can hear me saying, “They’re just another tool in our toolbox.”

Based on recent campaign results for our clients, I’m convinced more than ever that cardiovascular marketers can generate excellent results with strategic, targeted, well-crafted, “traditional” direct mail.

It’s an excellent medium to reach residents who are new to your area or to engage with new patients through offers of screenings or heart-healthy educational content.

However, it’s not necessarily enough to just mail once and to expect miracles. Direct mail, like any media, can benefit from frequency.

An excerpt from “Strategy & Tactics for Boosting Direct Mail Response,” a new 122-page report from Direct Marketing IQ, features best practices from leading direct mail experts. It highlights four ideas to consider:

• Re-mail the original package to the same target audience.
  • As with any message, timing is everything, and a re-mail could catch people just when they need your services. We’ve had great luck with the strategy — often generating more than 50 percent more response than we got with the first round.
• Send anew mailer execution to non-responders.
  • Highlight a different benefit. The theory is that if one approach doesn’t work, you go back to the prospect with a different pitch.
• If your offer is good for a limited time only, be sure to play that up.
  • People tend to respond more if there’s a sense of urgency. For example, if you have packaged screenings into a package price, think about setting a time limit: “Your eligibility for this final offer expires on December 31, 2011.”
• The last contact with the prospect can be a postcard.
  • 
Postcards are inexpensive, and your message is instantly visible. Our clients have had great success with follow up postcards. It’s certainly an easy strategy to consider.

Does Physician Involvement in Social Media Pose a Threat to Cardiovascular Marketing?

Physicians’ online activity is on the rise.

• In a recent study by Google, 86% of U.S. physicians said they use the Internet to gather health, medical or prescription drug information.
• They’ve joined the social networking revolution too. According to a survey by Mediamix International, 34% of physicians now use social media.

For the most part, I’m excited by these statistics.   Most of the heart and vascular marketers I know have been trying to encourage physician involvement in online activities for a long time.

But is there a downside?

I’ve been hearing a few horror stories lately.

• A marketing director friend recently told me about a patient who appeared at a cardiologist’s office without an appointment.  When the office staff politely told him that he must have his dates mixed up, the patient said, “Oh no, I’m supposed to be here.  I’ve been chatting with Dr. Jones on Facebook, and he told me to stop by.”
• Cases of doctors being sued for giving online advice in venues such as Facebook are also starting to surface.

Should these fears discourage marketers from involving physicians in social media efforts?

I hope not.

Physician and staff involvement adds credibility and knowledge that is hard to find in other sources. Online physician discussions offer amazing opportunities for both patient acquisition and retention.

But, it’s important to use common sense.

American Medical News recently published a post by Arthur R. Derse, MD, on this subject in its ethics forum.

I plan to share this with some of our clients as we plan for future campaigns.   I think it offers some great reminders that communications must be HIPAA compliant and that they should avoid giving specific advice to individual patients.

As Dr. Derse says, the bottom line is that online physician involvement in social networks should begin with the tweetable Hippocratic aphorism, “First, do no harm.”