Healthcare Marketing Discovers Life In The Mail Box

By Mike in Marketing, Profitability

Healthcare marketers face one insurmountable reality: that timing is everything.

Deliver the right ad on the wrong day and your potential patient simply hits delete or turns the page.

Thankfully, there’s a solution to this problem.

large-healthcare-postcard

Postcard magnet mailers.

The postcards have all the informative benefits of traditional direct mail, but it’s the attached magnets that are the real game changer. Why? Because magnets stick around. And unlike traditional direct mail, magnets have a practical purpose beyond their offer.

When an orthopedic surgeon sends out postcard magnets and someone without any back pain receives one, they’ll still have a use for it. They’ll use the magnet to pin their grocery list to their fridge or filing cabinet. And a few weeks later, when they throw their back out because they tried carrying too many shopping bags at once, guess who they’re probably going to call?

if you’re involved with healthcare, you should be involved with postcard magnets.

Doctors and healthcare providers are beginning to realize the power and potential of postcard magnets.  Here are some ways healthcare marketers are using them:

  • Primary care doctors are announcing the grand-opening of their practices
  • Dentists are sending out annual updates and cleaning reminders
  • Sports physicians are promoting pre-season physicals

And while these healthcare professionals’ specialties and approaches may vary, they’re all experiencing similar results – an increased awareness among their local communities, fuller waiting rooms and big booms in business.

Still need convincing? Here are 3 more reasons why postcard magnets are great for healthcare marketing:

scope

1. Scope

As far as advertising mediums go, you’d  be hard-pressed to find one that’s as flexible as postcard magnet mailers. You can send out 250 to one particular neighborhood, or you can send 1,000,000 across the country. The dosage is entirely up to you.

 

focus

2. Focus

Because postcard magnets utilize mailing lists, you can be incredibly targeted with your approach. Sure, you can blanket an entire area – and sometimes that makes perfect sense. But you can also pay a little extra to hone in on specific segments. For example, if you’re a pediatrician, you can target households with children. If you’re a plastic surgeon, it might benefit you to reach out to more affluent individuals with higher incomes.

Regardless of who you want to focus on, the important thing is that you’re able to. It’s this quality over quantity approach that usually pays off big. Other forms of advertising might be able to get you and your message in front of more people for less money, but if those people aren’t interested or in need of what you’re offering… what’s the point?

 

reach

3. Reach

While digital methods are new and exciting, the fact is most organizations can reach only 40-50% of their potential customers via e-mail. A lot of people still prefer the personal connection and tangibility that comes from receiving physical mail.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re not saying postcard magnets are the be-all end-all solution to marketing. In fact, they can work best when used in tandem with other media. If you have billboards or online ads, postcard magnets can further cement your place in the minds of potential patients.

The more ways they’re exposed to you and your services, the more likely they are to visit. Exposure is everything.

—

But it in the end, it’s all about results.

If your healthcare magnet is positioned on somebody’s refrigerator, who are they most likely to contact when a need arises?

Six months after your postcards are mailed, new patients will still be walking in your door.

And you can relax, having solved that ‘insurmountable’ healthcare marketing problem.  You, and a one powerful little magnet.

 

For more information on postcard magnets for your healthcare organization, please call us at 800-233-6690.  Or visit us at magnetbyMail.com .

 

Urgent Care Marketing

By admin in Design, Marketing, Profitability
Photo by Adam Ciesielsk

There’s a new business model that’s finding its way into almost every community: the walk-in urgent care clinic.

Today there are over 8700 urgent care centers in the US alone, according to the profession’s association.

And since urgent care clinics are usually small, local and privately owned, they are much more entrepreneurial than their big hospital counterparts.  Where a non-profit hospital might be able to get along with minimal outreach efforts, an urgent care clinic couldn’t survive if the community didn’t use its services.

For the doctors who run these centers, effective urgent care marketing can be the difference between withering or prospering.

As anyone who’s been involved with a neighborhood business knows, there’s a short list of effective ways to build awareness in a community.  But attending Rotary Club functions, co-sponsoring soccer car washes, and managing the chamber of commerce open house will only get you so far.

Sure, there’s something to be said for making an investment to assure a prominent spot in Google, under “local urgent care.”  But even the all-powerful Google Search would likely not connect with most potential patients when it was time for urgent care.

What the urgent care doctor needs is the clinic’s phone number, street address, and maybe a web address, to be posted in kitchens and workplaces throughout the community.

The clinic could really use imprinted magnets in those homes and offices.

And that’s where our postcard magnet mailers come in.

urgentcare-magnet-mailersYou see, our postcard magnet mailer is a jumbo, full-color, laminated postcard, with a magnet attached. We mail them to a mailing list you provide.

Think of it as a delivery-vehicle with a mini billboard that finds its way into the kitchen or workplace, for the cost of a postage stamp.

And done effectively, the magnet positions the urgent care clinic’s message in full view, for weeks, months or longer, for less than the price of an iced tea.

At magnetbyMail we handle the details: printing, laminating, assembling, addressing, bundling and even the postal paperwork.  We can even help with the design and the mailing list.

This leaves more time for the clinic to tend to its patients.

And even though we’re a bit biased about our love for these magnet mailers, we think you could might come to agree that it’s pretty much the vitamin C of direct mail marketing.

 

Another practical marketing idea from magnetbyMail.com,  where healthy results are what it’s all about.

Foldup: Direct Mail Goes Big

By admin in Design, Marketing
Photo by Jereme Peabody

The Next Big Idea in Direct Marketing

Late last year we asked potential customers looking at our products what they wished for.

They said, as much as they liked the idea of our postcard magnets, what they really wished for was more room to express themselves.

You see, we’ve always had our basic postcard magnets — these are jumbo postcards and custom printed magnets, one glued to the other and mailed via directmail.

But the Venti, our largest postcard magnet at 5-1/2″ x 10-1/2″ just wasn’t enough.  Some marketers want more than the Venti’s 115 square inches.

foldup postcard magnet directmail idea

So in January, we introduced our Foldup Magnet Mailer.  This a very big, 8-1/2″ x 11″ postcard, folded in half, a magnet attached to the inside, and sealed shut with easy-peel glue.  Marketers now can have over 200 square inches of printing area.

The fold provides lots of benefits.  The standard postcard format has two sides or ‘facings.’  But the Foldup Magnet Mailer has three facings: the front, the back, and the inside.  This gives marketers more space and flexibility to develop their message.

Another benefit of the Foldup is, because the folded piece is thicker than our regular magnet mailer, and the magnet is held securely inside, we don’t need to use poly laminate to keep the mailer as rigid for mailing purposes.

Saving poly laminate saves time and reduces costs. (We still provide a UV coating for shine and protection.)

Our customers can receive a Foldup Magnet Mailer for about the same price as our smaller postcard magnet.

A final benefit is that we can enclose custom shaped magnets with the Foldup.  (Our standard postcard magnets could use only rectangle shapes, mostly.)

Foldup Magnet Mailers make sense for any marketer who wants all the benefits of delivering a magnet to a home or office, but who needs lots of space to convey their message.

One thing we should mention for designers: the positioning of the Foldup’s magnet is more restrictive than for our regular postcard magnets. The magnet needs to be attached on the ‘inside’ of the folded postcard, and ‘behind’ the area where the mailing address is to printed.

But if your design can work with that location, the Foldup Magnet Mailer may be the perfect way to deliver your message. You can deliver it with a 200 square inch format, and provide a custom magnet to help keep your message in full view for weeks or months.

 

Another innovative marketing device from your friends at magnetbyMail.com, your source for magnet mailers and other ingenious communications tools.

 

Direct Mail Since Net

By admin in Marketing

It was as if Direct Mail advertising was hit by a bus a few years ago, when the Internet came to town.  Advertisers took off, thinking they could save a boatload by simply building a website, recalling the adage “build it and they will come…”

Our own Clarke Stevens looks into what happened to Direct Mail since that time in his recent article at Hubpages.com: Aspiring Media Could Impact Marketing Strategy .

Its worth a look…

Hospitals Advertise Too

By admin in Marketing

A regional hospital had identified a need in the community and added a Womens Diagnostic Imaging Center to its growing campus.

But the investment would have a slow payback if the Center was underutilized.

Magnet mailers for healthcareSo the hospital decided to advertise using ‘The Basic’ postcard magnets.

A postcard mailer was designed to announce the Center, and invite women for a free tour of the facilities.  The refrigerator magnet was designed as a convenient reminder for women who might need the Center’s services.  It provided phone number, address and website info.

Within four weeks, the new Center went from ‘unknown’ to being busy with tours.

And to this day, patients mention making use of the Center’s magnet in their kitchen.

Another marketing solution from magnetbyMail.com