April, 2004
Volume I, Issue 17

Healthcare News Trends

Is e-mail dead?

According to the April 5 issue of B to B magazine, "tragedy has befallen e-mail marketing and it's anyone's guess if the medium will ever recover...The medium's response rates have dropped steadily as mail volume has ballooned."

The magazine cites a study that shows that click-throughs for seminar e-mails dropped to 0.4% in the second half of 2003.

The story goes on to report that several large marketers such as AT&T Business Services and Hewlett-Packard have dramatically reduced or completely stopped e-mail marketing.

To see the complete story, "Can e-mail be saved?" go to B to B Online.

From PR perspective, we can report that it is getting very hard to contact reporters by e-mail. Many media organizations have very tight spam filters that knock-out anyone that is not on a white list. Some organizations, such as Reuters Health, have changed all their reporters' e-mail addresses and are not publicly listing them.

The solution? The good, old-fashioned phone call. In most cases, you'll get voicemail, so a compelling, customized pitch is essential.

Reporters are also much more likely to return the calls of people they know. That's why it's important to use a PR agency that specializes in healthcare and works with the industry's reporters and editors on a regular basis.

How do you compete with giants?

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that GE Healthcare will reach $16 billion in sales in 2005, making it one of GE's biggest businesses, "surpassing even its aircraft-engines division."

The Journal story noted that company is stressing "innovation along with profits." It said the unit's CEO, Sir William Castell, held a brainstorming session earlier this year and "asked managers and technicians to envision medicine in 2025. The managers discussed "long-term ideas before digging into strategy and product launches for the next five years.."

It is possible for small companies to play David to GE and other Goliaths

Public relations offers a more level playing field then advertising. Let's face it, a small company won't be able to ever get the same "share of voice" in advertising with GE, which spends more than $300 million annually on ads.

However, your company can get a very good share of voice in news columns in business publications, if you have a good PR strategy. The news media is interested in small, innovative companies that present their stories in a concise, well documented format.

Westside has conducted a number of campaigns that generated extensive national print coverage for well under $100,000 (that's less then GE spends on hand-out bags).

If you'd like to see a case history of a cost-effective campaign that helped a small healthcare company double its revenue in 18 months email us.

Industry Insight

"William Yasnoff, Department of Health and Human Services' special advisor...on the U.S. healthcare system: '(It) does a disservice to the word system. We have one-seventh of the economy that consists of little slips of paper floating around ... Medicine is mostly practiced in an information-free zone. If there's any information on you (during an emergency room visit), consider yourself lucky.'"

"Alan Ying, chief executive officer of MercuryMD, on the physicians' thought process when at the hospital: 'When a doctor walks into a hospital, all they can think about is getting back out. It doesn't matter how good the bagels are in the lounge.'"

"Ying on the dangers of demanding a full-function order entry system: 'You can say you only want the full monty, but after $100 million and five or six years, if you're a certain hospital in California, you try to go live and suddenly you have a real physician rebellion.'"

From "Overheard at the Expo" in the April 1 edition of Health-IT World.

Resources

Yahoo! and Microsoft are working on solutions to the e-mail spam problem.

The Inside 1to1 Marketing newsletter, published by the Peppers&Rogers Group, reports that these two big guns are looking at "e-mail postage" as a solution.

"Microsoft is developing an Outlook plug-in that would allow Outlook users to charge people they don't know for sending e-mail. Yahoo is taking a different approach (trying to) develop a postage network designed to charge bulk e-mailers."

This newsletter is just one of several published by the Peppers&Rogers Group. To learn more about the newsletters see the 1to1 Marketing homepage.

A more general (and better known) marketing newsletter is published by Marketing Sherpa.

This site contains a mix of free and for-sale content on various PR and marketing techniques and case histories. Recent stories included "How A&E's Online Store raised Conversion Rates by 50%" and "Marketing Financial Services to Teens and College Students."

You are welcome to forward this publication to other public relations professionals for noncommercial use.

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