Moving to CPG and OTC

Typical OTC Medication Aile in Drugstore or Grocery

I'm very excited to have made a career change, and as of December 3 have been working at Symphony IRI Group.  Formerly known as Information Resources, this firm for over 30 years has collected and analyzed shopper scanner data from groceries, drugstores, and other retailers.  They also manage a large consumer panel of individuals detailing their shopping patterns and motivations.

As a result, I will be deeply involved in data mining, and looking for innovative ways to summarize shopping patterns to help both manufacturers and retailers.  Application areas like media planning, inventory and assortment, and pricing.  These are the core business problems of consumer packaged goods (CPG). Fascinating discipline, filled with smart data scientists.  

From a healthcare perspective, most of my focus will now shift from the Rx world to the over the counter (OTC)  world; where consumer are playing an active role in managing their health in areas like pain relief, allergy, well-being, vitamins, skin care, etc.   One might think of this as the beginning of a patient's journey, before seeking physician consultation, or perhaps a parallel customer journey. 

Also on the docket, how does CRM, digital and social, affect the worlds of CPG and OTC?   Stay tuned.

Digital Commuting Rule of 2-1-1

Every morning I ride the NYC subway from my home to the CementBloc office in Manhattan.   Needing things to do, I have taken to conducting an informal poll of everyone in the subway car.  the poll is observational, and I am categorizing people based on how digital they are on their morning commute:

A)  Digital: Using some sort of electronic device:  smartphone, tablet, even an MP3 player with headphones

B) Analogue:  Reading a newspaper or a book, or a magazine.

C) Totally disconnected:  taking a nap, speaking with a neighbor, or thinking idly.

The typical results of my poll:  Roughly,   (A) is 50%, (B) is 25%, (C) is 25%

By the way, if you are like me, with the newspaper (Wall St Journal) and the smartphone (iPhone) checking email and music concurrently, ou get assigned to the Digital

In other words, the ratio is 2-1-1.  Of course, this depends on the audience and the time of year.  I find that around 7:30 am or 8:00 am the 2-1-1 holds due to students and business commuters that need to stay connected.  In summertime or midday if I run late, a different demographic takes over and you can get more like a 1-1-1 or a 1-1-2.

What does this mean for advertisers who are seeking CRM acquisition prospects?  You may have a captive audience if you can get mobile.  

Getting ready for the Fall Semester

I'm getting the syllabus and lectures finalized for my Fall 2012 course in

CRM at Rutgers Business School, Newark Campus.  I'll be using my textbook, Healthcare Relationship Marketing, by Gower Press, plus additional readings and other case studies.  The course will be cross-industry, and I expect to show many good examples from retail, financial services airlines, and hospitality.   WIll cover both consumer and professional

The emphasis will be on learning the practical aspects of designing a CRM program based on strategy, deploying with technology, and measuring.   Check out the syllabus.  Would love to hear ideas of best practices that you have on CRM.

Patients online finding, rating, scheduling doctors

Two websites that empower patients like never before have really taken off. 

ZocDoc lets patients schedule appointments with physicians, by linking directly to their office  scheduling systems.

HealthGrades enables patients to find a specialist near them, and rate the experience afterwords.

All about extending the convenience and immediacy of healthcare to patients, while providing access and promotion to talented capable physicians. 

Both are available across a growing number of major metropolitan areas, going national and perhaps beyond.

Think of this as a new entry channel for CRM systems.  Additionally in the future there should be a chance  to really perform analytics and understand the health consumption patterns across the country, by specialty.

Rise in use of QR Print to Online Codes

hSince I last blogged about these 2-D print  "action codes,"  especially QR codes, in February, boy has there been a dramatic increase in their usage.  Take a look at the exponential increase in 2-D action codes in magazines:  over 500 in the month of September, as Mediapost quoted a study by NellyMoser.

QR codes have the highest market share of these at 60%.
The codes are mostly in consumer magazines, and mostly in advertisements.  Healthcare specifically is not cited.

 Thanks to the comment (below)  by reader Ardash K, we can also see there has been a dramatic rise in Google searchers for QR codes.

This shows the mainstream exposure to certain core demographics, and that is a trend that consumer healthcare marketers should realize is at least worth a test.

Copay cards - follow the money

Co-pay cards are an often used tactic to encourage patients to try a new branded medication that is prescribed by their physician, eliminating the concern for an expensive co-payment that can come with a Tier 3 drug. In CRM terms, they are used as a conversion tactic, and can even be the gateway to an adherence program.

Here is another perspective on co-pay cards:

In a very interesting article and interview in MMM, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association is cited in an estimation of how much additional cost must be reimbursed because of the use of copay cards: $32 billion over the next ten years. In addition, the PCMA clarifies who is paying for those costs: employers, unions, and state employee plans. As well as taxpayers.

In other words, someone has to pay the insurance companies the money they expected in their copayments. Some is borne by the phramaceutical manufacturers, but some is also paid for by those who contractwith the insurers, like employers et al. The details of this analysis are not crystal clear, but it most likley is based on the missed savings that would come from generic usage. In any regard, this is a thought provoking total.

Want to read more about the perspective of the PCMA?: Browse their website, or a research report (by Visante) about their planned drug cost savings over the next 10 years.

Turning the Waiting Room into an Education Center

The medical practice waiting room can be a point of either acquisition or conversion for CRM, depending on how educated the patient is about the therapeutic category, and whether that patient is aware of the treatment options.

Come read this week’s MediaPost Marketing:Health Blog to get a perspective on how waiting rooms can be leveraged for better education, and facilitating the patient-doctor dialogue.

There are discussions of how to better educate patients before they see the physician, and techniques for measuring the effectiveness of waiting room programs.

Brainstorming: food for thought

Ever get a group of cross-functional people in a room for a CRM or PRM tactical planning session? Perhaps to plan media placement or other promotional ideas? Better ask them to do some self-study ahead of time.

A recent article in The Washington Post by Jena McGregor comments on a research study about brainstorming. The study was done in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology by Nicholas Kohn and Steven Smith, two researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington and Texas A&M University.

The researchers asked undergraduate students to contribute ideas, both individually and in collective groups. They shared the ideas on a computer, either in small chat groups or alone, but combined together after the fact. As expected, those made up of individual ideas that were later pulled together, outperformed the real chat groups, both with the number of ideas and the diversity of them.

Thus, think about asking teammates to make a short list before hand, to avoid the herd mentality.

Consumer Youtube channels -- various industries

I've been reviewing YouTube channels of various companies and industries that need to reach consumers. I'm looking for inspirations particularly outside of traditional pharmaceuticals, to industries where consumers need information on how to use products, before making a purchase decision: consider automobiles, cosmetics, and consumer electronics.

The spectrum of channels seems to range from advertising outposts to true peer to peer experiences. At the one end, Honda channels are predominantly commercials, and a few public service corporate videos. Apple's channel is in between in that it delivers instructional videos, but they are delivered in the official corporate messaging and video quality: see this iPad2 video on Apple channel.

Two companies for me have channels exemplifying more of the peer to peer, instructional nature taht consumers in the acquisition stage of CRM really need: http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthey must understand how to use the product. See for example The Mercedes channel, with sample start ups. Video quality less slick but authentic, nad I learn something about the dashboards, engine noise, etc. Then there is Destination Beauty by L'Oreal Paris. Sure, cosmetics firms make plenty of slick commercials with movie stars. But rather than show those, this YouTube portal is a series of tutorial videos by consumer-friendly "artists" that present peer to peer instructions on hos to use the products for face, or hair.

The more authentic, and the more helpful, the YouTube videos, the more influential on CRM conversion they will be.

Flipping a Switch for losing 28 pounds

I have been able to successfully lose 25 pounds within the past two months, and 28 so far in 2011. It feels great, and I still have more to go, maybe 10 pounds more. I certainly am very thankful for Gina F. and The Diet Center for my success, but I have thought about what mentality was required of me to change my behavior and improve my wellness.

I am familiar with multiple theories of behavior change (working in CRM), but the best metaphor I can come up with is "flipping a switch" In other words, just changing completely the set of bad habits with my diet, and changing my approach to exercise. Stopping the delusions and dealing with reality. I now no longer eat bagels, muffins, pizza, cake, cookies, etc, that I convinced myself were OK once in a while. I have amped up my consumption of vegetables and salads, and dialed way down my consumption of carbs like bread and pasta. I also now exercise vigorouslu and regularly, not once in a while and piecemeal.

I have heard others who have lost weight also mention the phrase "flip the switch." In fact, there has even been a weight loss book written by this name, but I have not read it. But I do agree that one way to change bad habits is to turn them off and replace them with much better, more positive habits, that results in lots of positive reinforcement. I am living proof.

Social Media recruitment for clinical trials

In rare diseases, one often finds active social media communities of patients and caregivers hungry for information. These communities exist for sharing disease state information, offering support, and occasionally advice on treatment.

Another tremendous application can be recruitment for clinical trials. This is the story of a a recent Mayo Clinic study within cardiology. A team of cardiologists led by Sharonne Hayes, M.D., has contacted survivors of spontaneous coronary artery dissection, also known as SCAD, a poorly understood heart condition that affects just a few thousand Americans every year.

The patient community is within a patient network called WomenHeart

The finding was that for this pilot clinical trial study, the number of patients needed was exceeded within a week; the overflow patients are eligible for a second round, expanded trial.

This is a great example of Acquisition for clinical trials, where social media can be a viable alternative, or complement, to paid media or other event recruitment.

Web analytics trends: more focused, less bouncing

A recently published study, reported on the KissMetrics Blhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifog, is The 2011 Web Analytics Review. The source of the data is traffic trends from hundreds of thousands of websites across the globe, which have participated in Google’s ongoing study of web browsing behavior.

The study shows year over year differences of a three month time period: Nov. 1 2010 to Feb. 1 2011, versus the same time period a year before. The findings generally show:

* lower bounce rates (leaving from the first page) at 47% on average now
* shorter time on website, at 4:50 average now,
* and fewer pages viewed, down to 4.5 on average.

These figures make good benchmarks for judging engagement of one's own website, although realize that results will differ by country, category, and media mix.

Yet, the trends above hold true worldwide, and also in the USA. There are results for other countries in the report as well.

What might explain these trends, over such a large sample? It can well be the benefit of targeted advertising, combined with improvement of website navigation to be more goal oriented. With this combination, a website has more qualified leads, people with interest and intent, who come to visit. Those interested visits are quickly led to a goal page, or to the information they need.

There are also results broken out by source of website traffic. The most efficient source of all? Cost Per Click paid search, with the lowest bounce rate, the shortest time on websites, yet the highest page totals consumed. This is consistent with the interest of a search initiated customer.

Statistical modeling for medication adherence

Patients not adhering to their medication regimens has been shown in multiple studies to yield sub-optimal health outcomes as well as decreased sales opportunities for pharmaceutical companies. Various CRM efforts over the years have tried to address this. Now a new tool may be avaialable.

There was a fascinating article in the NY Times Health Blog recently about Fair Isaac (FICO)creating a logistic regression style "medication adherence score" much like their credit score, that predicts likelihood to adhere based on demographic, financial, and transactional variables. For example: Are sixty-something
middle class Midwestern grandparents with low net worth particularly non-adherent?

If a score comes up as such, would a pharmaceutical company target them with a an extra adherence mailer, kit, or a premium adherence pill bottle? Or call center support? Since these are expensive resources, targeting using a validated model score seems attractive.

Of course, these resources could be offered to anyone, but could be promoted selectively.

I think likely the modeling score was validated on historical data. It will be fascinating to see how accuracy is tracked moving forward. Also, whether pharmaceutical firms or communications agencies will adopt it.

List purchasing and direct mail

One of the ways healthcare companies perform acquisition is via direct mail. It can be a targeted approach to acquire lists and then send patients information. Of course, direct mail can be expensive depending on the piece, and you might expect to get a 1% to 2% response rate on actions like website registrations or calls. Definitely this is an acquisition channel where you can create a basic pro-forma spreadsheet model to gauge potential ROI.

I would recommend Email as an more cost effective alternative for consumer acquisition. These also can be list purchased.

Where do the sources of the lists come from? They are opted in at various sources by the consumers who note that they have a particular condition. The sources of a pharmaceutical direct mail piece to patients is illuminating; see this blog entry and article.

I recommend a test and learn approach when it comes to pharma lists for direct mail or email. Rent a random fraction of the list and see the response rate. Or better yet, use a quantitiy you can afford. Also, consult an agency you trust to find the right list suppliers.

Invest a Bit to Measure

When investing millions in a new major promotional campaign, or a new selling technology, think about this: how will you be accountable for that investment? How will you know if that investment in advertising, communications, and technology is actually paying off? In today's corporate environment, answering those questions is paramount.

The Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) cleverly remarked in rhyme: "Door Meten tot Weten:" Through Measurement is Knoweldge.

Yet I often see clients, and agencies, omit the small proportion of the budget required to measure, which insures understanding of success, and the ability to optimize and improve. I would say 8% to 10% is a good minimal requirement benchmark for a measurement budget -- others would go much higher -- see this ClickZ point of view.

What does measurement look like? Especially with new technologies like multichannel, closed loop marketing, RM, iPads, QR codes, etc?

Ultimately, you want linkage between your promotional investments and incremental sales.

However, there are other critical evaluations that should be performed, on how the marketplace is behaving and how perceptions are being changed. Some call this "engagement." I like to think of it as: "are my stakeholders behaving the way I intended?"

Measurement is in large part the comparison of actual behaviors to what you expected when you set up your mutli-channel program, or your sales force automation system. Are the sales reps detailing as you intended? Are the physicians or consumers interacting with the media you have placed? Is navigation on websites achieving to goals that move your brand?

Therefore, when investing in promotional platforms, give some thought as to the expected marketplace experiences. And save some funds for measurment to confirm or optimize your plans.

Healthcare is Digital and Pervasive

This Tuesday our firm The CementBloc hosted an event during New York's Internet Week demonstrating multi-channel solutions in the Health and Wellness Sector. We received an impressive response of over 100 registrants, and we showed four waves of attendees through our offices. The context was a patient journey for a prospective traveler to the Far East, and how that consumer learned about all of the required vaccinations from web, mobile, office materials, EMail, and so on. Furthermore, healthcare professionals, be they primary care physicians or travel clinic specialists, hear about vaccine updates via professional portals, Epocrates, and ipad tablets from their pharmaceutical sales representatives.

For some first hand accounts of this exhibit, please see Yahoo and also Mediapost. For an impact on how this affected TheBloc and beyond, see My Life as a Focus Group.

Communications in healthcare can only be impactful when they can reach the target audiences where they gathering informations and making decisions. By necessity, that means placing portable information assets at various places: online, within communities, in office, (E)mail, out of doors, and in various media: print, digital, and video. The days of building monolithic websites with many bells and whistles is drawing to a close. Instead, one must design an interconnected distributed system that collectively accomplishes CRM or PRM.

Furthermore, that means working in medical communications is an exciting place to be.

Convergent branding: hitting the spot.

When I was studying for my math major at MIT, I learned over and over theorems about convergence: how a sequence of numbers gets arbitrarily ever closer to a target. The same concept holds in multi-dimensional space, like in the figure to the left: from all directions, follow the trend and get to the same point.

At The CementBloc, we also talk about convergent branding. From whatever channel a consumer, healthcare professional, or payer comes from, they experience the brand in the same consistent way. Ironically, this does not mean that all of your marketing is located at one point in space. Quite the contrary, the convergence is to the customer, wherever the customer goes, in whatever channel, that is where you place the consistent message.

This has implications for promotional planning. Say you have an audience of healthcare specialists, or consumer caregivers, with a high-volume central portal or community. Then make that favored location part of your convergent messaging plan. But in a subtle way. If you seem promotional, you steer the sequence off course; rather, continue the pattern, and let your true message flow within the direction of that active customer destination.

Heavy stuff? Want to find out more? Make a comment or send an email.

Search Engine Optimization -- feeling the impact

Often I am asked by clients I consult with how to improve their search engine optimization. This is a great question, since data shows that:

* Organic searchers are expressing intent and are highly engaged after landing on the website

* More search clickers find the organic listings than the paid listings

* Google is roughly 90% of search engine traffic and is of particular interest.

* It does not require any additional paid media spend

Put it all together, and organic search is a terrific ongoing strategy to enable acquisition for CRM programs.

There are best practices for SEO, and they apply whatever the size of your website.

Consider this Blog you are reading now. As a small time, twice a week technical blogger, I need to get my blog website traffic from where ever I can. Sure I have a few long standing referrals, like Gower Publishing and The CementBloc. Those contribute some traffic. Lately my order of magnitude of visits has doubled, knock on wood. I see this on my Google Analytics reports. The reason is organic search, one of the most high quality sources of traffic you can have.

How did the organic search to this Blog here grow so much, especially on Google? That is a lesson for all website developers in Search Engine Optimization.

Just try running the Google search of "IMS acquires SDI."
Good grief with all the news wires out there, how did this mid-frequency blog of Healthcare Relationship Marketing get to be a top 5 result (and top 5 gets over 70% of the visits) on such a major news story of an industry? This was not planned, I can assure you, but every day, traffic comes here from organic Google keyword searches on that topic.

* Become search-able. Include textual content on highly searched areas: such as tablets, digital trends, health industry and social media, often. Avoid Flash embedding of key text areas.

* Use relevant meta tags. I think my titles and labels really help here.

* Try to become "authoritative" and have valid factual sources on particular areas.

* Multichannel promotion of the website. -- as I update my website, I Tweet, Email, Linked in, and Facebook others so they can have a path to come back here.

* Get your website pointed to by highly respected and trafficked sources. For this blog, things really took off once I got pointed to from highly Followed Tweeters like Relationship Marketing update by Bruce Brown and Salesforce Daily from Paul M and technical blogger J. Polonetsky. Getting pointed to by industry websites by Kyp and adPharm were tremendous helps in not only referral traffic but in establishing credibility for organic search. a big help

Want to dive into SEO traffic for your organization? Feel welcome to contact me at The Bloc.

Also, there is a website from SEOmoz that can give a tutorial and a blog community called SEOMoz where diehard practitioners of search engine optimization best practices for years have been congregating and sharing best practices.

New Book and Special Discount

Very exciting! After over a year of researching, writing, editing, proofreading, and the patient support of so many, we are just one month away until the new book is available. Printed books to be out early March; E-books in April.

Whether you are a practitioner of CRM or PRM, a healthcare marketer, or a university instructor, there should be something in this book for you. It is intended as both a course and a reference that pulls it all together in Healthcare RM.

Come talk to me with any questions or interest. This author would be happy to give a guest lecture as well.

Pre-orders can be made now, and below is a special 35% off discount offer valid through March 31st:


Discount 35% off new book Healthcare Relationship Marketing at Gower Press website Enter code G1DLT35 at checkout

Book description below:

Healthcare Relationship Marketing: Strategy, Design and Measurement


Ira J. Haimowitz, Ph.D


In recent years there have been dramatic changes in the pharmaceutical promotional landscape, affecting both consumers and healthcare professionals. One consequence of these dynamics is the need for pharmaceutical companies to plan new kinds of dialogue and relationships with their stakeholders. The evolution has been from mass-channel "push" marketing to two-way, multi-channel relationship marketing. Targeted Emails, webinars, mobile messages, and social networks are expanding in usage.

This book is a practical overview and resource guide for the design and measurement of pharmaceutical relationship marketing (RM) programs. There are descriptions of each aspect of pharmaceutical RM design and measurement, including a running case study with follow-up exercises. The author has also conducted interviews from several pharmaceutical marketing industry experts, each having 15 years or more of working healthcare RM knowledge, and each speaking on their specific specialities.

For newcomers to healthcare marketing, this book can serve as a foundation and introduction that provides framework, details, and examples of both relationship marketing designs and associated measurement disciplines. Healthcare Relationship Marketing will also be valuable to readers currently working in pharmaceutical marketing or sales who may not have exposure to the particular disciplines of relationship marketing and direct response measurement and optimization. Even for the experienced practitioner this will serve as a convenient reference that pulls together all of the program components and measurement frameworks within a single book. This book may also serve as a textbook within a university course in marketing, or a pharmaceutical business program.


Contents: Preface; Healthcare trends and relationship marketing's role; Foundations of relationship marketing; Discovery: situation assessment; Strategy: planning the relationship marketing program; Analytics planning for relationship marketing; Execution: placing in the marketplace; Measurement of healthcare relationship marketing programs; Optimization and the new cycle; Conclusions and the future; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

Facebook: cost effective, quality CRM leads

Lots of news recently about advertising on Facebook. Online Media Daily cited E-Marketer data that projects Facebook advertising revenues doubling in 2011.

Yet, on the other hand, an Adweek article last week that Facebook click through rate performance is "abysmal" at about 0.05 percent. Furthermore, the article notes that "The worst performing ad category on Facebook, per Webtrends, was healthcare, which generated 0.011 percent click-through rates and an average cost-per-click of $1.27." That Facebook CTR seems too low for what we've seen, but do not let that deter you either way.

Here is a missing piece of the puzzle: We at The CementBloc have seen that in several major consumer female health categories, that the Facebook click-through leads on pharmaceutical websites are fairly engaged and qualified, far exceeding the goal oriented activity of banner ads on behavioral media networks. However, the Facebook leads are less engaged and goal oriented than either paid or organic search.

What do these numbers mean when put together: A compelling short term Facebook campaign in a high volume consumer health category may let you place 100 million impressions; with ever more demographics on Facebook continually, gaining your large impressions is becoming quite easy. Then your campaign (if having a slightly higher CTR than cited for health) would get 20,000 website visitors for about $26,000. If 10 percent of those attain goals, you have 2,000 highly qualified leads (e.g. registrants or screener takers) at about $13 per qualified lead.

This makes Facebook still more efficient than paid search, and indeed worthwhile considering as a small to mid-scale part of your direct-response consumer marketing mix.