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.

2-D "QR" bar codes

There has been an acceleration of awareness and usage of QR (Quick Response) 2 dimensional bar codes over the past year. A current article in the trade publication CRM Magazine has a QR code overview. This technology is described as an innovative gamble that marketers are taking; it is a low budget allocation, and small but growing awareness by consumers, and readability by smartphone apps. There is even a running blog about 2-D bar codes with very active community postings, including about which mobile phone bar code readers are effective.

A good overview of QR codes and their history is in Wikipedia; they started in auto manufacturing for tracking parts and shipments. Now, an active growth area in QR code usage is in commercial sales and marketing applications.

For an array of pharmaceutical and healthcare advertisements using QR codes, see this link in AdPharm.

At The Bloc we have healthcare clients investigating QR codes for RM related purposes. The primary reason is consumer acquisition, driving from printed offline pieces to a registration website or a promotional offer. The QR codes may in principle be on:

* print ads

* packaging

* patient brochures

* outdoor advertising

All of these are typically a challenge to measure accurately, particularly in a direct response way. As consumer usage of QR codes grows, they may serve as a replacement for vanity URLs which are not always remembered.

Hard data on response rates for QR codes is not standardized yet, but that may be forthcoming within a year or two. In the meantime, this appears a worthwhile experimental healthcare CRM acquisition tactic.

Twitter, my second business news channel

A Twitter account can serve multiple purposes, but it is best not to mix them. Some people view Twitter as a way to keep track of the latest whereabouts and activities of friends. Others, including myself, find it a terrific, focused continual news source.

I am fairly selective on who I follow on Twitter, and on what I tweet about. I keep it to business and professional interests. If you would like to see who I follow on Twitter, check it out.

The categories include Analytics areas like:
BI Analytics News

Analytic Bridge, by Vincent Granville

KDNuggets, by Gregory Piatetsky Shapiro

and Health Topics like:

Dr. Jenny K

New York Times Health

and advertising news such as AdTech, Ad Age, and Agency Spy
There are also a few pharmaceutical companies that tweet, and I follow some, and try to keep pace.

Finally, there are like minded professionals I respect for passing along good news.

Why is this my second favorite professional news source, after The Wall St Journal? Because the social network is sending my way filtered content rapidly; like a marketplace of filtering. My network of colleagues and sources has interests that overlap mine, but do not exactly duplicate. They re-tweet breaking topics that I find fascinating, and I try to reciprocate when I can. So I am exposed to news items and trends that are aligned with my interests.

I suppose RSS Feeds can accomplish the same thing, but Twitter also enables the multi-way, networked interaction. I do not check Twitter often, maybe once every other day. But that's enough for me to keep track of the industry and professional trends I care about.

Startup companies: reason for failure - meta analysis

Fortunately at The CementBloc I am at a successful startup that is now heading for 11 years. Now, in my line of work at analytics and technology for healthcare communications, I am continually working with young startup companies: software companies, advertising agencies, analytic consultants. Also, with downsizing, many of my talented former colleagues in the corporate world are starting their own small firms.

With this in mind I was very intrigued to read the post-hoc meta-analysis of 32 failed startups done by Chubby Brain. This is summarized as "Top 20 reasons why startups fail."

The top reasons include customer focus, responding to a dynamic marketplace, and team chemistry. But there are others as well. I encourage anyone in small business to take a look. I might also encourage those who employ small companies to look as well, for the right signs in who they are giving their contracts to.

Social Dashboards of Web Dashboards? Cut to the business

Website analytics has been an area I have been practicing for over 10 years now, back when this was an active software area of many startup companies (with colorful names like WebsideStory) outdueling each other for the most strking visualizations and most insightful path analyses. Nowadays, I have first found it surprising to see the rise in use of the free but spartan Google Analytics over the more mature and visually robust Webtrends and Omniture (now part of Adobe site catalyst). Those two have gobbled up many of the aforementioned startups.

Lately this month I have stumbled across new developments: software that take Google Analytics output and create new dashboards. One is Unilyzer software for dashboarding social media trends out of your Google Analytics output. The other are actual Google Analytics post-processing apps. I'll bet there are more that post-process in this way. I myself often take "G.A." output and visualize in my favorite dashboard prototyping tool, Spotfire. Tell me ones you know!

How to learn about the best choices for dashboard design, cost aside?
Much has been written over the past two decades about effective display of visual information in dashboards.
The work of Edward Tufte is foundational, and there are excellent texts like
Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few, reviewed in UX Design.
One can even read about dashboards in other original areas for inspiration: see this
blogger on automobile dashboards

However, don't forget the main purpose of your dashboard should be to drive business decision making. Therefore be business focused. Create the dimensions that matter to your application domain and to your clients. All data miners say that data processing to get clean,insightful KPIs is up to 80 percent of the project. Do not push that off by merely re-displaying the raw feeds. Make sure you get right to the drivers of your business.

Cloud Computing and iPad based selling

We have seen before in this blog: the mad rush of pharmaceutical companies to develop sales force selling "detailing" materials on the iPad. A nice perspective on this is provided by Eye for Pharma The appeal in terms of cost, ease of use, and the flash factor is irresistible. The initial wave has been primarily in the guise of developing nice visual detail presentations. The CementBloc is one agency that is developing iPad based selling capabilities

The first wave of iPad based selling has been divorced from other sales functions.
But what about more complete sales force automation (SFA) systems? Since the iPad is so new, and not directly compatible (yet) with traditional pharma infrastructure and databases, it is not surprising that SFA would be delivered via cloud computing. What is cloud computing? -- internet based servers, using software as a service rather than infrastructure investments. The WSJ has a nice overview of cloud computing, or for more technical, see Infoworld.

A case study from cloud computing developer Veeva, on Millenium Pharmaceuticals sites a sales rep solution, to save IT costs. But this was using more traditional PC based clients.


The latest, according to Medical Marketing and Media, iPads will in February be enabled with sample signature capture using aVeeva systems new sales platform called iRep. The company reports it is compliant, and that several pharma companies have already signed on for the February launch.

Once sample signatures are solved, the rest of SFA on iPads in the clouds will not be far behind.

IMS acquires SDI: the data firm nesting continues

The news that IMS Health is acquiring SDI (see IMS press release here) is a jolt to those of us who have worked in the pharmaceutical data industry for ten years or more.

Both companies declined to discuss the acquisition beyond a joint statement released last Friday afternoon. Unnamed company sources told Ed Silverman, who first reported the deal on his Pharmalot blog, that as much as 15% of SDI's staff could lose their jobs as a result of the acquisition.

Gary Gatyas, an IMS Health spokesperson, declined to speculate on timing for the completion of the deal, citing pre-merger notification requirements with respect to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.

SDI itself was made larger by the acquisition of Verispan in 2008. Verispan was in fact a conglomerate formed by the 2002 combination of multiple data vendors like Scott-Levin, SMG, and Kelly Waldron. This reminds me of the Russian nested doll pictured here, the matryoshka.

Why have there been so many combinations in the data, and informatics consulting business? Driven in part by profitability issues, intense competition, adn the mergers of the pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves,

If this deal goes through, With this latest IMS acquisition there will come a short term hassle for major pharmceutical clients in 2011 as the landscape gets sorted out. Then longer term, there will be less competition for information sources, and perhaps slow down the rate of innovation.

Managing display and search simulatneously

An interesting new research study by Efficient Frontier and Forrester Consulting showed that digital marketers are struggling with managing integrated search and display campaigns.

I have witnessed these struggles on my own as a pharmaceutical manufacturer employee, and see it now in my clients, as we deliver communications and we partner with media companies.

Some possible underlying reasons for the struggle

* Media companies are often conglomerates, and have acquired distinct and separate sub-agencies that handle search from the people who handle banner placement.

* The two tactics have fundamentally different objectives: search is for mid to bottom of funnel consumers that are expressing an interest in finding out more or in making a transaction. Banners are for upper funnel consumers, where you catch them by surprise in their reading other web pages, and hope your visual branding and offer may be appealing to warrant an interaction or a click.

* You cannot use impressions for both in the same way. Search text boxes do not grab the same share of attention as banner ads do.

* Therefore click through rates mean slightly different things.

* Interestingly, search click through rates are much higher than banner click through rates, since the consumer is more interested in the results. This despite the over-inflated impressions.

Nonetheless, a good marketing agency or media company should explain the relevant value of each of these digital channels, as they relate to the client's brand goals.

Measurement's role in the journey to health

A trio from the CementBloc, yours truly included, described the journey to wellness in a recent article on Mediapost.

In particular, consider the role that measurement plays as patients are taking medication to get healthy. Illness is often accompanied by one or more physiological metrics that are out of the normal range. As a patient is undergoing treatment, a primary way to measure return to health is by tracking those metrics as they return to the normal range. A patient can work with his or her physician to adjust the therapy based on how these health-related metrics change over time.

Metrics on wellness can be thought of individually or collectively, and technology plays an ever-increasing role in both cases. Individually, patients have more means than ever to quickly and automatically see how their health is improving. Just a few examples are the Wii Fit with built-in scale, the Bayer Contour USB glucose meter, and the Nike training and heart rate monitors. Pharmaceutical relationship-marketing programs come with pill reminders and online pain management diaries. These diaries have evolved from paper-based journals to secure Web pages, and now reside as apps on personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones.

Collectively, healthcare companies and device manufacturers want to measure overall utilization of wellness, conversion, and adherence tools placed in the marketplace. Web analytics data can signify which patient resources are most being utilized, and which features should be improved.

It is fascinating to think of what role media can play on this journey. Imagine if one's weight loss is not progressing as rapidly as needed, or pain relief is not coming quickly enough. Could one's PDA tracker or personal monitor someday become a venue for product placement for better nutrition products, exercise equipment, or even medication? As our country debates individual Web site data privacy issues, this may be a new angle to consider.