Hospitals continue to have great success using direct mail.
St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center was one of the first full-service community hospitals in Round Rock, TX, which is one of the nation’s fastest growing cities. Yet, competition came with the area’s dramatic population increases, with rivals all touting themselves as the “best” of one medical specialty or another. Celeste Lesmeister, marketing director at St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center, knew consumers had unmet needs, so she partnered with Austin, TX-based Elizabeth Christian & Associates Public Relations and Special Audience Marketing to conduct research and create a campaign to address those needs, while also promoting the medical center and its emergency services.
Challenge
The hospital wanted to cut through the clutter of competitive claims in a crowded healthcare market and give consumers the information they might need in an emergency situation.
Solution
Based on custom focus group studies, Lesmeister and her team developed a multifaceted campaign that included a hospital direct mail piece, a smartphone application and a print campaign targeting consumer and county emergency medical services.
“We had just completed a direct mail campaign for our urgent care centers locally. We had just opened one in eastern Round Rock. Within two days of our hospital direct mail hitting, we saw that the direct mail resulted in an immediate spike,” says Lesmeister. “So, when we started devising this campaign, direct mail seemed like the most natural medium. We could cross-market the smartphone technology and we could put something in a consumer’s hands to give them the resource they needed. They could learn about us, but they could also educate themselves on how to be proactive in an emergency.”
