Extending the Customer Experience Beyond the Store:

Chuck's staff at Wellspring Pharmacy sends out voice broadcastasts to new customers welcoming them to the store. The pharmacy is getting a good response from its monthly newsletter, and using a testimonial hotline to gather invaluable customer feedback.

His staff members continue to find new ways to build stronger relationships with their customers, like sending video postcards to customers on their birthday. Now that's an experience a customer won't forget!

Chuck even says that with the help of these tools, Wellspring has seen a 16% jump in prescription volume!

Getting the Word Out Quickly:

Robert from Corley's Pharmacy uses the tool almost every day to get ideas and build stronger relationships with his customers.

He uses the Industry Message Board to bounce ideas off of other pharmacies, and he gives away 2 tickets in his monthly newsletter to the first two people that respond with the correct answer to the newsletter's trivia question, typically getting Getting replies withing 10-15 minutes of emailing out the newsletter.

When he was preparing an in-store diabetes program, Robert needed a way to get the word out quickly to announce the event. He sent out a voice broadcast at 8pm one evening, and at 8:30 the next morning he had people at his store signing up for the event. And with reports, more trackability.

He attributes these tools to fostering brand recognition and helping his pharmacy "thrive even in difficult times."

Saving Time:

Triston from D&H Drugstore set up an information hotline to generate awareness about a product recall and provide follow-up instructions that saved the pharmacy staff a lot of phone phone time. 

He also sent an email blast to save the pharmacy a ton of time by eliminating call-backs for a recent hiring seminar.

One Pharmacy's 2009 Marketing Plan:

"We love the new Marketing Solution Center. We have now successfully put all of our stores on it AND more importantly we have developed a system to maintain the data and add to the data.

We utilized it when it first became available to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. The other stores had already celebrated at their stores and ours was coming up.

So I conducted a voice blast at our Rattlesnake office and boy could you tell the difference between not doing a voice and performing one. We probably had 3 or 4 TIMES the amount of customers visiting our store as the others.

Since then we have decided that in 2009 this will be our main form of advertising. It's like a rifle in that it targets the exact people you want to target ( i.e. existing customers ). We're also adding new customers by raffling off plasma TV screens at physician office and all participants have to do is fill out our information card which we then add to Rx solution center. The Dr. offices are specifically targeted for compounding or cancer which we specialize in.

Thanks for the great tool and we will use extensively at our 8 stores. Sincerely, Del Parrish R.Ph."

Politics in Pharmacy

Story 1: Voice Broadcast 
"Our state legislature introduced a bill that would have mandated all maintenance scripts be filled by medco mail order. I sorted my customer database to identify my state employees. I then uploaded that flagged group into my solution center database. I recorded a message to all state employees telling them that if that Bill passed they could no longer sue my pharmacy. I also gave them the name and phone numbers of the specific state legislatures to call and voice their negative opinion. After a 3 week battle, we won and the mail order language was removed from the Bill that was ultimately signed into law.

Story 2: Email Blast
"Our state is the only one that elects, rather than appoints Boards of Pharmacy members. In the upcoming election we had two independent pharmacy owners running for two open seats. I upload the statewide pharmacist email address into solution center as a flagged group, and sent all 9000 of them an email encouraging them to 1. VOTE and 2. Consider voting for our 2 candidates."
Dave Marley, PharmD.
CEO/President
Marley Drug, Inc.
www.marleydrug.com

Never Had a Response Like That

"We here at Young's Pharmacy want use the Newsletter function each month. We have our clients information and plan to email it to them promptly. Last month I sent it out. Well, within 15 minutes of the newsletter going out we had immediate results for the monthly trivia question. People were emailing their answers and calling the store with excitement. We never had that kind of response from a blast and plan to continue this every month from now on!"

Alan Patten
General Manager
Young's Pharmacy

"The library alone is worth the price. This is a home run" - Don Cantalino, Uniondale Chemists

"We did a voice broadcast to promote flu shots.  With limited labor, we were very pleased with the results.  We gave 500 flu shots—that's 25% more than we did last year!  Many commented to us how nice it was to be called and reminded.  Now we have a great database to do other voice broadcast messages when we have another event at Kunkel.  We continue to get additional phone numbers to add to the database." - John Dinkelaker, Kunkel Pharmacy

"I messaged customers who had visited my store since Saturday, inviting them back as a VIP customer to receive an extra 20% off their purchase during our upcoming Saturday event. It worked out great. Easy to do, and I'm not a techie!" - Mary Kirkland, Hilton Pharmacy

"With the Solution Center, I can organize my database into specific customer groups. Targeting my high-value customers with relevant marketing is so much easier." - Kresha Tisdale, Parris Pharmacy