EVEN IN A narrow niche such as diabetic customers, information can provide a competitive edge. Acknowledging this, Franklin Lakes, NJ-based medical supply company Becton Dickinson and Co., with a database of 1.8 million of the nation’s 3.2 million insulin-using diabetics, has launched an aggressive surveying campaign. The data collected will influence its outreach efforts.
Becton Dickinson’s database has been broken out into six brackets. The newest of these segments, the “new to insulin” file, launched a two-year cycle surveying campaign in fourth quarter 1997.
The survey, coordinated by marketing and database management firm Gray & Graham of Westport, CT, has been sent to more than 170,000 individuals in the file. While the initial goal of the process is to spur awareness and use of Becton Dickinson products, reclassification of names for targeted marketing efforts is an ancillary benefit.
But the primary goal of the program is to augment the database with the kind of data not available through overlay services. “As we started to overlay information we realized it wasn’t actionable relative to someone’s relationship to Becton Dickinson. If we understood loyalty or frequency of use, we were in a better position than knowing if they are young or old,” says Gray & Graham chairman Jeff Gray. Especially because the file, like the disease, cuts across all demographic categories.
The initial mailing consists of a survey that augmented previously captured insulin-use data, an educational brochure and a coded coupon for between $1 and $5 off the product. Responders are sent increasingly targeted surveys; non-responders are sent two more solicitations for information. A control group, which was mailed without a coupon, pulled a 26.4% response, but response for those with coupons ranged from 44.2% for a $5 coupon to 20.9% for a $1 coupon.
Separating these helped Becton Dickinson determine which members of its database made purchases driven by coupons, and were therefore good candidates for such mailings. In an earlier store display program, Gray & Graham tracked which respondents had redeemed rebate offers in stores. The cost was close to $1 million, but not all the stores were putting outthe information. The current policy of mailing to known rebate users (around 100,000 members of the database) costs about 10% of the point-of-purchase program. The company will continue its distribution points program but will base it on information from the surveys, such as where a diabetic was first diagnosed.
“Mailing to the broad-based group no longer makes sense,” says Gray & Graham president Mark Graham. “We need to mail to focused, targeted sectors. We do one major mailing per year to update files, but are now driven by each of these little segments, and by trying to better understand them.”
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