Marketing to millennials

Every segment of your healthcare market includes millennials. They're actively seeking primary and specialty care for themselves, their children and their aging parents. Here's a surprisingly effective way to reach them.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), direct mail is hot again—due in part to the unique way millennials think of it and respond to it. The SBA and other experts suggest several reasons for its resurgence:

• Direct mail gets noticed. The people you want to reach get hundreds of emails, but only a handful of mail. Instead of letting your message get buried in an inbox, let it stand out in a mailbox.
• Direct mail is trusted. Millennials and other age groups increasingly see email as "junk mail" and consider printed content to be more credible.
• Direct mail gets shared. While email goes to just one person, direct mail can reach a whole household full of people—and even visitors. That means more eyes see your message.
• Direct mail gets read. Filters can keep email messages from even being seen. But, according to InfoTrends, millennials consider reading direct mail a leisure activity. This casual reading may open a conversation, giving your message more exposure and possibly prompting someone to take timely action in response.
• Direct mail outworks email. An email can be dismissed or deleted in an instant, immediately ending its chance to influence a recipient. But according to RetailWire, direct mail has an average life span of 17 days.

You can measure print's impact on conversions

Can you evaluate success with print marketing? Can you gain ROI data to find out if your print strategies are working? Absolutely.

First, let's talk about the metrics you might want to measure. For example, do you want to know if your efforts are boosting phone calls to call centers, appointments with physicians, sign-ups for classes or donations to your foundation? To measure the impact of your publication on these consumer actions, you could:

• Send readers to a specific URL to sign up for classes and events, fill out a form, or answer a survey. You'll know that traffic to these destinations came from your publication.
• Use unique tracking methods, such as QR codes or trackable phone numbers.
• Conduct a readership survey. A variety of methods are available, but likely a combination of surveys taken online and via print publication will bring the largest response.