And just like that, another successful Imagine Blood Bank Summit has come and gone. We are always excited to show off Cleveland and it’s even more fun when we get to share up-and-coming trends as well as collaborating with industry leaders!
If you are in the blood donation industry and haven’t been able to attend an Imagine Summit, we invite you to attend next year! Below are some of the conversation highlights that really kept our attendees engaged and talking.
What is the Imagine Blood Bank Summit?
Imagine Blood Bank Summit is a specialized workshop for blood center executives involved in donor recruitment and inventory management. The workshop let attendees explore blood center strategies of the past and present in order to help shape the future of donor recruitment.
Industry leaders from blood banks all over gathered in Cleveland, Ohio for three days to learn as well as network and share what has been working for them and struggles they are looking for help with. And no, you didn’t have to be an Incept client to attend!
Topic 1: How to keep blood on the shelves despite current events
Imagine 2020 took place at the beginning of March, which was around the time that heightened concern of COVID-19 began to hit the US. Executives mentioned that in order for this pandemic to not deplete the shelves of blood, donation centers would need to do a few things:
Get in front of the pandemic and educating members on the importance of donating blood. Getting local and national government support is essential to this.
Continuing to stress the message that healthy workers are in donor rooms and while the center already maintains a high level of cleanliness, they are taking extra precautions such as taking temperatures of donors to keep a safe environment.
Keeping track of how this is impacting donations. Based on this topic, Incept then created a call code to help clients keep track of how often a donor stated COVID-19 as the reason they couldn’t or wouldn’t donate.
Topic 2: Is calling still effective?
With all the bright and shiny new platforms seeming to pop up every day, it’s easy to feel as if your current strategy is quickly becoming outdated. However, before you jump ship and completely abandon calling your donors, it’s important to look at all of the data.
Our internal data at Incept, along with donor center data provided, shows that 80-85% of blood donors are still coming in due to receiving a phone call. While everyone was in agreement that phone calling is still a priority, having a multi-channel strategy is key for extending messaging across multiple touchpoints and to reach those on your DNC list. Additional channels that have been found to be effective include digital ads, texting, and chat.
Topic 3: How to balance awareness with call-to-action content
The number one reason cited as to why people don’t give blood is because they have “never thought about it.” When there is no substitute for human blood, we need it to be on everyone’s radar!
Executives at Imagine 2020 were all in agreement that they wished they would have started online advertising to increase awareness a long time ago. However, it’s not too late to start now! Digital ads are a great way to increase awareness around the importance of giving blood and you can start with two different types of campaigns:
Targeting current donors - These donors are more likely to engage with your ads, share them with their friends on their personal pages, and even tag their friends to invite them to donate.
Donor Acquisition - Creating informative and engaging content to educate potential donors will help you get the message out to more people similar to the types of people already donating to increase your donor base.
Imagine 2020 was a wonderful networking and learning experience, but don’t just take it from us.
“I would recommend Imagine Blood Bank Summit because it helps gather other organizations together. Donor recruitment’s extremely important to all of our organizations and I think being able to network with other people and understand some of the changes and things that we’re doing in the industry really helps open our eyes, share ideas, and bounce thoughts off each other.”
“There’s a lot of innovation going on at this conference. It’s a lot of information that you can take back to your business and really work with your teams to strategize on what is the best avenue for recruitment. Being with Incept is a collaboration and they bring the innovation and we can bring the collaboration.”