Here at Incept, one of our values is never satisfied. Along with this value, we use the philosophy that we should always improve everything. This is why if you speak with any our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs), they will tell you that when recruiting a blood donor, they always try to schedule an appointment within the next ten days out. The reason they do this is because we have found that the closer the appointment is to the date of the call, the greater the likelihood that the donor will show up for their appointment. For example, if a donor schedules an appointment for tomorrow, they are more likely to show up for their appointment than a donor who schedules an appointment for three weeks from now.
We know that donors schedule an appointment with pure intentions, which is why our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) would never deny a donor an appointment that would be the most convenient for the donor’s schedule. With that being said, we know that things come up that are out of the donor’s control. It seems that these days we find our schedules fuller with each coming day. And I hate to say it already, but the holidays are right around the corner. This means everyone’s schedules are going to get even tighter. This is why when the donors don’t have preferences, our CMEs jump at the opportunities to schedule them to donate as soon as possible.
When a donor comes in sooner, it means that patients receive the blood components that they need to save their lives even faster. When always improving everything results in saving more lives, it is easy to see why we are never satisfied.
To take this concept one step further we realized that we had the opportunity to increase our productive donor rate. Our productive donor rate is calculated by comparing how many donors scheduled an appointment to how many donors gave a successful donation. This opportunity came in the form of direct mail. We know that our donors are busy, and we also know that they aren’t all able donate or schedule to donate within the next ten days. But we realized that we could help remind the donors who have scheduled their appointments more than ten days out via postcard.
The postcard reminder is sent a week prior to their appointment and includes their appointment date, time, and location. This prompts the donor to take a look at their schedule to make sure that they haven’t overbooked themselves. The postcard also provides a reschedule phone number for the donor to call in the event there is a conflict in their schedule.
The results of this test have shown that our productive donor rate increased by approximately 3% just by sending a postcard reminder to donors who have an appointment scheduled further than ten days out. So if you ever find yourself thinking that you have done all that you can, I encourage you to challenge yourself to be never satisfied, because in the end you will find that you can always improve everything!
In what other ways do you identify improvement opportunities?