E47: Podcast: Daniel Beers tells us how to target patients to maximize success
Dr. Kevin Coughlin: Good afternoon. This is Dr. Kevin Coughlin. You’re listening to Ascent Dental Solutions. This is Ascent Radio, where the focus is on knowledge, consultation, training and developing.
At this particular time, we are flattered to have a company on today’s podcast called eRelevance. One of the field and sales directors of North America is a Mr. Daniel Beers. Mr. Beers has reached out to me to try to help my organization and make suggestions in how he could improve, not just the sales, but also the service with a sort of, in my opinion, a very unique approach to target marketing, and I think it will be very valuable for our listeners to tune in.
Mr. Beers, thank you so much for taking time from your busy schedule to speak to me today. Why don’t you give me a little background about yourself and the company?
Daniel Beers: Sure thing. My pleasure and I’m happy to be here. eRelevance was a company founded in 2013 in Austin, Texas. A seasoned team that has traded over 1.5 billion of shareholder value. Very well-funded company. We’ve seen triple digit growth three years in a row. Innovative pricing service levels and results. We serve the aesthetic industry, the dental industry with a high retention rate of over 1,000 customers delivering near-immediate ROI. We are a hi-tech-powered patient marketing service to generate more repeat business from existing customers.
Kevin: Dan, if you don’t mind, I’m going to continue to refer to you as Daniel or Dan. But Mr. Beers, when you are talking about this targeting marketing, I’ve been marketing since 1983 and my personal opinion is many times that money has not been spent well because of my inability to really understand the marketing to really make sure that I am tracking properly. When you took time out of your busy schedule to sit down with me to see how you could help my company, basically, I know there is some proprietary information here. But in sub and substance, how do you direct and steer the appropriate clients that health care industry such as dentistry, whether it would be cosmetics, whether it would be lasers, implants, oral surgery, any of the nine specialty disciplines, how do you target that? How does it actually work?
Daniel: What we do is we are going after your existing customer database. Statistics say that 60 to 80 percent of your business comes from your existing customers. A lot of the times the doctors are going out there and they’re putting billboards and they are ramping up their website and doctors say to me, “This is how I’m marketing to my patients.”And I say, “You are not marketing directly to your patients.” And I say, “Doctor, can you tell me how many of your existing patients are driving by that billboard? How many of your patients are listening to your radio?” And they can’t tell me that?
So what we do is we monitor your patients’ behavior. We market directly to your existing patients. We monitor them through how they are clicking Google Ads, how they are going on Facebook, Instagram. Like I said, we are really monitoring what they are doing. There is two primary ways to doing patient marketing and one is to go out there and find new patients. It’s traditional and digital advertising. The problem is, what I just said is it’s hit or miss and it’s expensive and it’s hard to measure the results, and a very low conversion rate. What we do is we go after the existing patient. It is more repeat business through your existing patients.
A lot of people are saying maybe my billboards aren’t catching my patients, but my internal marketing is. And I say, “What are you doing?” Sometimes they refer to a company called Constant Contact. What they are doing with that is, technically, you’re spamming your patients. And doctors don’t like hearing that, but you are not targeting these patients. If you are going after a group of patients that would be suited for a certain laser or a certain treatment, not everybody is suited for that.
That is why we’re monitoring their behavior and we’re putting those emails directly towards those patients. We can tell you exactly what patient opened up what email, when they opened it, and what they googled and what they searched after they did that. So that allows us to be able to direct these e-blasts to those current patients. We are touching 95.7 percent of your patients through seven different marketing channels.
Kevin: Mr. Beers, when your company gathers this information, this profile on a particular group of patients that we as dentists want to attract, does that patient have the ability to, let’s just say, unsubscribe to it if they do not want to hear? How does that actually work if a Mr. or Mrs. Smith receives — I know several times a month I get a report and that report says to me so and so has unsubscribed. Which is telling me either they are getting too much information from me or the information they are getting they don’t find value in or they are just not interested anymore. Is this a similar program where someone can opt out when they choose to?
Daniel: They can opt out. We are doing three campaigns a month through seven different channels. For example, one of those channels will be text. They are going to receive that text and they can opt out of that text. If they do opt out, you do not lose that patient forever, you lose them on that one campaign. Keep in mind we are targeting these patients so we know what their interests are, we know what they’ve been researching. So we have a very low rate of people opting out or unsubscribing because we are emailing them stuff they’re already interested in, already stuff they’re looking for more information in, if that makes sense.
Kevin: Why don’t you take the listeners through the protocol that you’ve been working with me and my company on what the exact process and procedures are? Let’s say Dr. Jones or Dr. Smith is interested in contacting eRelevance, going through you or one of the other excellent sales representatives, how do they actually make the system work? Can you explain that to us?
Daniel: I would have a conversation with the doctor and what I would like to do is because I am covering all of northern America so for you I was lucky I got to drive down there, which I would rather do. But if I’m talking to a doctor somewhere in California or Ohio, we set up a demonstration over the computer. It’s a Join.me meeting and I walk them through about 22 PowerPoint slides and they’re able to ask questions and interact and I kind of go exactly what they’ll be receiving as being a customer of eRelevance.
What a practice would get is that, you get a tech-enabled service delivered by our experts. So you’ll have a client success manager that works directly for your practice. You get three targeted patient campaigns monthly. Those ten campaigns are engaged across seven different digital channels. It’s data driven and we are holding ourselves accountable because all the data is right in front of us, it’s also right in front of you.
The practice will be able to see who is clicking what, when they’re clicking it and when they’re booking the appointments. Also you’ll be able to see how they’re booking their appointments. Are they booking their appointments through text? Are they booking them through email? Are they booking them through a web landing page? So everything that we do is clearly right in front of the practice so they’re able to witness and they’ll be able to see exactly where everything is coming from.
Kevin: Is it correct to assume after a contract is signed between the organization and your company, you then provide them with your email list of patients, or does your company actually go into our computer and software systems and gather that information on their own?
Daniel: Once you go through the demonstration and you believe this is a solid fit for your practice, we’ll set you up with an on-boarding call. So you sign the contract, the contract is a year-long and then you’ll have your on-boarding call about a week later or whatever is suitable for you, and what we do is we pick your brain inside and out. It’s about a 45-minute call with your client success manager and you just tell them what your goals are, where you want to be. If you’re having an open house, we can do a campaign for that. If you’re having new doctors coming into the practice, we can send that to that.
Keep in mind that we are sending this to all of your patients, something like a Constant Contact, they’re only touching 16 to 20 percent of your current patient database. Like I said before, we’re touching 95.7. So if you’re having an open house and you have 5,000 in the database, wouldn’t you want to send it to those 5,000 instead of just having to touch 16 percent of them? That’s why these campaigns can be customized to you. Everything, like I said, is customized. We can use our before and after pictures, we can use your before and after pictures.
The way we get to your current patients is you provide us with your database. We are 100 percent HIPAA compliant so we take that database and we scrub it down. We scrub it down from people that have passed away, people that have moved, old numbers, nicknames, house numbers. We get all that out of there. So if you are telling me that you have 5,000 in the database, I can almost promise you that after we scrub that you’re probably going to have 4,500 to 4,000 in there because we’re removing all that bad data, so now we’re not wasting these emails sending them out to those people that it’s not active. So we’re getting no kickbacks because all the emails — after we scrub — are all clean so everybody will be receiving this.
Kevin: For somebody who is not as technologically savvy as yourself, how do you actually get into our database? Do we take a thumb drive and download the information or does your system actually go in there and retrieve it?
Daniel:You would send us your database. You could do it through a thumb drive, you could do it through however you thought was the safest way. The way they operate is obviously HIPAA compliant as well so there’s 100 percent safety behind all this where nobody’s information will be leaked out or anything like that.
Kevin: Okay.
Daniel: You’re requesting the work, we’re providing the results. I want you to keep in mind that this is a service. We’re not just giving you the software and saying good luck, we’re doing all this work for you. We’re customizing everything, we’re scrubbing your database, and we’re doing every single campaign. The work on your end is we just need to get the thumbs-up on the campaign. So for a month you say, “Hey Danny, I want to do a campaign on Botox.” So we’re going to customize the campaign for your practice on Botox. We’re going to customize it, get it ready, we’ll send it to you, say it looks good, send it out.
Kevin: For real life examples, whether it’d be fillers, Dysport, Botox, laser for tattoo removals, hair reduction, the list can go on and on — facial rejuvenation, wrinkle removal or reduction. These targeted campaigns, your company has certain databases, certain criteria that knows that a Mr. or Mrs. Smith would be right for this particular brand of marketing for this particular service and that’s how you do the link. And then it’s up to them to follow up with their dentist to schedule the appointment. Is that a fair assessment?
Daniel: For the most part. Basically, as our first campaign we would probably do a general campaign where we would offer every single one of your treatments. And then from there, now we can monitor the patient’s behavior through their cell phone or through their email. So 90 percent of patients their email is tied to their Facebook or their Instagram or their cell phone number is tied to their Google so that’s how we’re able to monitor. It’s very similar to an Amazon approach. Because for such a long time, this software has been available but only for larger businesses like Amazon, like Google. We’re the first company to be able to provide this for small businesses.
Kevin: I don’t want to put you on the spot, Daniel, but I understand your company also has some very unique almost tier marketing opportunities for those individuals willing to try your company and see the success that they can get through this targeted marketing. Do you want to explain a little bit of that?
Daniel: Yeah. Just kind of break that down a little better for me here. The question you are asking is how we are able to provide this marketing service?
Kevin: My understanding is periodically, your company offers promotions. For example, I sign up today and then I refer Mr. Smith there is some benefit for us referring clients to your company. Am I correct in that?
Daniel: Correct. We have to do a whole vetting process on the practice to make sure they have a proper database. We can work with people under 1,000 in a database but we can’t guarantee our results as far as seeing five times ROI your first month, up to 14 times ROI after month three. So you have to be vetted and if you’re properly vetted through my CEO and Vice President of Sales, then we’re able to offer you a KOL program and that’s a Key Opinion Leader.
What we do then is anybody that you’re able to put in contact with myself or anybody at the company, if we can sign them up, the KOL will receive five percent annuity over a three year span monthly. For example, if you send me somebody right now that has 5,000 in their database, they pay their monthly fee, they pay their database fee, you’ll collect five percent of that annuity every month they make that payment for up to three years that they have our service. We’re seeing a 99.1 retention rate as far as people renewing our service after year one. We also would ask per testimonials. That kind of is up a handshake, we’re not holding your feet to the fire to do anything like that, but once the service speaks for itself, if you go on our website www.eRelevance.com you can see that we have several testimonies from several big doctors around the country.
Kevin: Without putting you on the spot, are you comfortable telling the listeners what the approximate investment would be for groups of let’s say between 1,000 and 5,000, between 5,000 and 10,000 and 10,000 and up? Is there a way that you can give a ballpark figure so that they know what their investment would be?
Daniel: Of course. We do have specials. There are certain times of the month they offer specials. The company is trying to hit a number as a whole. It is a startup company in year four so they try to generate MRR, Monthly Recurring Revenue, so if they’re behind in a month or ahead, they can sometimes tailor certain specials. But for the most part, our service ranges between $2,000 to $2,500 per month. That’s a monthly fee.
Typically, you have a onetime startup fee of $1,999. That’s the fee you pay if you sign up right now, $1,999. What that does is it allows us to get your database and scrub it down. It’s basically a database scrubbing fee. If you hired a third party company to go do some like that, these numbers would be tripled. So you have your one time startup fee of $1,999 then your monthly fee is somewhere between $1,999 and $2,499.
Then you pay $100 for every 1,000 patients in your database. So if you do have 5,000 patients in your database, that will be $500 added to your monthly. So if you’re paying $2,000 a month for the service, plus your $500 for your database fee, now you’re paying $2500 a month for that fee. Somebody that referred that business, they would collect five percent of that monthly. Granted we’ve worked with doctors like Dr. Grant Stevens who has almost a million patients in his database through 60 different practices. So if somebody could refer somebody like that they’d be sitting pretty for quite some time.
Kevin: I can tell you this, Mr. Beers, I’ve had personal contact with you and your company now several times, everyone has been a straight shooter, they’ve been professional and they’ve been upright. And I can tell the enthusiasm in your voice and in your actions that you want to continue to see this company prosper and provide the services that are so greatly needed and that is, in my opinion, targeted marketing.
Basically speaking, whatever our listeners are into, whether it’s cosmetics, whether it’s implant surgery, implant prosthesis, whether it’s periodontal care and treatment, you name it. It makes the most sense to target the customer or patient base that are best suited for our personalities and needs to see our practice grow. And at this point in time, eRelevance has really seen, I think, the future and has jumped on it and that’s why your revenues are high, your business is growing. Kudos to you and your company and I thank you so much.
As far as providing contact information, Dan, is there a way our listeners can reach out and get information? Could you just review the website, perhaps a telephone number or email so our listeners could follow up with your company?
Daniel: I would be happy to do that. The website is www.eRelevancecorp.com. My name is Daniel Beers. Call me Danny. But if you’re looking me up on LinkedIn or social media, it will be under Daniel. My cell phone number is 508-439-3614. I’m on the road a lot so I’m happy to text, I’m happy to call, whatever the best way to reach out to me. My email is dbeers@erelevancecorp.com.
Kevin: I can’t thank you enough for taking time and I thank your company for offering a service that is so greatly needed in health care but in dentistry in particular.
My name is Dr. Kevin Coughlin. You’ve been listening to Ascent Radio with a focus on knowledge, development, communication and training. I also want to give special thanks to Mr. Doug Foresta and his company, Stand Out and Be Heard. Without his expertise and his time and effort, this podcast could not be brought to you.
Thank you all very much for listening and I look forward to speaking to you in the near future. Enjoy the afternoon.
