Healthcare: Government Web Sites Outperform Priviate Sector

Government websites outperformed private sector Web sites in a healthcare benchmark report released by ForeSee Results. Nearly 40,000 visitors were surveyed on healthcare websites during the month of October, 2009.

Key Findings

• Government healthcare sites outperform all measured private-sector industries. In aggregate, government healthcare sites (79 on a 100-point scale) are performing better than any other category of healthcare site measured in the ForeSee Results benchmark. Pharmaceutical Web sites come in at a close second with an aggregate score of 78. Hospital Web sites score 73 in aggregate, and health insurance Web sites trail substantially, with an aggregate score of 64.
• A satisfied online customer is a valuable, profitable customer for healthcare organizations. Public image is only one reason why healthcare companies should be concerned with online customer satisfaction. Highly satisfied online customers are significantly more likely to become repeat customers, purchase more services, use the Web site as a primary resource, and recommend both the company and the website. Because customers purchase additional services and recommend that their friends and colleagues do the same, improving the online experience leads to increased revenue and cost savings.

Why Should Web Sites Care About Visitor Satisfaction
On average, when compared to less satisfied site visitors (satisfaction of 69 and lower) highly satisfied Web site visitors (80 and higher) are:

• 139% more likely to return to a Web site
• 169% more likely to recommend the Web site
• 153% more likely to use the website as their primary resource for interacting with a healthcare organization, instead of using more costly channels like call centers or office locations.

"Health insurance companies have the most room for improvement and also the most to gain from focusing on the customer experience, because improvements can directly and quickly impact their bottom line," said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. "Meanwhile, because of a long and focused effort on online satisfaction over nearly a decade, government-run healthcare Web sites are leading the pack and provide a positive example of how focusing on the customer experience has tangible results."

Read the full report 2009 Healthcare Benchmark (PDF) from ForeSee Results.

Industrial Marketers Shift To Online Marketing

Acquiring new customers and generating leads and during the economic downturn remains both a top goal and a top challenge for industrial marketers, many of whom are turning to online marketing tactics to find new prospects and ways to generate revenue, according to the fourth annual survey of marketing and sales executives and managers in the industrial sector conducted by GlobalSpec.

The report, “Trends in Industrial Marketing 2009: How Manufacturers are Marketing Today,” says that 44% of respondents stated that customer acquisition is their primary marketing goal, with another 29% choosing lead generation. An additional 13% of respondents selected customer retention as their primary goal, up from 5% in 2008.

While lead generation is a key initiative for industrial marketers, lead quality outranks lead quantity when deciding where to allocate marketing budget. The survey also found that three out of the top four marketing channels for generating quality leads are all online.

The proven ability for online marketing to deliver high quality leads has encouraged many industrial marketers to shift to online marketing. Forty-eight percent of respondents reported that online is a greater portion of their marketing budget in 2009 than in 2008, and nearly one-third surveyed said they will be spending more than 50% of their marketing budget online. At the same time, 30% of respondents are reducing trade show attendance and 28% are reducing print ads.

Despite the increased shift of marketing dollars to online media, respondents still face a number of challenges in their marketing efforts. More than half of all respondents selected "too few marketing resources" as one of their top three marketing challenges in 2009, with "generating enough high quality leads for sales" and "need to improve my marketing ROI" rounding out the top three.

Other top findings from the Survey include:

• 63% of respondents will closely evaluate the performance of marketing programs and reduce or eliminate those that don't perform well
• 43% will expand marketing efforts to reach new industries
• 88% of respondents will spend the same or more on online marketing in 2009, as compared to 2008

About the survey: The fourth annual survey of its kind was conducted among US marketing and sales executives and managers in the industrial sector. Of the 555 survey respondents, 66% hold management positions in sales or marketing and 12% indicate they are a president/CEO. The respondent pool represents a variety of company sizes, with annual marketing budgets ranging from less than $50K to more than $1 million.

Twitter - Key Trends And Tweeter Activity

The profiles and activity of 11.5 million Twitter accounts were analyzed by Sysomos Inc. and published in a comprehensive report in June. Most of the results are useful but some are just guesstimates (for example, they find that 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25, but this is based on only the 0.7% of users who disclose their age). Still this appears to be the most comprehensive report publicly available for finding insights into the Twitter user base.

Highlights of the report include:

• 72.5% of all users joined during the first five months of 2009. The Ashton Kutcher verses CNN race to achieve 1 million followers and Oprah starting to use Twitter drove explosive growth in March and April.
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet. They may be holding a user name for later use, or use the account to simply follow others.
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people. This could be skewed by the newness of the tool and the large number of recent joiners.
• 150 followers seems to be the tipping point for many users. Sysomos found that Twitter users tended to “follow back” all of their followers up until about 150 connections. Then the follow-back rate dropped dramatically.
• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity and and 10% of users account for 86% of activity.
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

View the full report online or download the PDF.

Social Media an Increasingly Important Tool in Keeping Employees Engaged

Employers faced with reduced communication budgets and resources are turning to social media to keep their workforce engaged, according to a survey released today by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation and Buck Consultants, an ACS company.

The survey explored how organizations are communicating with employees to keep them engaged and productive and received responses from nearly 1,500 participants representing a broad industry and geographic base.

• Almost 79% of the respondents report that they use social media frequently to engage employees and foster productivity, outranking even email (75%).
• Company blogs are the most popular social media tool currently in use (47%), with discussion boards ranking the highest for future planned use (33%
• Current use of social networking sites such as Twitter (21%), Yammer (20%), and Facebook (18%) is significant, but organizations are planning to use those tools even more in the future.

It should be noted that social media was not the intended topic of this research. According to Robin McCasland, Chair, IABC Research Foundation, the survey was intended to get a snapshot of employee engagement among their members’ workplaces.

"We did ask some social media questions in the survey because it is THE buzz topic these days. But, it was not intended to be the primary topic."

She added, "However, we found it interesting that social media emerged even in the questions where it was not one of the possible multiple choice responses. We asked a question about which communication methods members use to promote engagement. A couple of the suggested answers included e-mail and face-to-face meetings. “Other” was another response option. For that question, 72 people chose “other” and wrote in “social media.” They didn’t elaborate — but did rate their use of social media very high."

Looking to learn more about the use of social media inside a corporation? Check out the book SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate. It's also available for the Kindle, Amazon's wireless reading device.

Internet Activities Survey Results

According to a February-March 2007 survey, 71% of American adults use the internet.

Here are some of the things they do online:
Send or read email : 91%
Use a search engine to find information: 91%
Search for a map or driving directions: 86%
Look for info on a hobby or interest: 83%
Look for health/medical info: 80%
Research a product or service before buying it: 78%
More...

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking surveys (March 2000 – February-March 2007).