School Health Corp., a cataloger serving school nurses and athletic trainers, is mailing its top 100 accounts to convince them to make greater use of its improved commercial Web site rolling out next month.
“We’re mailing first to our best customers because we think they’re the most likely to use the site,” said vice president of marketing Jim Dennler, adding that School Health is considering a 100,000-piece drop this fall to a broader swath of its customer base. The mail campaigns will cost School Health more than $10,000.
Dennler is hoping the redesigned Web site will increase the nearly $32 million company’s sales by 15%. It will contain many enhancements, including more extensive product information than what’s generally found in a catalog and a robust e-commerce system featuring better item searches and order tracking.
The site will offer three areas: SchoolHealth.com, catering to the school nursing trade; eSportsHealth.com, for the athletic trainer market; and HealthGiant.com, targeting non-school-based clients (public health personnel and pediatricians). All areas will be accessible from the main site address, www.schoolhealth.com.
Over the next two years, the Hanover Park, IL firm will try to double (from 15%) the number of customers who order from its site, though Dennler conceded this may not be possible.
“A lot of our customers still don’t have computers,” he said.
School Health also wants to use the site to get feedback from customers.
The company offers about 7,000 products by catalog and online. They range from $5.50 boxes of adhesive strips to $3,175 defibrillators.
Besides mailing 200,000 catalogs to nurses and athletic trainers in some 20,000 school districts nationwide, School Health occasionally sends promotional postcards and brochures to its database, which lists some 111,000 schools as customers or prospects.
Despite his projections for growth, Dennler said the markets School Health serves are difficult to define: “Every school district knows down to the dollar how much money they have to spend on academic disciplines, but very few know what they spend on school nurses or athletic trainers.”
Last year, School Health acquired Econoline Foam Products, which enabled the company to grow by more than 10%. Will any acquisitions follow this year?
“I hope so,” said Dennler.
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