Pulling the trigger because of COVID’s touchless requirements
For Mark Pinto, Associate Digital Product Manager at PatientPoint, QR Codes quickly became the go-to touchless physical-to-digital channel that could be used in response to COVID. As the person in charge of product and advertisement opportunities at point of care offices/hospitals, Mark was on the hunt for a ready-to-implement QR Code solution—and Beaconstac fit the bill quite well.
With the key objective of increasing ad revenue with programmatic advertising—comprising performance indicators like better fill rates and more partnerships with supply-side platforms—Mark’s team deployed QR Codes on IXR interactive devices.
IXR solutions include advertising panels, self-check-out stations, self-scannable product info displays, and devices of the like. In this particular case, PatientPoint’s IXR devices displayed educational content about different medical conditions at hospitals and healthcare facilities throughout the country.
The panels switch screens every ten seconds or so, with a QR Code on each screen directing patients to more content about the particular ailment displayed. Upon scanning, each patient will view a programmatic advertisement of a brand that PatientPoint has partnered with before they’re led to additional information. Prior to leveraging QR Codes during COVID, PatientPoint’s IXR devices simply worked through physical interaction with the displays—patients would have to click or touch to navigate through the content.
With QR Codes, they’ve been able to meet the no-contact requirements brought forth by the pandemic:
“In March of 2020, people were saying that COVID-19 lived on surfaces. Our objective then was to quickly roll out a way in which patients could use our IXR interact devices without any physical contact whatsoever and learn more information.”
Leveraging Beaconstac for PatientPoint’s requirements as a healthcare marketing platform
Seen as the ‘QR Code guy’ at PatientPoint, Mark has been able to exploit Beaconstac’s enterprise-friendly platform to scale their use of QR Codes for programmatic advertising. His team is also looking to expand QR Code usage into other avenues at the company.
According to Mark, Beaconstac’s intuitive user interface, a better deal that included a higher number of QR Codes, and cost-effectiveness were strong reasons for choosing Beaconstac over other QR Code solution providers in the market.
A clean and intuitive dashboard UI
Mark has found the ease of using Beaconstac’s dashboard to be one of its standout features. The ability to have a one-stop QR Code solution with varying functionalities at his fingertips has been extremely convenient.
His team can bulk-create QR Codes, customize to the ad sponsor’s liking, get analytics, sort and label QR Codes, manage access to the Beaconstac platform if a client wants access, integrate with other software, and more. All within a single dashboard.
On being asked how he would describe Beaconstac to a friend, this is what Mark had to say:
“I am a big fan of self-serving platforms. Beaconstac is definitely one of those—it’s easy to use and there are a lot of capabilities on the dashboard to do things yourself. If a client has a one-off request—be it a landing page or a dynamic form—we have the ability to create them ourselves without having to employ a separate creative team.”
Using Beaconstac internally has also been seamless for Marc and his team:
“The platform itself is so simple to use. My team members often don’t realize how easy it is to create and set up QR Codes until I actually show them. It’s great that way.”
The ability to change content on the backend without having to reprint or redeploy has also made things smoother. With dynamic QR Codes, when the contract is up for a brand they’re working with, they can simply log in to the dashboard and update the QR Code content at their end.
QR Code analytics for enterprise-level requirements
As a company in the healthcare marketing business, it is crucial for PatientPoint to keep a regular check on the scans that they receive via their QR Codes. This has been extremely easy for Mark’s team—they have been able to easily integrate their business intelligence platform with Beaconstac using an API.
He can segregate QR Code scans directly into different buckets based on their product offerings:
“We regularly keep a tab on the QR Code analytics data that we’re getting. Our analytics partner has been able to easily create dashboards and separate out QR code scans based on where they’re deployed—like interact devices, print material, custom one-offs, hospitals, and point-of-care back offices.”
Given the scale of PatientPoint’s QR Code usage, having the enterprise flexibility to use their own analytics tool with Beaconstac has made things seamless for Mark:
“We get daily reports pertaining to all the QR Code analytics data we track. And we can do this directly on our own analytics platform, without having to log in to the Beaconstac dashboard every time. Having this enterprise-level flexibility to integrate Beaconstac with other software tools has been really convenient for us.”
Swift and responsive customer service
Another aspect of using Beaconstac that Mark has been really impressed by is Beaconstac’s prompt customer service. As someone who is big on the same, it has made his experience as a customer that much better:
“The Beaconstac guys have been great at answering any questions that we’ve had. They are quick to respond and usually get back to us within a 24-hour window. Also, when we faced any issue or problem on the platform, they resolved it almost immediately.”
Deploying QR Codes for other PatientPoint use-cases
While the primary touchpoint where PatientPoint leverages QR Codes has been on interact devices like check-out stations and panels—Mark has deployed QR Codes for other purposes too.
For instance, his team has sent out QR Codes to PatientPoint ‘ambassadors’ who reach out to different point-of-care facilities, healthcare providers, and hospitals to develop partnerships. Instead of handing out paper-based business cards during their interactions with potential sponsors, these personnel simply give their digital cards or vCards in the form of a QR Code. Their contact information and other details get saved automatically on the user’s device after scanning the QR Code.
“Our team of ambassadors—who visit physician offices and point-of-care centers throughout the country—had reached out to me for QR Codes on their business cards. With Beaconstac I’ve been able to use the vCard template and deliver the codes to them easily.”
Mark has also worked with partners who’ve required QR Codes for more specific purposes. In one case, his team paired QR Codes with Beaconstac’s form template and deployed them at seminars or learning sessions that employees attended at physician back offices. These sessions were titled ‘LunchNLearn’. Attendees could scan a QR Code, enter their details in a QR-linked form, and in turn, receive a coupon for their lunch.
“We have utilized Beaconstac’s forms feature to run tests to get people to go into the break room more often. We ran seminars called LunchNLearn, and we placed a QR Code on the break room screen that employees use to do their sessions. They could get their lunch coupon that way. It was an effective way to incentivize them.”
Getting consistent results with Beaconstac QR Codes
Although the decision to leverage the QR Code engagement channel was prompted by COVID, PatientPoint is seeing consistent results with Beaconstac even after no-contact restrictions have been lifted.
The QR Codes they have deployed on interact devices alone yield nearly 7000+ scans on a week-on-week basis, compared to the 1500 weekly scans that they had started with. They’ve also been able to reach over 208,000 unique users out of the 270,000+ scans they have received. These scans are spread across 2300 locations in the country.
In addition to being an alternative revenue opportunity, QR Codes have also helped PatientPoint cut on printing costs that they would otherwise have with printing paper business cards.
Both the savings component as well as additional programmatic advertising revenue have ensured that PatientPoint will continue to partner with Beaconstac down the road:
“For all of us at PatientPoint, the digital marketing space is constantly evolving. It’s important to stay on par with trends in the industry and innovate with new tools that have the potential to increase our ROIs. We’re seeing consistent results, and QR Codes have continued to show an uptick in engagement—and therefore we will continue to partner with Beaconstac going forward.”
208,000
unique users reached
