The Bonati Institute

Using PRIZM to drive effective direct marketing campaigns

The Company

The Bonati Institute is an advanced arthroscopic spinal surgery facility that employs patented state-of-the-art equipment and minimally-invasive surgical procedures to treat back and neck conditions such as Failed Back Surgery Syndrome, Stenosis, Sciatica, Herniated Disk and Spondylolisthesis. A pioneer in the research, study and applications of laser technology for arthroscopic procedures, Dr. Alfred O. Bonati is the Chairman and Chief Orthopedic Surgeon at The Bonati Institute.

The Challenge

A key tactic for recruiting new patients for The Bonati Procedures is a seminar series involving more than sixty educational seminars that The Bonati Institute will conduct throughout the U.S. and Europe in 2005. A challenge for The Bonati Institute was to develop an effective method for choosing the right markets for future seminars. The Bonati Institute also wanted to implement a more targeted approach to identifying its best prospective clients in those markets. Moreover, it also needed to know what its clients were like, where they lived and how to reach them. To meet the challenge, Bonati turned to Claritas and its signature segmentation system– PRIZM –which classifies the U.S. population into 66 segments based on a socioeconomic scale by combining household-level coding and geographic-level coding to provide the same segment schema at both levels.

The Case

Claritas PRIZM –coded a previous patient file of 5,000 names and addresses at the household level to produce PRIZM Profile Reports ranked both by segment and index. The rankings, known as a target cluster index, were based on how the PRIZM segments corresponded to demographic, lifestyle and media behaviors. The Bonati Institute determined that the target groups were middle-income consumers who were not aware of their choices involving orthopedic-related services. To determine market potential within the target groups, Claritas then generated market potential index reports for all the ZIP Codes within a selected market.

The Results

Armed with this level of information, The Bonati Institute was able to structure a direct mail campaign to those target groups, inviting them to a seminar in the immediate market area. And, the results from the ongoing campaign have been immediate. The Bonati Institute increased seminar attendance by 20 percent in the initial phase of the seminar series, which has led to an overall increase in scheduled surgeries. The data also spurred the redesign of The Bonati Institute's marketing materials to address the new target groups.