Healthcare practitioners are always looking for ways to help their patients. For convenience and accessibility, they look at health tech and online tools to improve patient care. They offer virtual appointments for patients who aren’t available for in-office visits or prefer online communications. They use EHR integrations to work more efficiently, storing patient data in one place to improve patient care. They also focus on making treatment plans affordable for patients without risking impact and quality of care.
With inflation on the rise, many patients are cutting back or delaying purchases for discretionary needs. Cost is a significant barrier to treatment adherence, and rising medical costs due to inflation can discourage patients from accessing supplements and wellness products, leading to poorer health outcomes. A recent Fullscript survey reported that 70% of patients who are postponing supplement purchases are doing so due to cost. (1)
To address the ongoing concern of inflation, diversifying services and reducing costs when possible has been critical to success for many integrative practitioners and their patients. Fullscript has been a vital tool for easy, affordable, and quality supplement dispensing — as well as adherence and patient engagement tools — offering more features to practitioners than any other dispensing platform.
In this article, we explore the barriers of discounting products, the benefits of running promotions on Fullscript, and discuss the successes that practitioners have experienced. In a healthcare world that’ is shifting more and more towards digitalization, practitioners have to find ways to help their patients be as healthy as they can be while on a budget.
- Barriers to discounting supplements
- Benefits of Fullscript promotions + video
- Timeline of promotional support for practitioners
- Growth statistics and results from Fullscript promotions
- Benefits to patient care
- Tips for optimizing your supplement promotion
Barriers to discounting supplements
Setting up and running supplement promotions can be a hassle for practitioners who use tools and software that do not support or automate discounts. Some barriers may include turning on promotions to the entire account and all patients, the ability to change the discount percentage to fit the practitioner’s needs, and sometimes even letting patients know about the promotions, via marketing and communications tactics.
“Before Fullscript, anytime we wanted to run a promotion we had to go in and apply discounts to every patient manually, and that was a lot of work! That’s all gone with Fullscript because everything is automated. It’s so much easier.” –Geri Brewster RD, MPH, CDN
The manual setup of promotions and the time-consuming aspect of running them can turn any busy practitioner away. When the tools and software a practitioner is using aren’t helping them with overall efficiency, why would they implement them?
Thankfully, Fullscript has identified the pain points that practitioners face, and has made it easy to run a supplement promotion for patients!
“Any way you can limit the barriers to success is a win. For example, limiting the need for the patient to have to log back in, or remembering which password they selected, and then having to search for specific emails are small barriers we don’t notice a patient might experience. Fullscript, and its whole platform, is what breaks those barriers. It’s just so easy to dispense supplements, set up refill reminders, and run promotions! Value add for your patients and your clinic by limiting the leg work you have to do or your team has to do in the process as well.” –Dr. Melissa Gallagher ND, CLT
Benefits of running patient promotions on Fullscript
The Fullscript platform has been optimized for busy practitioners. The philosophy behind the software is adapted from practitioners’ needs and pain points, so Fullscript can become a solution-oriented tool rather than a hassle.
“Fullscript makes it so easy to run a promotion! It’s also very easy to turn the promotion on and off.” –Geri Brewster RD, MPH, CDN
When a practitioner sets up their Fullscript account, they can choose between a no-margin account or a margin account. Margin accounts are a great option for practitioners to make passive income, rather than recommending health stores or online supplement stores to patients. Everything is seamless and even annual sales taxes are generated by the Fullscript team.
1. Easy opt-in for practitioners
Opting in to an existing promotion on Fullscript can be done in four simple steps. Once a practitioner has all of their patients on Fullscript, they log in, navigate to ‘Dispensary settings,’ view ‘Patient promotions,’ and opt in. Practitioners have total control of the promotional discount they’d like to apply to their dispensary.
2. No extra work for practitioners
Completing the opt in process is all practitioners need to do to reap the benefits! Fullscript takes care of everything else, including shipping, marketing, enabling and disabling the promotion, and much more. Take a look at the comparison!
What practitioners do:
- Opt in
- Ensure all patients are on Fullscript
What Fullscript does:
- Notifies patients via emails
- Sets up and activates the sale on the platform
- Implements marketing strategies for promotion awareness
- Disables the sale when it’s over
- Supports patient questions
- Follows up with promotion results
- Ships all products
The typical timeline of promotions includes many promotional assets that both practitioners and their patients see. These are all managed and run by the Fullscript team, so there is no extra burden on the practitioner or their support staff.
This is what the typical timeline looks like:
3. Control over discounts
Practitioners have full control of their discount and can apply it to their entire dispensary. Once everything is set up, Fullscript sends an email to all patients on behalf of the practitioners on the day of the sale. If practitioners would like to publicly share the sale on their website or social media channels, they can!
Did you know? The best results are seen when a practitioner offers a 15% to 25% discount to their patients.
4. Proven results
In Geri Brewster RD, MPH, CDN’s case, she saw an increase in her dispensary’s activity while participating in the annual Cyber Monday Sale. The Fullscript team worked with supplement brands to coordinate the sale and gave the option to all practitioners to opt in. In the 2019 Cyber Monday sale, Geri was able to provide a discount to her clients and saw an increase of almost 10% for her overall dispensary activity. She also saw a jump in her MSRP and a 115% increase in orders from her existing clients.
Dr. Gallagher’s participation in the 2020 summer patient promo gave her the experience and confidence to recommend Fullscript promos to all of her colleagues. Dr. Gallagher’s Fullscript dispensary saw an increase of 1462.33% in MSRP and 813.33% growth in orders in just one week.
Here are some other stats that show real practitioners’ experiences after opting in to patient promotions on Fullscript:
“I would say to any practitioner to opt in to all of the promotions run by Fullscript. At first, I was concerned that my sales would dip in the months following the sale, but they didn’t. In fact, my patients get reminded that they have an account with my dispensary and start ordering again. With each promotion that I have opted in to, my sales have not only been boosted from the sale but my average sales trends upwards. It’s a win!” –Dr. Gail Clayton, DCN, CNS, MS, RPh
5. Quality assurance for practitioners
For practitioners, recommending quality products is extremely important. Knowing the ingredients, the formulations, any excipients, and also understanding the manufacturing processes of brands is an important part of the recommendation process.
“Patients will shop high-quality common supplements beyond the recommendations I provide. It’s easy for them to navigate and self-serve on the Fullscript catalog for themselves, their families, and even their pets. They get an elevated level of service with shipping that is consistent and an added discount.” –Dr. Melissa Gallagher, ND, CLT
For practitioners who are busy seeing patients on a daily basis, researching the quality regulations of each brand they’re recommending would be a daunting task. With Fullscript’s quality program, practitioners can trust the catalog of products, and even on sale, product quality isn’t compromised.
6. Affordability for patients
For patients, ordering supplements is often a cost not fully covered by an insurance provider. Even though the importance of maintaining good health with the help of supplements is important and understood, some patients simply can’t afford the added financial burden.
By being able to provide affordable prices, practitioners can assure that patients don’t have to choose between their preventative health plan and other expenses. Sometimes even the slightest reduction can help!
“With affordable prices through discounts, I can help my clients avoid purchasing from random or popular online sites and having to deal with potentially poor quality-controlled products.” –Geri Brewster RD, MPH, CDN
Along with affordability, promotions on Fullscript are fully supported. The Fullscript catalog has practitioner-grade supplements to give both the practitioner and their patient peace of mind. The Fullscript customer support team is also a resource for practitioners and patients if issues arise with supplement products. There is no hassle in sending supplements back if there is ever a need.
7. Convenience for patients
Practitioners don’t have to worry about running a promotion and getting too many products delivered to their office, which might not have enough space to store products. The convenience of patient delivery is ensured with Fullscript. This also makes it easier for the patient to receive what they need and start their treatment/wellness plan right away, without having to pick up supplements from another location. The Fullscript doorstep delivery is an enjoyable experience for both patients and practitioners.
8. Optimized patient care for practitioners
Finally, an important benefit recognized by our practitioners is the ease of running a promotion using Fullscript while maintaining everything else going on in their practice and keeping patient care top-of-mind. Because the Fullscript platform is automated, once the initial set-up is complete, nothing else needs to be done by the practitioner. They get to focus on letting their patients know about the sale and continuing to provide care to their patients.
“Periodic promotions and sales keep compliance levels high and remind those who may be slipping to get back on the protocol. It also helped us meet revenue goals as well.” –Dr. Melissa Gallagher, ND, CLT
There is no disruption in the workflow for the practitioner and if the promotion is successful, the payout is automatic and instant.
7 tips for optimizing your supplement promotion
To make the most out of a supplement sale on Fullscript, here are some of our top tips for practitioners to ensure their promotions are a success!
1. Verify your discount
When you opt in to a patient promo, you have complete control over what your discount will be. Head to your Fullscript dispensary settings and go to the Patient promotions tab to verify your discount and ensure it’s in line with your practice and goals.
Note: The discount you set will apply on top of any current store discount. For example, if you currently have a global discount of 15% and you opt in to the promotion with a 10% discount, your total discount will be 25%.
2. Update your patient list
The more patients uploaded to your Fullscript store the more patients will have access to your sale. Make sure to update your patient list regularly using the patient import tool — especially before a patient promo!
Follow these simple steps to upload new patients and keep your list up-to-date.
3. Switch to a full product catalog
Catalog permissions are set at the dispensary level and dictate what level of access patients have to your Fullscript catalog. Switching to a full product catalog gives your patients access to the entire Fullscript catalog and more browsing options during a sale.
Learn more about changing your catalog permissions.
4. Start writing more treatment plans to engage patients
Incentivize disengaged patients and increase orders by writing treatment plans complete with detailed instructions and supplement recommendations. Practitioners on Fullscript see a 50% increase in orders when re-sending discounted treatment plans.
Log in to your Fullscript account and head to the ‘Insights Dashboard’ to try re-sending a treatment plan during the sale to boost patient engagement!
5. Promote the sale to your patients
While we take care of things like shipping, general marketing, enabling and disabling the promo, we still recommend using our toolkit of marketing resources to spread the word to your patients.
6. Write promo-specific protocol
Writing and recommending promo-specific and seasonal shareable protocols is a great way to provide guidance for patients on what supplements and products they should consider during a patient promo.
7. Opt in to all future patient promos
To ensure you never miss a patient promo on Fullscript, we recommend “globally opting in” which will automatically opt in your store to all future supplement promotions. Globally opting in is simple and can be activated in your dispensary settings.
WHICH PRACTITIONER TYPES CAN OPT IN TO THE PROMOTION?
Margin account owners can opt in to patient promotions. Margin sub-practitioners and clerks will not be able to opt in and will follow the opt in status of their store owner. No-margin accounts will automatically be opted in to the sale and Fullscript will offer patients a flat discount of 25% during the two-day sale.
WHAT DISCOUNT WILL I BE PROVIDING?
You can offer patients additional savings on top of your typical dispensary discount — up to a maximum of 25% in Canada and 35% in the U.S.
WHEN IS THE PROMOTION?
The Spring Supplement Sale will run from March 14th – 15th, 2023.
WHEN CAN I OPT IN?
The opt in period for the Spring Supplement Sale ends on March 7th. You won’t be able to opt in — or out — of the sale after 11:59 p.m. PT on March 7th.
HOW DO I OPT IN TO THE SALE?
Opting in to the sale is easy and can be done with the click of a button in your store’s dispensary settings! Click on ‘Patient promotions’ and then decide whether you want to participate in all future sales or just the upcoming promotion. This is also where you’ll select your discount amount for the promo.
HOW IS THE DISCOUNT CALCULATED AND APPLIED?
You decide what discount you want to give your patients! You can add an additional discount in increments of 5%. This will stack on top of any existing discounts you currently offer, including any individual patient discounts you might give.
For example, if you typically give patients a 10% discount on supplements and you opt in to the promotion with additional patient savings of 10%, you will be giving patients a total of 20% off during the promotion.
WHAT KIND OF COMMUNICATION WILL BE SENT TO MY PATIENTS?
Patients will receive a sneak peek email the week before the promo to let them know the sale is coming. Patients will also receive emails and advertisements during the sale as a reminder to shop. We’ll send you a sample of a patient email in advance!
Still haven’t found the answer you’re looking for? Reach out to our Customer Success team, who are always happy to help!
The bottom line
Running a patient promo on Fullscript, whether it’s an independent promotion by the practitioner, like a Back to School sale, or a Fullscript-led promotion, like the Spring Supplement Sale, is easy, supported, and convenient. Supplement quality is never compromised, patients can enjoy affordable products delivered right to their door, and practitioners can avoid any hassle promotions may cause. This gives back crucial time to the practitioner so they can spend it helping their patients get better.
“My advice to other practitioners would be not to overthink a promo. Just do it! You can get substantial data on what was and wasn’t successful and then improve for the next promotion. It’s so worth it. I promise you’ll have wished you had run a promotion on Fullscript earlier.” –Dr. Melissa Gallagher, ND, CLT
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- Fullscript. (2022). Patient Survey.