Home - ICHP KeePosted

Official Newsjournal of the Illinois Council of Health-System Pharmacists

Marketing Affairs
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue - How Can Marketing Affairs Continue to Serve You?

by Bernice Man, PharmD, BCPS - ICHP Director of Marketing Affairs - Practice Coordinator, Specialty Pharmacy; Northwestern Medicine

The Division of Marketing Affairs would like to keep the ICHP membership updated on our recent activities! For those who aren’t familiar with us, we are “responsible for developing and maintaining programs to support current membership and recruit new members.”1 Since the summer months are traditionally peak wedding season, I thought I’d utilize the “something borrowed” maxim.

Something Old
Marketing Affairs has continued previously implemented initiatives such as promoting membership retention via contacting new members within three months of becoming an ICHP member and featuring two ICHP leaders in each KeePosted issue. We continued the annual Student Chapter Video Contest and this past year centered it around social media. Last but not least, our Champions project continues to move forward under Julie Downen’s excellent leadership. There are still a number of sites who do not have Champions, please contact Trish Wegner at trishw@ichpnet.org if you are interested in joining the Champion team!

Something New
One of our 2018-2019 goals is to increase ICHP’s social media presence. To this end, Melissa Dyrdahl, ICHP’s Communications Manager, created an infographic that outlines the various ways members can connect to ICHP and stay updated via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. An initiative that has been ongoing and we hope to move forward through completion is obtaining the ICHP Board of Directors’ approval for a new network for technicians.

Melissa has done an amazing job graphically with revamping ICHP’s visual communication and developing a marketing calendar that is shared on our monthly conference calls. For example, she revised our Student Chapter Video Contest advertisement as well as an email to our newly minted 2019 pharmacy school graduates.

Something Borrowed
We are in the process of evaluating and leveraging ICHP’s website analytics information. To this end, we met with ASHP’s Director of Digital Marketing and Strategy and their Data Analyst in order to obtain guidance on how to best leverage ICHP’s online presence. ASHP provided extremely helpful information and we look forward to implementing these strategies in the upcoming year!

Something Blue
We identified that ICHPChat was not working out as a venue for membership discussion, so we are pivoting and in the process of moving that activity over to ICHP’s private Facebook group. Please join our Facebook group to participate in future discussions!

How Can We Serve You?
The inaugural year of my two-year term as ICHP’s Director of Marketing Affairs is quickly coming to a close. Many thanks to the dedicated members who participate in the Division of Marketing Affairs’ monthly conference calls. I look forward to how the group can move forward in 2020! Please do not hesitate to contact me with any new ideas for Marketing Affairs as we certainly want to tailor our activities to the needs of the ICHP membership!

References:
1. Illinois Council of Health-System Pharmacists. Marketing Affairs Division. https://www.ichpnet.org/about_us/divisions_and_committees/display_division.php?division=division_of_marketing_affairs. 2019. Accessed June 25, 2019.