Direct Marketing Campaign begins! First set of flyers sent out.

In an attempt to promote my eBook and this ThenCameCancer.com website, I mailed out my first set of flyers to doctors today. It was a relatively small mail flight of 200 folded booklets, but it’s a good start.

You can download the complete 8-page direct mail piece here. The flyer consists essentially of a request to oncologists and hematologists to help me get the word out about my eBook and my website to their patients. In addition to suggesting to the doctors several ways in which they can help spread the word, the 8-page flyer also contains sample pages, like:

• the front cover of the eBook

• a page of promotional copy (derived from the virtual rear cover of my eBook); 

• the first page of the Preface of the eBook; 

• the Table of Contents of the eBook;

• the Table of Educational Resources —Articles, from the eBook

• The web page for the expanded More Resources segment of the Unlimited Access version of my ThenCameCancer.com website, featuring the extensive outline that provides information and links to the Foundations, Associations, Pharmaceutical Companies, Journals, Magazines, Internet Media, Videos, List of medications used in chemotherapy, and comprehensive cancer treatment centers, hospitals, and institutions.

Essentially, what I am asking doctors to do is to print out and place a copy of the front cover of my eBook, backed by the one-page promotional copy derived from the virtual rear cover of my eBook, in their office waiting room so that patients can see them as  free handout literature which they can take home with them. Let them get a taste of what the eBook and website has to offer them so that they visit the website and decide for themselves if they just want to browse around on the free, public access version, or if they (hopefully) want to purchase a Membership to gain more access and support this endeavor.

When I went for my annual physical exam at the very beginning of the new year, I showed the flyer to Dr. Nasir Khan, my primary care physician. He liked it and said that his UB / MD clinic would display it in their waiting room. Ideally, I want doctors to attach the front cover of the eBook to one of those letter-size plastic holders you find in the brochure areas of doctors’ office, with several copies of the promotional page available to the patients to take home as the handouts. As soon as I can, I’ll take a picture of the display in the UB / MD waiting room as an illustrative model for what I have in mind.

Now, if I could just get the doctors in America to cooperate by telling their patients about this resource I have provided to newly diagnosed Multiple Myeloma patients and their families, maybe my efforts will have turned out to be worthwhile after all.

It’s way too expensive for me to conduct a direct mail marketing that will reach all the doctors, hospitals, medical schools, and others whom I’d like to contact. So, I wish that administrators in such organizations would download the flyer PDF package directly from my website, print out the front cover page and the promotional copy page, and place them in the plastic holders of take home brochures in their own offices, without my intervention. Ah, that would be ideal! 

Considering the costs of First Class postage, plus paper, plus ink toner consumption, plus the initial investment in a Brother laser color printer, it costs me about $2.00 per piece. So, I won’t be able to contact as many doctors than I had originally hoped. Nor can I afford to provide any one of them with a printed set of flyers for their own use without being reimbursed: I have to rely on the doctors to share the costs of paper and ink, which I know may be seen as a stretch by those who won’t be able to see the value of getting the word out to their patients.

But, hey, it can’t hurt to ask, right? After all, it’s just an experiment in shared marketing. I’ve been carrying the load and taking the total risk all by myself thus far. Let’s see how it all turns out from this point on.

For anyone who might be interested in the details, here’s a little background on what led up to my decision to try to promote my eBook and my website through a direct mail marketing campaign in the first place.

Throughout most of December 2014, I turned my attention to the marketing and promotional phases of this eBook and ThenCameCancer.com project. In order to make this project a success, I feel compelled to try to get the word out to as many people as possible who might benefit from either reading my personal narrative, or by gaining quick, easy, and one-stop convenient access to a wide range of informational and educational resources on cancer in general and Multiple Myeloma in particular, or both. I decided that, since the original point of contact which every uninformed, newly diagnosed Multiple Myeloma must go through on their journey with this disease is their doctor, I would try to enlist the support of the doctors in America in getting the word out to their patients.

Towards that goal, I designed a flyer, and I investigated various supplemental ways to distribute information about my eBook and its associated website to doctors—other than the Internet. At first, I thought that I would try faxing, since my initial research turned up a relatively inexpensive broadcast fax service that I could pair up with a relatively inexpensive mailing list. I could send out over a million faxes to all the doctors in America within a week for under $1,000. 

Alas, it turned out that such indiscriminate faxing is illegal. According the Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005, it is illegal to fax anything to anyone with whom you do not already have a pre-existing business relationship. Fines are stiff.

Not wanting to do anything illegal or open myself to costly penalties, I then explored using eMail. According the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, it is legal to send out promotional emails to people you don’t yet know, as long as you follow certain guidelines. But the vendors who sell the contact information of the doctors want 45 cents per name, which is exorbitantly expensive in my view, and they won’t let you just take their list and use it forever. They also want to charge you for a one-time email blast which they will do for you at their office for an additional, inflated price. 

To get a bigger picture of my direct marketing options, I figured that I might as well check out traditional direct mail marketing using printed materials sent by the good old U.S. Postal Service. While reading the arcane regulations was not much fun, I did learn that my best option was to create a “folder booklet.” While many experts would argue for a short, simple postcard, I feel that, in order to give doctors and their staff the best opportunity to see what I have to offer, I have to include more information than can be contained on a mere postcard (although I will eventually conduct some tests to see if my guess is correct). 

Since I was now considering using real-world physical materials instead of virtual materials like emails and faxes, along with the postage, I had to incorporate the costs of paper, ink toner, and, of course, a laser color printer to make everything look nice and professional.  Although the cost comparison with email marketing indicated the traditional direct mail marketing would be more expensive, I ended up electing to use the printed form of sending out my flyers because I believe that there is a better chance of actually getting my message in front of the eyes of people who might appreciate seeing it, rather than have them delete unread an email message from an unknown source as junk.

So, I invested in a new color laser printer from Brother (model HL-L8350CDW, in case anyone is interested), and I ordered reams and reams of paper. Throughout the holiday season, I began to pump out and assemble copies of my flyer. It’s a big financial risk I take, but I’d feel like a failure if I did not at least spend some time and money trying to get the word out to those who might benefit. Yes, of course, I need to generate revenue to pay my living expenses and my mounting medical bills (getting a triple cocktail of chemo once a week is not cheap!), as well as to keep this whole operation going. That’s why I am hoping that my investment of time, labor, and money over these past three years on this eBook and website project will now bring in some money. But, as I stated from the outset, the more important goal for me is to be productive and to be of service to people before my time is up. 

However, at the same time, I have to conserve my energy and my very limited financial resources. It would be foolish to think otherwise. So, if this project does not get financially supported by the public relatively soon, then I will ultimately be forced to abandon it and move on to something else which might. I won’t regret the time and effort I put into writing my book and developing this website: I’ll just feel sad that I was unable to connect the content to the people who could most benefit from what I have put together on their behalf.

Anyway, the point of this blog is to announce that I mailed out my first set of flyers to doctors this week, and it really feels good to be able to do so. I will follow-up by sending out several hundred more flyers in the coming days, after which I’ll be interested to see how this marketing experiment will have worked, so that I can determine what my next step will be.

Let’s hope that the doctors—and their open-hearted administrative staff—see the value in what I’m trying to accomplish here and step in to help out. Anyone who wants to can freely download the PDF file  containing direct mail marketing flyer from my downloads page and help to get the word out by printing out and displaying the front cover and the promotional page anywhere they choose. Thanks.

Merry Christmas 2014: I'm still here!

Merry Christmas 2014

Many stem-cell transplants get five or ten years of remission: I only got one. So it goes. I have to live with that reality, until I don’t.

This illustrative chart of my M-Spike levels since I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in January of 2012 tells the story better than any words can. My words will summarize and provide some context and explanation for the progression of the data along the all-important life-line of that graph.

Following my stem-cell transplant at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY, I had one year of remission throughout most of 2013, but my Multiple Myeloma came back at the beginning of 2014, such that I had to resume a full regimen of weekly chemotherapy. Fortunately, my body was able to respond well to the chemo without doing me in through its unavoidable side-effects, so I can send you this Christmas card with joy and while in good spirits.

I realize that the image I am sending you is not exactly your traditional Christmas card image. It’s actually a graph of the biochemical marker in my bloodstream, called the M-Protein, or M-spike, which indicates the degree to which the malignant plasma cells called “myeloma” are present in my blood, over time, since I was first diagnosed in January 2012 with a rather aggressive form of the disease. At the same time, however, as the illustration of my life-line, it’s also the most intimate self-portrait which I can share with you at this point in time. That graph is me!

Some explanation might be in order for the non-medically oriented recipients of this mass-mailed Christmas card, for which I beg indulgence of those experts who have to wade through a presentation by a layman of technical and scientific stuff, which is presumably over his head and to which he’s not expected to pay too much attention anyway, lest he mess things up along the way. 

On this chart, “zero” does not mean that the myeloma cancer cells are all gone. Unfortunately, this particular disease is not curable; it is only controllable through chemotherapy. “Zero” on the chart means that, as far as current medical science goes, doctors can only look for and/or measure the presence of the cancer cells up to a certain point, beyond which their instruments cannot see clearly. The myeloma cells are still there: they just exist at—or below—the technical barrier of the scientific instruments used to look for them, which is a constraint known as the “zero detectable” limit. 

The laboratory doctor either reports “No M-spike seen,” and he notes down a number correlating with the amount of myeloma present per volume of blood, or he reports seeing traces of an M-spike that is so faint that it is “not quantifiable.” When the lab physician cannot quantitate the degree of immunologically useless—but harmful—antibodies known as M-Proteins, he ascribes the smallest possible numerical amount to his report, namely 0.15 Grams/DecaLiter, to indicate that something is still there, but science cannot say for sure how much is there.

What all this means is that, as long as my monthly check-ups show that this M-spike, which is the primary indicator among many which the doctors use to assess me and get a complete picture of the Multiple Myeloma cancer burden, stays at, or below, this zero detectable level, I am OK. I am surviving. 

Although no one can predict how things will turn out or how quickly things can change, what we can deduce so far in my adventure with this disease is that the current chemo regimen—which is exactly the same combination of drugs in exactly the same dosages as the full and aggressive regimen that I was given originally at the Erie County Medical Center—is actually working. Cancer cells are very smart, but myeloma cells are exceptionally smart: they’re tiny, complex organisms, branching off into many diverse families from a central tree, each cousin fighting amongst the others in this ruthless and unruly tribe to be the top dog in my bone marrow and in my blood stream, making treatment very challenging and ultimately ending in failure. It’s all a matter of time, as all Life is fated to be. To observe that the original chemo regimen I was given is still effective is something of a wonder to behold, for it is happening much to the amazement of my doctor and our mutual appreciation at its efficacy thus far. 

As it’s turning out, the original, high-powered, chemotherapeutic regimen that Dr. Zale Bernstein prescribed to pull me away from death’s door has become my “maintenance” regime. I guess the fact that my current oncologist must resort to such a high-powered, full course regimen is a further indication of the very advanced stage at which my cancer was first diagnosed, along with my allegedly “poor prognosis.” 

However, medical science being a very pragmatic—but imperfect—art, the plan now is to stay the course with this high-powered regimen for as long as we have success, and for as long as I can tolerate the side-effects of the poisonous drugs being used to keep the cancer down at that “zero” level. If and when one or the other of those factors changes significantly, it will be time to sing a different tune. But, as the main characters echo to each other in Ridley Scott’s great movie epic, Gladiator: ”not yet. Not yet!”

John-Michael

P.S. I launched my eBook (Then Came Cancer: My Adventure with Multiple Myeloma) and its companion website (ThenCameCancer.com) back in July, but Memberships (“sales”) have been extremely slow. Less than ten (10) Memberships. I feel disappointed, but not defeated. I spent most of the past three years writing the book, teaching myself a new website design program, and finally developing a website that I am convinced can be the most efficient, most comprehensive, most convenient one-stop destination for newly diagnosed Multiple Myeloma patients and their families. But not enough people are finding the website, nor are those few who do find it (through random Google searches, usually for the keywords “prognosis” and “life expectancy”) sign up for the Unlimited Access membership which gives them access not only to my personal narrative, but also to the extensive set of educational resources I have gathered together on their behalf. 

Although I would really like to move ahead to something new, I cannot allow myself to fail in this—perhaps my last—major project. Though I have extremely limited financial resources, I feel compelled to get the word out as best I can. So, throughout 2015, I will be focusing on the advertising and marketing communications aspects of this project. 

I will begin with a direct mail campaign to as many doctors throughout America as I can reach with my meager resources.

I had originally thought to use faxes to contact these physicians, but, upon further research I learned that, according the Junk Fax Prevention Law of 2005, it is illegal to fax to anyone with whom one does not already have a previous EBR, or “established business relationship.” Fines are stiff: $250 per infiltrating sheet of paper, up to almost $2,000 per transmission. Without that law, I would have been able to fax all 1.25 million doctors in a week for under $1,000. But thanks to some lobbyists who managed to convince our current crop of idiots in Congress that faxing was “stealing the property” of the recipients (i.e., their paper, their ink, their time), this restraint-of-trade law was put into effect.

I investigated email marketing, but the organizations which control the mailing lists, which are often licensed by the American Medical Association, want 45 cents per name. I found that rate so exorbitant that I felt obliged to compare it to traditional direct marketing techniques using printed paper and the U.S. Post Office.

While I concluded that it will be somewhat more expensive to use traditional, print-based direct marketing, I believe that I may get a better return on my investment if I physically place a high quality, multi-paged set of colorful pages in the hands of a doctor or his/her office staff than if I send out emails that will be shunted into a junk mail folder and deleted without ever being seen. It’s just a hunch, but it’s a risk I have to take.

Accordingly, for Christmas I invested in a Brother color laser printer and several reams of good quality paper, and I have been pumping out under-one-ounce-49-cent and up-to-two-ounces-70-cent “folded booklets” (as the Post Office calls them) in preparation for mailing them out, come the New Year. I’ll be buying a mailing list of hematologists and oncologists, and I will integrate their contact information into a FileMaker Pro database, so that I can do a mail merge with the address page of my outgoing mailers. 

After that, we’ll see who reads it and if they will help me get the word out to their patients by doing what I ask them to do in my booklets—namely, to put flyers in their offices and to be conduits informing their patients out about the availability of my eBook and its companion website.

Unfortunately, while I approach this direct marketing campaign with high hopes and invigorating enthusiasm, I don’t have high expectations from strangers. I’ve learned from my disappointing experience within the halls of Roswell Park itself—my home base—that doctors and medical staff and the administrative staff who run them do not seem to possess the highest level of marketing acumen or appreciation for an innovative public relations opportunity that has been staring them right in the face for many months now. My project is apparently beyond their narrow ken: they don’t seem to know how to exploit me and my project to their own advantage, which, in the right, creative hands, could be considerable. 

Beyond Roswell’s abject failure to appreciate what I have accomplished, to date not one of the fifty people to whom I promoted my eBook and my website has deigned to purchase a Membership, even though several of them promised to do so. 

More personally upsetting has been the reneging by several doctors at Roswell who told me that my book should required reading among not only among the nursing staff so that they could gain some empathy into what a patient feels as he progresses through all the stages of cancer diagnosis and treatment, but that my book should also be recommended reading for all other cancer patients who are going through the same thing I am, but who perhaps do not have the same intellectual capacity or ability to articulate what they feel as they move through the current medical system.

Perhaps rudest of all has been the lack of response from the top level administrative staff at Roswell, who individually and collectively in committee, have not even bothered to show me the courtesy of a reply to my written correspondence, my emails, and my verbal entreaties requesting nothing more than their permission to display flyers promoting my eBook and my website in a few select areas where Multiple Myeloma patients, stem-cell transplant patients, and other cancer patients going for chemo, commonly traffic. 

Despite this de facto rejection by Roswell’s medical staff and its administrative and marketing personnel, many of whom I met and got to know, I must still try to get the word out to doctors and staff and cancer treatment centers throughout the country whom I don’t know. Let Roswell keep its petty policies and procedures; they’re entitled to their prerogatives. However, I won’t let myself be constrained by their short-sightedness and lack of imagination. In my marketing campaign, I will go beyond the halls of that one great institution to get the word out to those who need it most.

Why should I bother to do that? Why should I spend what little money I have to get the word out? I suppose that, besides cancer, I must suffer from the disease of being a chronically naive fool: I intuit without sufficient proof that someone somewhere is desperately eager to get this information I have to share, so I do what I do, because it will help him. Thus, though I feel disappointed by those in whom I placed a certain degree of faith, I energize my will power to dig deep. I empower myself to overcome the rejections by those who had promised to support me and my work with more than lip service: I would be remiss if I gave up now. 

Sometime in between my marketing efforts throughout the New Year, I hope to be able to squeeze out another writing project—maybe a screenplay about having Multiple Myeloma, maybe a script about something else I was thinking about before I got derailed with this cancer. 

If I decide to write a script about Multiple Myeloma, I’d appreciate it if anyone knows how to personally get in touch with actor Matt Damon, whose father has Multiple Myeloma, as he revealed in a video that was recently webcast by the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. I wrote Matt a letter, but my letter bounced back due to the lack of a street address in the California town he now calls home. 

They say there are only six degrees of separation between one person and the next. Let me know if you’re on a chain to connect me to Matt Damon, so that I can ask him if he’s interested in participating in a feature film project I have in mind on Multiple Myeloma. One way or another, I will get the word out, or die trying.