Planning
Rabbits, apparently, are "the new black". We decided that with the growing number of people living in flats and keeping "house rabbits", this would not be a bad area in which to start. Our computer database meant that a listing of our rabbit-owning clients could be generated easily. It was then a question of trawling through the list and sending promotional material (a letter offering a 25% discount on myxi and VHD vaccines) to each and every unvaccinated rabbit owner.

Flaws & rectification
Very quickly, I spotted some problems with this idea. I suspected that many of the rabbits listed were no longer owned and that the clients had failed to advise us of their demise or re-homing arrangements. Another problem was that several rabbit-owning clients that already visit the practice regularly had read about the promotion on our website, but were unable to take advantage of the special offer, because their vaccinations were not due during the specified period. This presented a dilemma, since the original plan was to generate income that would not normally have been spent, rather than lose 25% on guaranteed fees.

About a month into the promotion, our internal practice newsletter contained the rather pessimistic comment: "The rabbit promotion has seen varying degrees of success throughout the branches, but we will all learn from this."

I found this amusing, since we were only a month into the project and yet the general opinion was that we had given up! It was now time to get things rolling and inject some life into the scheme.

• Personalisation of the promotional letter - "Dear Mrs Smith" is far more polite than "Dear Rabbit Owner". Our Verifac Mentor computer system can automatically personalise documents. This helped to save time since the letters could now be sent out in window envelopes rather than addressing them all by hand. 
  
  
• Mention of the rabbit's name - reference to "Snowy" shows that we have taken the time to remember the pet. 
  
  
• Avoiding "scare tactics". Clients tend to respond better to a promotion highlighting benefits ("an opportunity for a free health examination where you can discuss any aspect of rabbit care in addition to vaccination") rather than a threat of "dire problems if you do not bother to take our advice"! 
  
  
• Addition of the following: "Apologies if you are no longer a rabbit owner. We would appreciate it if you could telephone us in this case so that we can update our records. Many thanks". At least if we know the client no longer has the pet in question, we can avoid sending further information for which the client has no use. 
  
  
• Use of every stamp to maximum benefit - use the opportunity to promote other services and products available for rabbits: Advantage, Burgess Supa Rabbit, hay... (Hint, it is better to design your own flyer highlighting these items rather than pack the envelope full of drug company leaflets - from experience, clients are less likely to bin a smart, one page info sheet than they are reams of literature that they can't find the time to read). 
  
  
• Use your initiative and get maximum exposure for your website and pet health advisers. 
  
  
• Extension of the promotion - this avoids upsetting clients whose rabbits are not due to be inoculated during the initial 3 month period. Although this does defeat the object a little, the last thing we want to do is isolate our good customers who visit the surgery regularly.

Conclusion
After improvements to the project, we had a 7.5% response rate. On the face of it, that is not a bad response, but most of the respondents were those who regularly vaccinate their animals, promotion or not, so we didn't consider the project a success.

What went wrong? I believe that the problem lay with our database; probably less than half of the clients we approached were in fact still rabbit owners. So, if we run a similar promotion in the future, a different method of "catching" the rabbit will be essential. Whilst it can be useful to use an existing data base, in this case it would have made more sense to target NEW rabbit owners.

For this we could look at places where most people acquire rabbits, i.e. the RSPCA and local rescue centres, pet shops and breeders. Rabbits are still largely considered children's pets, so we could look at doing a promotion with a local school, perhaps in their newsletter.

I believe that if we had targeted our market with a little more care, we'd have been much more successful.