By bundling professional marketing services into device purchases, device manufacturers are hoping to take the edge off surgeons’ concerns that the technology might gather dust, or could take years to pay off.

BTL launched its partnership with eRelevance in late 2015 to help cosmetic and other practices adding BTL’s Vanquish ME, Exilis Ultra 360, Ultra Femme 360 or Cellutone technologies market the devices. According to eRelevance, 130 practices have participated in the partnership.

The way it works is cosmetic surgeons who buy BTL devices get six months of marketing with eRelevance for free, then have to pay in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $20,000 annually to continue using eRelevance’s customer marketing automation service. The proprietary service, which automates and leverages a practice’s current customers, has helped BTL practices generate just over $16,000 in additional revenue, with an average of 19 more patient consultation requests per month.

Mr. WeinrothThat’s 20 times the return on a practice’s investment to use the platform, according to eRelevance Chief Marketing Officer Adam Weinroth.

“…a lot of practices are not already equipped with state-of-the-art marketing. So when you have an opportunity to take on a new device that enables you to do a new procedure, if you don’t have the ability to market it very well, that takes away from some of the attractiveness and purpose of taking on that additional device,” Mr. Weinroth says. “It’s a huge benefit to a manufacturer like BTL, where they can provide a clearer path to the device really contributing to a practice’s revenue.”

eRelevance offers a turnkey, cross-channel marketing solution that enables practices to run integrated promotions, not just on email but also across Facebook, Instagram, mobile apps, text, website landing pages, etc., according to Mr. Weinroth.

“Typically, for a lot of these devices, you might get a pay-off period that spans a couple of years. In our case, with BTL, we’re helping customers pay off the devices in less than six months,” he says.