Farmacia Simán, Honduras' top pharmacy retailer, rolled out web push with OneSignal to reach desktop users, attributing conversions via UTM tags linked to Google Analytics to measure real impact on purchases and revenue.
Grupo Farsimán has operated in Honduras since 1958, and today runs more than 190 pharmacies with over 2,500 employees across its business units. Farmacia Simán, the group's flagship and widest-reaching brand, has long been a pioneer in pharmacy e-commerce in the region — and was also the first pharmacy in Honduras to roll out web push notifications as a digital communication channel.
“Here in Honduras, we were pioneers in web push for pharmacies.”
The challenge: rigid internal systems and a small team
Before OneSignal, Farmacia Simán managed its notifications — both web and in-app push — through systems built in-house by its IT department, running on Amazon Web Services. That in-house solution had clear limits: unappealing formats, inconsistent delivery, and no real way to measure performance.
“It wasn't new formats, it wasn't appealing. Sometimes the push arrived, sometimes it didn't.”
“It didn't generate the transactionality, the performance, or the measurement of the relevant KPIs.”
Without visibility into basic metrics like CTR, the team had no way of knowing whether a campaign was actually working. The previous platform also suffered from significant send latency: a push scheduled for 10am could take up to an hour to reach users.
On top of that was the size of the team: just five people in digital marketing, young and used to intuitive tools, managing a high volume of communications with no room for complex platforms.
“With just five people on my team, pretty young, it's more intuitive to have an online platform, with clear icons, where we can preview before sending.”
That same need for simplicity applied to quality control on every send:
“In digital marketing, it happens all the time that a word gets misspelled. Testing is what helps us catch that.”
Why they chose OneSignal
The decision to move forward with OneSignal responded to a specific need: a large share of Farmacia Simán's traffic happened during business hours, from office computers, where mobile device use is often restricted.
“When we decided to bring on OneSignal, it was to cover the need to target desktop audiences using Chrome or Safari at their companies. We had a good percentage of active users on computers during peak business hours, 8am to 5pm, Honduras time.”
The team saw an opportunity to reach those desktop users — always with their explicit consent to receive notifications — something their previous system didn't support.
One additional factor, unusual for this kind of decision, tipped the scale: the ease of paying with corporate cards, key for the group's digital operation.
“Payment methods are key for me, since in digital we always work with corporate cards. That was a deciding factor, and it's part of why I chose OneSignal.”
The implementation
With Bildung Data as implementation partner, Farmacia Simán rolled out OneSignal to tackle two fronts at once: reaching desktop audiences and fully modernizing its push notification stack, both web and in-app.
Adoption was gradual but steady. Farmacia Simán scaled step by step — 1,000, then 2,000, 3,000, and 5,000 subscribers within a short period — before surpassing 23,000 web push subscribers as it hit its first year on the platform, in July 2026.
The team rolled out several solutions on top of OneSignal to fully replace its previous stack:
• Weekly communications plan: Monday through Sunday, planned in a single session, without errors or downtime — something that used to require building each send day by day.
• Push notifications with images: messages far more visual and engaging than the plain text of their previous system.
• In-app messages: migrated just a month ago, allowing creative artwork for the first time, not just text.
• HTML-format ads: the team's favorite feature for building more elaborate creative pieces.
“With OneSignal we can send creative artwork. And the feature I love most, because that's how I like to create, is the HTML format.”
For a team of just five people, having Bildung Data present at every stage — not just at launch — was key to sustaining the pace of adoption without friction:
“The support — from the technical team, the billing team, the commercial team, who back us up day to day — makes this whole process easy too.”
Results: more traffic, better CTR, and measurable conversion
Since implementation, and over the course of its first year on the platform, Farmacia Simán has seen a 20% increase in web traffic driven by push campaigns. Push CTR also improved significantly, climbing from 1.2% to 4.8% — a jump the team attributes directly to being able to include images in their sends. The send latency, previously nearly an hour, also disappeared entirely.
Beyond traffic, the team confirmed that push also drives direct conversion, in two ways: users who click through for one product and end up buying another, and users who buy the exact product featured in the push.
“I always put it this way, informally: it's like fishing. We throw the bait, and the user bites. They come in, and they buy.”
The team's operational efficiency also changed dramatically:
“In a week — really, in a day — they can schedule the whole week, when before it had to be done daily.”
How they measure impact: UTM tags connected to Google Analytics
Before OneSignal, Farmacia Simán had no clear way of knowing whether a push campaign was generating real traffic or conversion, beyond the team's intuition. A key shift came from something deceptively simple: the documentation OneSignal provided for setting up UTM tags on every campaign.
With every send, the team tags its pushes with UTM parameters connected directly to Google Analytics and Power BI, where they keep a real-time dashboard.
“What made things easier for us was the UTM setup and all the documentation OneSignal sent us. That's where we do our tracking from. I have my dashboard in Google Analytics, and also in Power BI, with everything set up there.”
That connection to Google Analytics lets the team go beyond engagement metrics like CTR, and measure the real business impact of each campaign — not just how much traffic a push generates, but whether that traffic translates into actual purchases and revenue. This let the team map two conversion patterns: users who come in drawn by one product and end up buying another, and users who buy the exact product featured in the push, with the sale attributed to the specific send that drove it.
That end-to-end traceability — from push to purchase — is exactly what let the team confirm, with business data rather than just perception, the traffic jump they saw after adopting the platform:
“Right now we've grown web traffic by 20% compared to our first month with OneSignal. That's also tied to the number of active users we have, so it's a pretty significant number.”
Looking ahead
Following its success at Farmacia Simán, the group is already planning to extend OneSignal to its other business units — starting with Econo Mascotas, Honduras' leading pet shop chain, and then regionally with Farmacost in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The team is also evaluating Journeys and email to round out its stack and centralize every channel on a single platform.
Edwin closes with direct advice for other companies in the pharmaceutical industry considering a tool like this:
“It will always pay off to look for platforms that genuinely add value. I do recommend the platform — you'll see the added value, and especially the optimization in time, resources, and of course traffic and conversion.”
— Edwin Martinez, Digital Marketing Manager, Grupo Farsimán
