1. Healthcare Strategy
2015ISSUE2
This issue of Healthcare Strategy Alert! is produced in cooperation with Coffey Communications, Inc.
on data-driven strategies
Building physician referrals ... 6
Data-driven physician
relationship management ... 8
Marketing automation ... 10
Transforming
healthcare marketing 2
2. TAKEnote
Judy Neiman,
President
Forum for Healthcare
Strategists
The Transformation of
Healthcare Marketing
Data Paves
Among those tools are precision marketing,
real-time campaign management,
digital strategies, content marketing,
and customer relationship management
(CRM). The experience of organizations
immersed in the transition offers lessons
for all healthcare marketers.
Orlando Health’s
Radical Transformation
For Orlando Health, Orlando, FL, an
organizationwide cost-reduction effort in
2012, driven by a troubled economy and
significant reimbursement cuts, was the
impetus for a complete transformation
in marketing strategy, structure, and
execution. All departments were being
asked to reduce spending—and marketing
was no exception.
Faced with the prospect of budget cuts,
marketing leaders at Orlando Health
concluded that it was time to radically
change the organization’s approach to
marketing. “We knew that unless we
changed our marketing strategy, we
would not have sufficient resources to
do an effective job in the future,” says
John Marzano, Vice President, Chief
Marketing & Communications Officer.
“We needed to appropriately balance
traditional ways of marketing and
establish much more of a digital and
multichannel approach, which is where
the consumer was going.
“It’s really time to evolve marketing
healthcare services,” Marzano continues.
“Historically, healthcare marketing has
focused on hospitals and facilities.
But healthcare consumers today are
not searching for facilities; they’re
searching for services, information
about diseases and treatments, and
specialized physicians. We needed to
adjust our strategy and tactics to focus
on meeting consumers where they’re
actively searching for information. If they
Healthcare marketing executives are increasingly recognizing
that traditional marketing methods are no longer sufficient in
today’s world. Successful marketing now requires more targeted,
data-driven approaches—and fluency with newer methods
and tools.
By Debbie Reczynski
Data Drives Today’s
Marketing Strategy
With today’s growing abundance of
data, accompanied by access to new
technologies that enable better use
of that data, healthcare executives
have a tremendous opportunity to
advance marketing and physician
relationship strategies. And marketing
and physician relations executives
are clearly interested: data-driven
approaches to marketing, physician
relations, referral development, and
digital strategy were a key topic
of discussion at the 20th Annual
Healthcare Marketing and Physician
Strategies Summit this past April.
This issue continues the data-driven
conversation. Featured in the issue
are in-depth case studies of several
organizations that have made data
and analytics the foundation of their
consumer-directed marketing and
physician relations strategies. Also
included is an examination of marketing
automation, with some guidelines for
organizations interested in pursuing a
marketing automation platform.
How does your organization stack
up? Read on for ideas to advance
your use of data and analytics. And
mark your calendars for the 21st
Annual Healthcare Marketing and
Physician Strategies Summit, May
23-25, 2016, Chicago, where data,
analytics, and measurement will again
be an important focus.
2 Healthcare Strategy Alert!
3. the Way
“Our entire team now is skilled in a multichannel marketing
approach.”
are out there searching, we want to be
there with meaningful content so that
when they have their ‘moment of need,’
they will choose Orlando Health for
their care.”
To set things in motion, Marzano first
had to convince organizational leaders
and physicians that this was the right
way to go. “That took quite a bit of
time,” he says. “It’s a shift in mindset,
and it took us more than a year to
socialize ideas with executive leadership,
the board, and physicians about why
this shift was necessary to drive future
revenue for the organization.”
At the same time, Marzano was assessing
whether the structure and skills of his
marketing team were right for a strategy
that involved understanding new ways
of engaging, nurturing, and converting
consumers to action. Ultimately,
full-time employees (FTEs) were shifted
out of more traditional marketing areas
into a digital environment and new
talent was recruited to fill the newly
defined positions.
Next, Orlando Health eliminated its
in-house creative services function
and repurposed those FTEs to build
a physician sales force as part of an
integrated marketing and sales function.
“This sales team is fully calibrated with
our marketing efforts, and those liaisons
are updated and informed to effectively
communicate consistent information
to potential referring physicians,”
says Marzano.
The third component of the transformation
ensured that Orlando Health would
have the data analytics needed to
validate return on investment (ROI)
for its marketing efforts. “Through the
implementation of CRM and physician
relationship management (PRM)
platforms, we now have the capability
to access intelligence to optimize
our precision marketing approach,”
Marzano explains. “The analytics will
help us better determine what’s working
and not working, as well as efficiently
identify other key services that can drive
additional revenue.
“Our entire team now is skilled in a
multichannel marketing approach,” he
continues. “The team is progressing
nicely. We’re optimizing our campaigns;
better targeting consumers; and building
the foundation to track, measure, and
drive ROI for the organization.”
The results of several multichannel digital
test campaigns launched in late 2014
demonstrate how well the strategy works.
The 12 campaigns, which supported
key services and ran for 90 days, drove
82 million digital impressions from all digital
channels including social media, search
engine optimization (SEO), and search
engine marketing (SEM); 90,200 unique
digital visitors to Orlando Health’s landing
pages and websites; and 3,033 conversions,
(Continued on page 4)
32015 Issue 2
3
4. 4 Healthcare Strategy Alert!
support the organization’s business goals
for both consumers and physicians.”
There’s still work to do, though. “We’ve
made great progress, but we’re not there
yet,” says Marzano. “We continue to work
with our IT department to ensure that
we will be able to consistently transfer
data from our patient accounting system
into our CRM system. Time is an issue
as well, because once you start sharing
data analytics, the demand increases
exponentially. Finally, we continue to work
on integrating our call center operations
into the CRM. We will continue to drive
patients actively searching for information
to a digital environment as much as
possible, and for those who prefer to call
and talk with an appointment scheduler,
our goal will be to make that transaction
seamless. It’s a clear work in progress.
We’ll get there.”
Ochsner’s Shift to
Data-Driven Marketing
Ochsner Health System, New Orleans,
LA, is another organization that
has made the shift from traditional
opinion-based advertising to marketing
that is highly-focused, data-based, and
measurable. “It’s really a shift in mindset,”
says Terri McNorton, Vice President,
Marketing. “I like to summarize it in
terms of spending: if we spend $1,000 on
marketing, that’s $1,000 that someone
else in the organization doesn’t have the
opportunity to spend on something
else. So, we have a responsibility and
obligation to know that it is going to get
results and that it’s the best possible way
to spend that $1,000. The only way we
can accomplish that is if we’re measuring
the results.
“We’ve learned to take that mindset
and integrate it into everything we’re
doing—whether it’s on the digital side
or on the traditional side,” McNorton
continues. Regardless of the platform,
the question is always how are we
using data before, during, and after
our programs to make sure that we are
optimizing those initiatives.”
Before launching a program or campaign,
McNorton and her team test ideas
meaning consumers took some kind of
action, such as downloading an information
guide or making an appointment.
“Out of those conversions, we recorded
495 patient appointments that generated
$17 million in gross charges and $4 million in
net patient revenue,” says Marzano. “The
numbers knocked us over—and again,
these were just digital test campaigns
over a 90-day period, without any
backing of a full multichannel campaign.
It was a defining moment for us. We
were confident that we were on the
right track.”
What’s more, those 3,033 conversions
provided crucial customer data that
plugged into the CRM for future
outreach and engagement. “The
conversions are feeding the funnel,”
explains Marzano. “Our goal is to then
drive those leads into an action.”
Right now, Orlando Health has
20 campaigns in the market for a
variety of service areas: cardiac care,
sports medicine, gynecology, oncology,
and bariatrics, among others. All are
targeted in precise ways based on how
the consumer is searching. “We link
consumers back to relevant Orlando
Health landing pages where they
can provide us with their contact
information so that we can further
engage and nurture them and ultimately
convert them into an action,” says
Marzano. “Once the CRM is fully
functional, we’ll also be able to link to
consumer lifestyle demographics for
even more hyper-targeted marketing.”
Meanwhile, on the physician side, an
electronic PRM tool enables streamlined
management of physician activities.
“We can identify which physicians are
opportunities for additional business or
which are opportunities for additional
education about Orlando Health services
and fine-tune our outreach strategy
accordingly,” Marzano notes. “Our
strategy is completely aligned so that we
are able to cross-promote initiatives and
reinforce key messaging, all designed to
(Continued from page 3)
5. 5
with online panels, which helps set up
for a better implementation. Precision
marketing and propensity modeling
are also used to target mailings and
digital campaigns to the audiences
most likely to benefit from the service
being marketed.
“Rather than segmenting patients based
on age and gender or geographic regions,
we are able to, in a very focused way,
segment on patients who are most likely
to benefit from or need services such as
cardiology or back and spine services,”
says McNorton. These high-propensity
patients are identified through Ochsner’s
CRM program, which uses claims data and
patient data from millions of interactions
across the country to propensity model
patient needs in a specific market. The
result of these targeted campaigns is a
better response for less cost.
Then, while a program is active,
real-time monitoring provides data and
information to help improve programs
and optimize results. “There’s so much
that we can be doing, especially on
the digital side, to help us understand
how consumers are reacting during
the course of implementation,” says
McNorton. “If there’s an online call to
action or e-links, we have the ability to
see how consumers are engaging or not
engaging, where their journey might be
taking them online, where they might
be falling off, where we might not have
enough content, or where the content
doesn’t appear to be engaging consumers.
We can use that information in real
time to make adjustments and better
optimize campaigns while they’re still
in market.”
And when a marketing program ends,
indicators such as market share and
downstream visits and associated
revenue are assessed. That data not only
shows how well the program did, but
can also suggest where improvements
might be needed.
For example, as the top program in the
nation for liver transplants, Ochsner
had an opportunity to do some broad
digital outreach for patients in need of
a transplant. “These are people who are
online, they know their diagnosis, and
they’re searching for information, so
the digital environment is a great place
for us to engage them,” says McNorton.
“By watching how they interact with
us—by feeding into our webpages,
engaging with those pages, completing
forms we have online—we can get
an overall look not only at how many
people see the material as an initial
impression and how many click through,
but also how they are engaging. We can
see how many are calling to schedule
appointments and how many actually
do schedule appointments.”
All of that provides a good view of a
patient’s path to Ochsner as well as
information on how to make that path
more meaningful. Issues or obstacles that
are interfering with the patient’s path can
be identified, and steps can be quickly
taken to resolve them.
For instance, Ochsner had an issue on
a weekend where calls regarding the
transplant program were rolling to an
operator, but the operator wasn’t able
to provide the information callers were
looking for. “Because we were able
to track that, we could quickly come
up with a solution to get patients the
information they needed and keep them
engaged,” says McNorton.
A CRM Mindset
As often as possible, Ochsner runs its
marketing programs through its CRM
system. But McNorton notes that,
even without a CRM system, it’s still
important to take a CRM mindset
into marketing. “You need to make
sure that you are able to capture data
and use it to track patient interactions
throughout a marketing campaign or
program,” she says.
Visitors to an organization’s website, for
example, provide plenty of information
that can be used to improve their online
experience the next time they visit.
“If you come to our website and have
given us information that helps us
understand what you might be looking
for, don’t we have an obligation to use
that information so that your next visit
to the website is more meaningful and
more relevant?” McNorton asks. “If
someone registers for childbirth classes
or requests pediatric information
or vaccine schedules, don’t we have
an obligation to make sure that on
their next visit, they’re not served
up information about our Medicare
Advantage or senior programs? We’ve
got to do a better job of getting to
know patients one-to-one and making
sure that the content we provide
is more targeted and tailored to
their needs.
“It’s really about iterative learning,”
McNorton adds. “And that’s what
marketing should be about. It shouldn’t
be about planning the campaign,
implementing the campaign, and
waiting six months to see what the
campaign accomplished. It should be
very much about putting programs into
market based on the very best research
that says it’s going to be successful
and using real-time data while it’s
in market to improve on it. This is
something we in healthcare need to get
better at. Otherwise, we’ll be quickly
overshadowed by competitors who do
understand CRM and who know how
to do it well.”
Sources
John Marzano can be reached at
john.marzano@orlandohealth.com.
Terri McNorton can be reached at
tmcnorton@ochsner.org.
2015 Issue 2
“You need to make sure that you are able to capture data and use it to
track patient interactions throughout a marketing campaign or program.”
6. Armed with solid data, healthcare organizations are vastly improving their
ability to identify physicians key to growth, strengthen referral relationships,
improve hospital and physician alignment, and grow revenue in priority
service lines. The fact is, data is power … and it can aid tremendously in
physician relationship management and outreach, as well as in gaining
physician and executive support for the efforts.
At the University of Chicago Medicine
(UCM), data is having a major impact on
decision-making in the area of marketing
and physician strategy. “It’s all part of moving
the organization forward from being more
transaction-oriented to influencing through
analytics,” says Carol Marshall, Executive
Director, Referral Marketing, Customer
Insights and Analytics. “With data analytics,
we are able to take a smarter, more efficient
and effective approach to our interactions
with referring physicians.”
By integrating claims data with physician data
from a PRM and UCM’s EPIC system, Marshall
and her team can target opportunities, track
changes in referral patterns, and measure
returns on outreach efforts. “The data gives
us a chance to not only build on our base of
loyal referrers but also redirect referrals from
competitors. We can drill down by service
line and by physician within that service line,”
says Marshall.
“We’re able to develop group practice profiles
that show referrals to UCM by physicians
within the group. We can see our loyalists,
our splitters, and who’s not referring to us yet.
We look at which of our programs and which
faculty physicians are getting a high volume
of referrals. And we can see where referrals
are going if they’re not coming to us and
whether there’s a particular AMC, community
hospital, or specialty physician group out in
the community that is a favorite.”
Engaging Physicians in Outreach
That data is presented to faculty physicians
within a service line, and with their input, an
outreach plan is developed. The plan includes
all of the information known about referring
group practices based on the data as well as
intelligence gathered in the field, such as a
group’s interest in UCM’s Clinically Integrated
Network, opportunities for improvement,
and how they view the University of Chicago
Medicine. The plan includes a commitment
from faculty to accompany outreach team
members on visits to referring physicians.
These physician-to-physician encounters are
essential to the success of UCM’s outreach
strategy, so it’s crucial that faculty physicians
understand why they need to be involved
and see the value of their participation.
“As an AMC, the University of Chicago
Medicine is totally dependent on referrals,”
says Marshall. “So having our faculty reach
out to community physicians is an absolute
must. With data, we are able to show faculty
physicians what we are doing on their behalf,
as well as the return on their engagement.
They see that the dollars invested are
working for them and that the effort they
are expending as part of our outreach and
marketing efforts is worth it.”
One surgeon who had questioned the
value of physician outreach has been so
impressed with the referrals he’s gotten
since the implementation of the data-driven
approach that he has now become a vocal
spokesperson. Through face-to-face meetings,
he’s been able to win over physicians who
had been referring elsewhere and is now
seeing a steady stream of referrals from
those physicians.
“That’s how we’ve been able to help our
faculty understand the importance of
building meaningful relationships with their
referring physicians,” says Marshall. “Many of
6 Healthcare Strategy Alert!
By Debbie Reczynski
A Model That Works
Data-Driven Referral Development
7. Health systems swim in data, but what’s been missing is the
ability to integrate and apply data in a meaningful way.
Evariant provides a centralized data management hub and analytics engine that
leverages multiple data sources, produces powerful predictive insights, is easy to
use, and drives informed decisions and actions. Learn more at www.evariant.com.
Join the conversation!
Can you overcome your
marketing challenges
without a wall full of
hieroglyphics?
our faculty have done a 180 from thinking they were too busy and
that we should be bringing them referrals to being totally engaged in
the process.”
And they’re letting the C-suite know how important outreach is as
well. “Our faculty physicians have been extremely positive and vocal
with the C-suite,” notes Marshall. “The faculty’s success from outreach
has been so positive that our team has been flooded with requests
to visit referring physicians.” As a result, Marshall has been able to
expand her outreach team.
“In a very competitive market, the University of Chicago Medicine’s
inpatient hospital volumes have grown significantly in the past couple
of years,” Marshall adds. “We take that as strong evidence that this
approach works.”
Source
Carol Marshall can be reached at carol.marshall@uchospitals.edu.
Carol Marshall offers the following tips for
successfully implementing a data-driven
outreach strategy:
1. Work toward complete and accurate data
capture of referring physicians in your EMR.
2. Make sure financials are readily available and
linked to your data.
3. National Provider Identifier (NPI#) is the
lynchpin—make sure it is included in all
data systems.
4. Invest in claims data, but also invest the
time to configure it correctly—service lines,
DRGs, competitors.
5. Invest in a really good analyst! Whether it’s
a separate position or something you take on
yourself, you need someone who understands data
and can connect multiple data sources together.
5 Tips and Tools for
Data-Driven Outreach
8. 8 Healthcare Strategy Alert!
Health Quest, a three-hospital integrated health system serving New York’s Hudson Valley region,
is seeing success with a data-driven approach to physician relations and outreach. Although Health
Quest does not have a liaison team, through diligent use of a PRM platform, the LaGrangeville, New
York-based system has been able to improve physician tracking, build referrals, reduce leakage, and
take a smarter approach to network growth.
“The PRM provides high-quality
outpatient data, which has been
difficult to get in New York state, as
well as almost real-time access to
inpatient data,” says David Ping, Senior
Vice President, Strategic Planning and
Business Development. “We have more
visibility into physician activity in the
market, and we’re able to view it in
an actionable time frame. Instead of
relying on anecdotal evidence about
where physicians are admitting patients,
we have the data to track how much
business comes to one of our hospitals
or diagnostic facilities and how much is
going somewhere else.
“With that information,” he adds, “we
can have meaningful conversations with
physicians. If a physician’s volumes have
dropped, we can ask why so that we
By Debbie Reczynski
Data-Driven Physician
Relationship Management
9. Sometimes a physician simply is not aware of all your organization
can do and what the results have been.
9
can uncover potential issues or problem
areas and address them.”
Driving Outreach Impact
For example, when analysis revealed
that one orthopedics group was starting
to refer fewer patients to one Health
Quest hospital, a team that included the
hospital’s CEO, operating room director,
and Ping went out and met with the
group’s managing partner and practice
manager. “We asked, how are we failing
you, what are we doing wrong, and what
are the issues causing your physicians to
refer elsewhere,” says Ping.
Several issues emerged from those
discussions, including how Health Quest
was handling patient education for knee
replacement patients and some process
flow issues that were making scheduling
difficult for physicians. “We came up
with a list of 10 things that were either
creating process problems or leading to
perceptions that there might be quality
issues,” says Ping. “And we said, if we
address these, would you be willing
to refer more of your patients to our
hospital?”
Physicians agreed that they would. So,
through a series of monthly meetings,
Health Quest executives worked with
the physicians to resolve the issues and
implement solutions.
The approach worked. Physicians were
having a better experience, and so were
their patients. Once physicians saw that,
volumes started to shift, says Ping. In
the first 12 months, Health Quest saw
an increase of $4.5 million in revenue
attributable to this initiative.
The data also provides a look into
relationships among physicians, which
adds further knowledge about referral
patterns and potential opportunities
for redirecting referrals. “We can see
which physicians have strong ties to each
other based on the patients they have
in common,” Ping explains. “We can use
that information to determine if there
are physicians out in the community
who we might want to talk with about
Health Quest programs and our quality
and patient outcomes so that we
might be able to change some of those
referral patterns.”
Leakage, Loyalty, and
Retention
Data not only helps grow referrals, it also
helps keep leakage down. Health Quest
employs approximately 120 practitioners
in its medical group, including 40 primary
care practitioners. As with referring
physicians, the ability to track activity for
employed physicians provides important
information for opening a dialogue with
physicians who are referring outside
the network.
“Where problems exist, you can sit down
and talk with physicians to find out why,”
Ping explains. “It’s also an opportunity to
make the case for your own facilities and
specialists. Sometimes a physician simply
is not aware of all your organization can
do and what the results have been. He
or she may not be aware that you have
three surgeons on staff who can do
the exact same procedure that they’re
referring outside of the network for and
who are actually receiving better ratings
from the ratings agencies.” Since starting
to track this information, leakage from
the employed group has declined, and
one physician now sends 95 percent of his
patients to Health Quest.
It’s also important to let loyal physicians
know that they are valued. “If we have a
doctor who’s doing 80 percent of his work
at a Health Quest hospital, we still want
to know what we can do to improve,” says
Ping. “We don’t want those physicians to
feel like they’ve been forgotten—we want
to know what we can do better so that
we continue to earn their business every
day. Data lets us have those conversations
as well.”
A Smarter Approach to
Practice Acquisition
Finally, data has been a valuable tool
for Health Quest as it seeks to grow its
Physician Enterprise through practice
acquisitions. “By preparing custom
reports using data on alignment with
Health Quest, business that is already
coming to us, leakage to non-Health
Quest hospitals or ambulatory
facilities, and payer mix, we’ve been
able to create a consistent format for
reviewing practices and evaluating their
incremental revenue potential,” Ping
notes. “We use that information to
determine if there’s an opportunity to
grow the business more by acquiring a
given practice or if it would be more of a
defensive purchase.”
Health Quest’s data-driven approach
to physician relationship management
has been successful, and Ping attributes
the success to securing executive buy-in
and educating leaders throughout the
organization early on. “It’s never too
early to start,” he says. “We spent time
working with the management teams at
each of our hospitals and at the medical
practice. We explained the platform,
demonstrated how it could work, and
gave them some good examples of
doctors that we really need to talk with.
Because we don’t have a liaison team,
it’s our hospital CEOs and service line
leaders who are doing the outreach, so
they need to understand how to use the
data and see that it works.”
Another recommendation: start with
the low-hanging fruit. “We started
with initiatives that would show results
quickly,” concludes Ping. “Once we had
our first success, with orthopedics,
everyone saw the benefit and was totally
behind the strategy.”
Source
David Ping can be reached at
dping@health-quest.org.
2015 Issue 2
10. 10 Healthcare Strategy Alert!
Automation is changing the way we do pretty much everything these
days. Building a car. Designing a house. Creating a retirement plan.
Now, it has the potential to change the way we do marketing as
well—sort of.
While marketing automation isn’t technically
about do-it-yourself or replacing marketing
professionals, it is about automating
components of the marketing process to
make individual, repeatable tasks more
practical and to increase the efficiency of
marketing spending.
At its core, marketing automation is
about using technology to centralize and
manage real-time, multifaceted marketing
campaigns that are heavily focused on
content marketing and lead nurturing in
the digital space. Think of it a little like a
virtual sales force—generating qualified
leads and building relationships on
top of the broad-based marketing and
advertising campaigns you do to promote
products or services.
Marketing automation takes advantage
of technologies that facilitate faster,
more coordinated communications
with potential customers and, as a result,
delivers clear benefits to marketing
professionals looking to optimize their
marketing spending and generate more
qualified leads for real sales teams or
other conversion strategies.
Just as important, marketing automation
can provide increased efficiency and
productivity, better marketing and sales
alignment, and richer target audience
and business intelligence. In short,
it’s a good thing for marketers to add
to their arsenal of marketing tools.
And healthcare professionals, who
are grappling with stiffer competition,
more discerning patients, a need for
population health strategies, and a
desire to build lifetime customer value
and loyalty, can certainly leverage the
benefits of marketing automation.
Yet, jumping on this trend may seem
daunting given how new and changing
it still is. The decisions surrounding
appropriate software platforms, contact
databases, lead scoring, and other
technologies can all be a little confusing.
As healthcare marketers explore this
emerging solution set, they can learn
from consumer and business brands
that have been leveraging automation
for the past few years. Looking at what
other healthcare organizations have
struggled with along the way can be a
useful first step as well. So, here are 11
guidelines for a smoother marketing
automation experience.
1Have a goal—and a well-defined
strategy to meet that goal.
This seems intuitive, but it’s easy to get
caught up in the excitement of using
new technology and digital platforms
and forget to set up clear expectations
and a business plan. This doesn’t mean
you have to invest hundreds of hours or
thousands of dollars up front. Piloting
and testing automation solutions is ideal,
but even these test efforts should be
clearly defined.
2 Have the right people in place
to set up and manage things on
an ongoing basis. Despite the name,
marketing automation can be staff-
intensive, especially on the front end.
And most initiatives require a different
mix of skills than those associated with
traditional marketing and advertising
efforts—skills including interactive
development, content creation,
analytics, and different approaches
to production and design. Whether
staffing internally, outsourcing, or
BY Daniel Fell
President
Neathawk Dubuque & Packett
He can be reached at
dfell@ndp-agency.com.
BY David Peterson
Digital Strategist
Neathawk Dubuque & Packett
He can be reached at
dpeterson@ndp-agency.com.
BY Kelsi O’Leary
Account Executive
Neathawk Dubuque & Packett
She can be reached at
koleary@ndp-agency.com.
for Marketing
Automation Success
11 Rules
11. 11
a combination of both, make sure
you have identified the necessary
resources and have defined roles and
responsibilities ahead of time.
3 Marketing automation is a
multidisciplinary effort.
A successful automation effort requires
more than just the marketing team.
Other key players include the web team,
IT, finance, service line staff, and clinical
professionals—all of whom can bring
insights into the customer decision path,
content creation, and conversion points.
Nurturing relationships is a unique
challenge that everyone has a role in;
marketing can’t do it in a vacuum.
4 Marketing automation is NOT
email marketing. Although email
can be one component of marketing
automation, it should not be relied on
for an entire strategy. Too often, email
is used as a blunt tool to push out
messaging indiscriminately. A better
approach is to focus on content tailored
to your target audiences and use
inbound marketing to attract, nurture,
convert, and delight your prospects.
Email can then support those efforts
and keep that content in front of
engaged prospects.
5Vet your automation vendors.
There are a variety of automation
systems and cloud-based tools on the
market, and they are evolving rapidly
with many of the big companies
buying up smaller niche players and
expanding their solutions. Comparing
vendors can be confusing and
frustrating, especially when it comes
to things like pricing. Make sure the
products you select meet and exceed
your needs and allow you to grow as
your needs expand. Strive to have a
full understanding of costs involved as
well as what resources are required for
setup and maintenance.
6 If you don’t have a CRM
system, get one. While marketing
automation can work as an independent
marketing solution, it’s really designed to
work in conjunction with a CRM system.
Building and funneling qualified leads
to your contact database should be the
ultimate goal, and most automation systems
have very limited database capabilities.
7 Plan ahead and create trigger
flowcharts and customer paths.
Unlike a simple email blast or traditional
advertising campaign, marketing
automation takes time and intent.
Strive to further segment your target
audiences with lead scoring along with
“if this, then that” type of scenarios
planned out well in advance. And use
the tools in the platforms to automate
custom replies, build time-sensitive
responses, and learn from your target
audiences’ behaviors.
8 Test, test, test. Test the message,
test the call to action, test the
response from your own team, test the
frequency of your contacts. The beauty
of these systems—and digital marketing
in general, which is a primary channel for
a lot of automation work—is the ease of
testing and running scenarios.
9 Expect results and work for
them. Marketing automation
requires a significant investment of
time and energy to build and monitor
activities. To realize the full potential
of an automation program, marketers
need to commit to building programs
that ultimately drive conversion and
sales. Doing so requires detailed tracking
and monitoring, real-time adjustments,
and a dedication to understanding the
ROI for your investments in time and
out-of-pocket costs.
10 Marketing automation is all
about the long game. Unlike
many marketing campaigns that have
a clear start and end point, marketing
automation is more like a sales effort
that can continue indefinitely. Think
beyond what you want your audience
to do this week to how you want to
communicate and shape their actions
over months or perhaps even years.
11Good marketing automation
ties into other efforts. Multiple
divisions or service lines have to work
together, learn from each other, and
coordinate efforts. While automation
can work for a single product or service,
most customers, including consumers
and referring physicians, will have
multiple needs over time.
Marketing automation is still in its
infancy. And with all the rapid advances
in technology and software, marketing
automation systems will evolve rapidly
over the next few years. But marketers
who focus on the relationship-building
aspect of these tools, and not the
technical features, will continue to be
successful. Ideally, automation should
augment strong marketing programs
and never replace them. Keeping the
basics in mind and applying sound
marketing communications principles
will always prevail.
2015 Issue 2
