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Health professionals can’t afford to neglect their outreach strategies. For providers and payers, effectively reaching patient populations with timely and relevant information is the key to empowering them to take charge of their health. As a result, thoughtful and data-driven marketing impacts health outcomes and the cost-effectiveness of care.
However, to garner responses to their calls to action, health professionals must make informed decisions based on relevant data. In this guide, we’ll explore the impact of data analytics on healthcare marketing and the steps health professionals must follow to implement it.
What Is Data Analytics?
Arcadia defines healthcare analytics as “the systematic use of data and statistical analysis techniques in the healthcare industry,” which involves “collecting, managing, analyzing, and visualizing data to derive valuable insights and make informed decisions.”
When applied to outreach, this process enables providers and payers to identify populations that could benefit from proactive services and cost-effective interventions. For example, payers might analyze claims history to identify members needing wellness programs or support groups. By sending targeted communications, payers can address members’ specific health risks and increase their responsiveness to the recommended care.
Key Data Points to Analyze
Different data points provide unique insights that allow healthcare marketers to understand their audience’s preferences and needs. The following data points are key to driving successful healthcare marketing:
- Audience demographics: Demographic data stored in electronic health records (EHRs) helps healthcare marketers understand their audiences and what messages resonate with them. This data includes age, location, and socioeconomic status.
- Engagement metrics: Metrics like webpage click-through rate (CTR) and direct mail response rate reveal how patients interact with certain campaigns. For example, you might find that your audience is highly responsive to direct mail appointment reminders as opposed to digital outreach.
- Health and wellness interests: Direct patient feedback, such as survey responses, offers a wealth of information about the interests healthcare marketers should prioritize. Data analysis enables marketers to identify topics audience members will respond to, such as wellness tips or disease prevention, and deliver highly relevant content.
By analyzing these data points, healthcare marketers can craft personalized and timely content that yields high response rates.
4 Tips for Implementing Data Analytics in Healthcare Marketing
1. Start with Clean, Quality Data
Proper data governance in healthcare ensures health information is accurate, accessible, and secure. This is vital to care delivery, but it also impacts patient outreach. Data-driven marketing decisions start with a foundation of robust, reliable data.
The first step to obtaining clean, quality data is aggregating information from multiple sources. A centralized data management system, like a data analytics platform, consolidates information from health records, EHRs, and other sources to provide a comprehensive view of patient populations.
Next, NPOInfo recommends cleaning your database by following these steps:
- Conduct an audit of your database.
- Remove unnecessary or unuseful information, like the contact information of deceased persons.
- Review the remaining data for duplicate entries and other errors.
- Standardize processes for ongoing maintenance.
- Consult a data marketing expert for additional help.
After cleaning their databases, healthcare marketers can be confident that the data driving their outreach strategies is current, relevant, and aligned with their audience’s needs.
2. Segment Your Audience for Targeted Campaigns
Review your data to identify similarities between groups within your target audience. For example, you might group hypertension patients together and create a separate group for diabetes patients.
These groups, or audience segments, will help you create targeted communications that speak directly to patients’ health needs. In the end, segmentation can even impact health outcomes by delivering the right information to the right audiences in a timely manner.
3. Personalize Messaging Across Channels
Although some communication channels are more effective than others, your message matters more. Tailoring messages to patients’ needs helps them feel supported on their health journeys.
Here are a few ways you can use what you know to create messages that resonate with recipients:
- Address recipients by name: Using a recipient’s name in any form of communication immediately makes the interaction feel personal and direct. Consider starting physical mailers, text messages, and emails with the recipient’s first name.
- Tailor health tips: Share health tips specific to each individual based on their age or medical history. For example, send information on maintaining heart health to adults at risk of hypertension.
- Include community resources: Highlight relevant community resources, such as nearby clinics or wellness programs, based on the recipient’s location. Or, share information about telehealth services for those in rural areas.
Additionally, your audience segments can guide personalized reminders and follow-ups for patients receiving care. Targeting these materials increases the likelihood that recipients will respond since they’ll see your organization is attentive to their specific health journey.
4. Track, Analyze, and Refine Campaigns
Maximizing marketing success is an ongoing process. As audience members come and go and health concerns shift over time, you must consistently track your campaigns to identify areas of improvement.
To keep your campaigns adaptive, consider these approaches:
- Track social determinants of health (SDoH): SDoH refers to the nonmedical factors that impact a patient’s health. For example, a religious person may have a different outlook on preventive health services, like vaccinations, than an atheist. By tracking SDoH data, healthcare marketers can more precisely tailor resources according to the external factors that could change a patient’s health needs.
- Leverage predictive analytics: Using historical data and machine learning to anticipate potential health needs, marketers can forecast future campaigns. For example, a healthcare organization could identify patients at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and design an outreach campaign that offers tips for managing blood sugar levels.
- Implement automated campaigns: Enable real-time responsiveness by adjusting messaging according to patient interactions. For example, send rescheduling instructions to a patient who recently missed their appointment or educational content to a patient with a newly diagnosed condition.
Also, continue tracking engagement data to learn what communication tactics garner the most engagement. For example, are your traditional newsletters cutting it, or would audience members prefer dimensional mailers?
Data analytics is a powerful tool for enhancing both patient care and outreach. Using robust analytics tools and prioritizing a clean database are crucial steps in turning your data into actionable insights.
To maximize the reach of your marketing efforts, review your current tech stack and determine what tools you’re missing. From there, pair your data with top-tier technology for a strong and effective marketing approach.
