personalization

With so many different channels to engage customers in order to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones, including a myriad of digital methods, it can be difficult to figure out where to focus an organization’s efforts. There are a few tried and true methods though that should not be forgotten amidst all the new technologies and media. Newsletters, both print and digital, are a well-known way to engage customers. But in many industries they have been virtually swallowed up by other forms of communication such as email, blogs, social media pages and other digital mediums. Digital newsletters however, continue to be highly effective for certain industries, particularly for the healthcare and insurance industries with an open rate of 32.2% and 43.7% respectively according to MailChimp, a leading email service provider.

The Benefits of Personalized Newsletters

The idea of digital personalized newsletters may be generally associated with the advertising and marketing days of the past, but there are many ways to reinvent this medium to benefit healthcare and insurance providers as they engage the demand generation consumers. The consumer’s appetite for relevant and real-time health information is insatiable as proven by searches for health information on Google. This “old” idea can be reinvented in many new and engaging ways to deliver personalized, relevant health content. Just think about some of the current advantages personalized newsletter can provide:

Can position your organization as a trusted advisor and dispenser of dynamic, one-of-a-kind personalized health information offering transparency to your knowledge bases
Has the potential to show customers that an organization cares about their customers and has the customer’s best interests at heart
Helps build trust with customers by maintaining a top-of-mind presence
Helps to remind customers of the positive value an organization can bring to them

Why Personalized Newsletters are Ideal for Healthcare Members in 2014

Digital personalized newsletters compared to their printed counterpart are particularly appropriate for healthcare and insurance payers in 2014. The digital communication piece offers an ideal way to build relationships and engagement with healthcare customers regardless of changes in the landscape of the industry. Healthcare payers have a great deal of incredibly useful health-related data that they can use to create personalized newsletters to form a deeper relationship with each individual. Here are just a few of the ways healthcare payers might use this format to engage with their customers:

Include personal health tips specific to the needs of that customer
Provide healthy recipes based on that customer’s health information
Create different informative health-related articles based on the different segments of the healthcare market
Utilize graphics and other custom touches based on demographics, ethnicity, and other factors
Include upcoming appointment reminders to healthcare customers in their newsletters, along with click-to-call functionality connecting the customer with their physician
Remind customers of their health benefits when entering into a health event, such as pregnancy as well as special programs to keep you healthy during that time

The Importance of Segmentation and Personalization of Newsletters

The fact of the matter is that there are few promotional tools that can do as much to promote a brand for as little money as newsletters. There is a world of ways to reinvent the medium for very modern results. Health food stores and other businesses in niche markets understand how important newsletters can be in building and maintaining personalized relationships with their customers, and the same can be said for healthcare. The key is segmentation, personalization and relevancy. When talking about personalization, we are not referring to only changing the recipient’s name, but including specific health-related information that pertains to each customer individually. No two newsletters are the same. Sending the same newsletter to every healthcare customer would be highly impersonal and for most it would be useless. By changing the format with relevant content based on the needs of the specific customer, healthcare payers can truly personalize and build their relationships with customers like never before. This entail would provide a great deal of value by improving public perception and implementing a personal presence in the lives of healthcare members.

In case you’re still not convinced, consider a few more of the possibilities of personalized newsletters to engage your healthcare members:

They allow an organization to market new services and products immediately to those who would be most interested in them
They allow an organization to describe the benefits of their programs in a detailed manner, considering the needs of each target audience
They allow an organization to reemphasize the value of their services in a friendly, conversational format
Newsletters may be the only comprehensive opportunity for positive interaction between the customer and the organization
They allow the customer to obtain health information and reminders because no one has the time to sift through Google and customers can’t remember all the do’s and don’ts in their busy world

Many experts agree that personalized newsletters are going to be a strong and effective tool to engage healthcare customers in 2014. As long as healthcare payers remember to personalize with relevant content, there are many contemporary possibilities.

The healthcare climate has changed, and consumer centricity in healthcare is now more important than ever. In order to better serve consumers, enact more personalized healthcare communication programs and develop more sustainable health programs that influence the lives of consumers for the better in the future, it is necessary for health providers and payers to leverage big data in new and innovative ways. There are huge stores of data available for healthcare industry insiders to take advantage of in order to profile consumers and ultimately better serve them through programs such as digital dashboards that are easily accessible to consumers, employers and healthcare payers.

What Kind of Data is Most Useful?

Successful healthcare consumer centricity programs take many different kinds of information into account. Healthcare payers and providers can better serve consumers with tailored communications and personalized programs by first obtaining the following types of data in a central repository:

Behaviors – Information about lifestyle choices and behaviors that pertain to diet, exercise, activity, sleep patterns and other habits can be very helpful. These may be obtained through information from various databases, surveys and other records of interactions with consumers.
Claims – All claims tell a story, and can be used to tailor more personalized experiences for and communication with consumers in the future. A well-managed electronic records database is essential here.
Rx – Tracking and measuring pharmacy metrics can be very beneficial to healthcare payers, not only because it provides an opportunity to streamline cost initiatives, but also because it provides another opportunity to see what health choices consumers are making and where they’re spending their healthcare dollars.
Biometric Devices – Since the dawn of the digital age, many advances have been made in the healthcare world, including the development of biometric devices that identify doctors and staff and gather vital information about patients. Statistics from these data records can be used to pinpoint trends, develop more customized healthcare products and services and make better predictions about healthcare outcomes.
Tests (Blood) – The records of blood tests can also be used to develop better products and services for consumers. The more information that healthcare payers and providers have about the unique populations they serve, the more personalized communications, experiences and programs they can provide.
Master Data (PHR, ethno-, techno-, socio- and demographic) – Perhaps the most useful chunk of data for profiling healthcare consumers is a master data file that includes demographics, personal health records, ethnographic information, socioeconomic information and all varieties of useful digital information about the group of consumers that a given healthcare organization serves.

What Can We Do With All This Data?

The goal of any successful consumer-profiling program should be to achieve the kind of strategic analytics that will support better health initiatives. Analytics can fuel tailored dashboards for consumers, employers and payers, which epitomize the new drive toward consumer centricity for healthcare payers. Such a dashboard provides a more convenient way for consumers to receive information from and communicate directly with healthcare payers and providers, which allows payers in particular to foster relationships with consumers that were not always possible in the past. These dashboards can also be used to gather more information about consumers in the future, and do so in a more organized, cost effective and streamlined way. In the end, the more insights a healthcare payer and/or provider can gain about the consumers they serve, the better prepared they will be to target personalized communications and develop more sustainable health programs in the future. It’s a win-win-win for the healthcare payer, the consumers who use their products and services and the employers who help provide health plans to their employees, when applicable.

The Power of Personalized Newsletters

Hosted by Studio IQ

Copyright