MARKETING

Ochsner Health Challenges Itself to Think Like Amazon, Adopt Real-Time Marketing Strategy

Amazon is so on top of its customer relationship management at times, consumers can feel as if their minds are being read. Why can’t hospitals marketers do the same?

Ochsner Health leaders have challenged themselves to think like the e-commerce giant in recent years, adopting real-time outreach strategies across the entire enterprise. Whereas in the past, a patient might receive two separate and unrelated mailers highlighting orthopedic and cardiology service lines, now the approach is much more nuanced.

Patient “Matt” might, for instance, suffer from hip pain and visit an Ochsner primary care physician, resulting in a referral. Marketers at the Louisiana-based health system are now able to harness data to see whether the patient ever scheduled that specialist visit. If not, they can then send Matt an auto-generated email reminding him “he doesn’t have to live with pain,” and highlighting the many orthopedic options Ochsner has available.

“This is the benefit of the latest customer relationship management (CRM) technology. It meets all of the expectations of today’s consumer and helps us better understand their needs,” said Chelsea Lockhart, manager of Ochsner Health’s CRM and marketing automation strategy. “This is what everyone wants when they interact with a brand.”

Less than two years into this effort, the 40-hospital system is producing eye-opening results. Marketing email open rates in 2020 leapt to almost 40%, a 12 percentage-point uptick compared to 2019 and nearly double the health care industry average. Year-over-year marketing leads are up 48%, too, and 63% of consumers reached by these promotions have come in for an appointment, a 10% improvement.

“These are huge numbers for us that we are very proud of,” Lockhart said.

Crawl, Walk, Sprint

Ochsner Health certainly is not the first to try to tackle this “Amazon challenge.” But, oftentimes, ambitious marketers are met with seemingly insurmountable obstacles including delays accessing electronic health record (EHR) data, disjointed call center strategies and low-visibility touch points.

For Lockhart and her colleagues, the “secret sauce” has been a “crawl, walk, run” approach to real-time marketing, starting off small and building to bigger initiatives down the line.

“We couldn’t just come out of the gate running like a cheetah; we had to begin somewhere,” said Brittany Graffagnini, assistant vice president of marketing programs. “This was really a fundamental shift in our approach, thinking more around the needs of patients and their lifestyles, rather than a siloed service line focus.”

The health system shifted its strategic approach to leverage key life events to form tighter relationships with patients. Birthdays are one jump-off point, with Ochsner targeting patients at ages 26 (when they’re no longer eligible to be covered under their parent’s insurance), 40 (when many start showing greater interest in their health) and 50 (when it becomes more important to have regular cancer screenings). Graffagnini said they also have tailored send-times to individuals for maximum impact. Patient A might typically open messages first thing Monday morning, while Patient B sorts her inbox Thursday before bed, and Ochsner makes note of each for future outreach.

On any given day, marketers now deploy more than 50 personalized email campaigns based on wellness, EHR and online-form data. All three sources flow into Ochsner’s CRM system, which sorts the information into preexisting campaigns and automatically deploys marketing to the correct consumers. They’re even able to send dynamic messaging that automatically changes the creative to a version that best matches the recipient.

These tools have proven pivotal during the COVID crisis, allowing Ochsner to communicate with patients about their scheduled appointments and pandemic protocols. Marketers have also used CRM to create “real-time trigger campaigns” that are customized with the brand of Ochsner’s regional partner organizations. They’re also receiving daily reporting on response and open rates to further inform and guide their strategy. As of the fall, the team had sent 16 such campaigns to 500,000 patients, producing a 31% open rate and 535,000 scheduled appointments.

“Because we brought all of this data together prior to the pandemic, we were able to communicate with people based on their schedules and create campaigns that really comforted their unique concerns,” Lockhart said. 

Learning to Sprint

The “run” portion of Ochsner’s transformation has involved expanding these efforts across the entire system, utilizing all team members, not just marketers. “We’ve targeted our call centers as part of this push, bringing these often disconnected patient touch points into the CRM strategy,” noted Kylie Worley, a senior marketing specialist.

Now call center staff can see in the CRM system what campaigns each patient has already received and can help to continue “meaningful conversations with the patient” based on previous efforts.

Worley gave the example of another patient named “Amy” who visits an Ochsner obstetrician-gynecologist for her five-month ultrasound appointment. Marketers have programmed the CRM to immediately start sending auto-generated emails to Amy urging her to find an Ochsner pediatrician in hopes of keeping the family in the health system. If she doesn’t schedule an appointment with a pediatrician, the call center will be notified to follow up with her.

On the back end, CRM experts are receiving a constant stream of real-time data to monitor whether their efforts are working, including email open and click-through rates, direct mailers sent, online forms completed and phone leads. They also can pinpoint details such as what services are driving the most revenue and which doctors are generating the greatest interest to help inform future campaigns.

“We are creating this constant feedback loop so that we are able to continuously hone our strategy and share this information with key stakeholders, from executives to the marketing team,” Worley said. “This ensures that communication is most meaningful to patients, and that we’re constantly refining our efforts as service line and hospital operation leaders.”

 

This article features an interview with: 

Brittany Graffagnini
Assistant Vice President, Marketing Programs
Ochsner Health
New Orleans 

Chelsea Lockhart
Marketing Manager, CRM and Marketing Automation Strategy
Ochsner Health
New Orleans 

Kylie Worley
Senior Marketing Specialist
Ochsner Health

Image credits: istockphoto.com/Oko_SwanOmurphy | istockphoto.com/fizkes