It’s virtually a given anymore that we should be sending out a welcome email to new patients or new subscribers to online portals we offer. Whether it’s to track where they came from to measure marketing effectiveness, or simply to kick off the relationship, we know it should be done. But what good is a relationship that ends after the first date?

Instead of sending just one welcome email, some organizations are now sending a more comprehensive welcome series to new subscribers – and they are reaping the reward. Cheetah Digital reveals in their quarterly email benchmark report, “Brands that extend a welcome program to a full series enjoy increased customer engagement throughout the welcome process at a rate that is nearly double the overall promotional email average.”

So, what might this look like in a hospital setting? One example would be to send a series that results in added touchpoints with the new enrollee:

Email #1: General welcome with pertinent login information

Email #2: Reminder to set up any additional profile settings (selecting a PCP, service line interests, communication preferences, etc.)

Email #3: Invitation to sign up for a newsletter or event

For all the advantages that can come from building a more solid relationship with your newest patients and customers, between May 2016 and April 2017, only 40% of brands were currently sending a welcome series over the more traditional single email.

If you’re not convinced that doing a welcome series is going to work for your organization, consider squeezing more out of your welcome email by sending it in real time. A first welcome message sent via real-time triggers can have a 10 times higher transaction rate than those sent as bulk messages. Setting up automated triggers for your welcome email may seem like a daunting task, but by integrating near real-time web data into your CRM, it may be easier than you think.

Need help setting up automated emails, or crafting an email welcome series? Contact the LionShare team at 1‑800‑928‑0712.

Every February, consumers are typically inundated with hearts whether it’s about Valentine’s Day or American Heart Month. It’s the time of year when we tell the special people in our lives how much we love them, as well as learn about heart attacks and heart disease.

With articles informing women that heart disease is the number one killer of their gender and nicknamed the “silent killer”, it can get heavy. But there are ways to keep it lighthearted with your campaigns and messaging while taking important steps in educating the community.

For example, the University of Iowa Health Care is hosting a “Heart à la Carte” educational event for women to celebrate American Heart Month. The free event includes heart-healthy appetizers, red wine, dark chocolate, as well as a photo booth and chair massages. It’s a great alternative for women to take in important messages in a fun and relaxed setting rather than simply reading an article on a computer screen.

Marketing tactics that align with happenings in popular culture resonate with consumers and help support your campaign messaging. It will also give you an opportunity to make connections in a face-to-face setting. So it’s okay to step outside the metaphorical marketing box and create messaging and campaigns that are fit for a box of chocolates during American Heart Month. If you want to discuss more about putting the light in lighthearted in your campaign, give LionShare a call at 1-800-928-0712.

Ever wish you had a crystal ball to predict consumer behavior? Enter psychographics, your personal soothsayer for your consumers’ values, interests, lifestyle, attitudes and opinions. Reaching beyond demographics, psychographics help you understand personal preferences and behaviors.

Demographics, of course, has its place in targeting your audience, but when combined with psychographics, you get a complete look at your audience. This means you can be much more targeted with marketing and brand messages that are more personalized and meaningful.

Healthcare is very personal; being able to personalize your messaging by truly understanding your audience will bring a wellspring in return for your effort. Not only does it help you connect on a personal and emotional level, it builds that vital relationship brick by brick so you can become a trusted friend and eventually, as we are all focused, gain brand loyalty and advocacy.

Connecting with consumers who are influencers and trusted advisors within health and wellness for their family and friends can extend your brand reach and be a boon for your population health programs.

Knowing who you are talking to is imperative. Are you talking to someone whose family and friends view as a trusted advisor for their healthcare questions? Are they an influencer or trusted advisor on physical fitness, healthy lifestyle and/or nutrition? Are they focused on a natural, healthy lifestyle or do they buy mostly processed or junk foods?

How could having these deep insights change the way you approach population health? Understanding your consumers’ behaviors and lifestyle can help you reach them on a personal level to make behavior changes that will improve their health or help keep them moving in the right direction for continued health. Connecting with consumers who are influencers and trusted advisors within health and wellness for their family and friends can extend your brand reach and be a boon for your population health programs.

We can understand who our audience is, but digging deeper into the why behind their behaviors and learning as much as we can about their intent and motivation can pull back the curtain on our consumers and reveal how to get them to make that sometimes elusive behavior shift.

Sandwich boards give restaurants and cafes the canvas they desperately need to grab your attention as you walk by on a street jam-packed with invitations to come inside. Quickly pitching daily specials and showing off some personality with illustrations or witty slogans, sandwich boards can say more than the sign above the door, all while looking you straight in the eye and giving the restaurant a chance to convince you to swing in on a whim. Subject lines play a very similar role. They elbow for attention among hoards of incessant emails sent to somebody whose primary objective is to find and read the useful information, trash the rest and move on with their day as fast as is humanly possible.

Low, flat or declining open rates are especially frustrating because they mean your email campaign is failing at a very early point – preventing the message contained inside your email from having even a chance to convert. Since a campaign’s subject line is likely the biggest factor in determining your open rates (though, time of day, the “from name” and the “preheader” also play roles), optimizing it goes a long way to increasing conversions. But subject line optimization is a mix of art, science and testing.

You can’t measure any subject line’s true effectiveness without some metrics and a little competition.

You’ve likely heard various legends of subject line do’s and don’ts. DO make it between 45-60 characters. DON’T use ALL CAPS or exclamation points. DO avoid fabled spam words like “Free” or “Diet.” Well, the fact of the matter is that experts disagree on many of these points. Sure, there are some hard and fast rules, but they have more to do with avoiding overt deception than some expert understanding of mystical email user behavior.

So, what exactly may cause a recipient to open or not open an email? It may often go without saying, but it’s worth remembering that we are most likely to open emails that proclaim to contain details we want to read. The craft – which any email user can observe in their own inbox, executed with varying degrees of success – lies in staying genuinely informative while simultaneously piquing curiosity.

Health care email campaigns are commonly one of three types of messages. Each provides opportunities to get creative.

1. Events – “Join us this weekend for our event”

Event campaigns are a great opportunity to utilize localization in your campaign’s subject line. “Healthy fun for kids in north Kansas City this weekend” implies an irresistible nearby convenience. Don’t be shy about asking questions, either. “Looking for something fun to do with your kids this weekend?” may perform even better. Try shorter subject lines. “We heard kids love bouncy houses” might reference just a single station at the weekend’s event, but in the inbox your email will stick out like a cute little food truck in the middle of Times Square.

2. Newsletters – “Your Health Digest – August 2016”

Since health care newsletters usually contain various wellness tips, stories and events, you can often have your pick of a particularly intriguing one and highlight its benefits. For example, “Your Health Digest: How to forever change your eating habits”, utilizes the wildly successful How-To copywriting approach when referencing a healthy eating course that is listed alongside several other topics. If you’re unsure which topic or course may generate the highest open rate, try testing headlines for a couple of them. It’s also important to reference the benefit to the recipient – “How to forever change your eating habits” – rather than the title of the course. Benefits speak much louder than methodologies.

3. Announcements – “Dr. Smith has joined our team of physicians”

The power of something new never goes out of style. For announcements and events, utilize phrases like “Introducing” or “Now open!” For example, instead of “We welcome Dr. Smith to our team”, try “Introducing Dr. Smith, our newest brain surgeon”. If you’ve opened a new location, “Now Open! Our newest, state-of-the-art facility in Kansas City” may generate more opens than “State Line Urgent Care opens to the public” because the former’s description begs for the answer contained within. What type of facility is it? Where is it located? And, don’t worry, exclamation points are not automatic spam triggers.

These are just a few examples meant to help get those creative sandwich board juices flowing. Strictly descriptive subject lines can be appropriate at times. But you can’t measure any subject line’s true effectiveness without some metrics and a little competition. When you’ve settled on a couple potential subject lines, the next step is to start deploying your campaign with an A/B test. You can deploy Subject Line A to 10% of your recipients and Subject Line B to another 10%. After you’ve given those recipients a day or so to open the email, review the open rates and send the winning subject line to the remaining 80% of your recipient list. For the next similar deployment, pit your winning subject line tactic up against a new potential winner. Then you’ll be on your way to true subject line optimization.

Before you start your journey, I offer one final note. Keep your eyes on the prize that is purely increasing your campaign’s open rates. Just like a restaurant’s sandwich board can’t ensure a prompt and educated run down of the wine list after the customer is seated, a subject line has to hand off the conversion baton to solid email design and body copy. It’s a rare subject line that will affect anything beyond the open rates. But that early step is a vital one, if just to give your email a chance.

The heat is on! And summer is my favorite time of the year. Not only because my entire families’ birthdays fall in between Memorial Day and Labor Day, but mostly because it gives us a little more time to spend together and recharge before the craziness of the school year.

Summertime is also a busy moving season and as a healthcare marketer, it’s important to capture summer new movers. Getting your messaging out in front of new movers can make you their first choice for their families’ healthcare. If you aren’t connecting with them, your competitors may be. Make sure you get there first. Here are three reasons why:

1. Summer Quantities Increase: In many markets across the country, especially in the south and west, new mover counts can increase by 20-30% in the months of June – August, sometimes even through October for those new movers who fail to submit a change of address right away.
2. More families with children move during the summer.
   • People with children enjoy the flexibility of summer for their move, if they are able to choose their move date. The summer months provide less hassle or conflicts with school and school-related activities.
   • Comparative to a single person that rents a place down the street, summer families are probably going to stay put for a while. The average family resides in a house for at least 5 years.
   • New summer residents are on a time schedule. They only have so long to get into a routine before school starts and crazy life resumes, so catching them now is very beneficial.
3. For you, your marketing team and your organization, ROI is always top of mind. New mover ROI during the summer months heats up and gives you great results to deliver to your C-suite.

This is the opportune time to promote your services, differentiate your organization from the rest and keep your community healthy. Messages that work are same-day appointments, extended hours, urgent and primary care access. If you want to attract the bounty of summertime movers to your services, please contact us at 800‑928‑0712.

Being able to start a conversation at the moment an individual needs your service is critical to driving volume and loyalty. In healthcare, there are many ways to segment your audience that go far beyond the basic demographics of age, income, and geography. Some targeting opportunities include propensity for commercial insurance, presence of children in the home, health and lifestyle propensities, profiling clusters, medical diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10 and CPT).

Coordinating the right message, at the right time, with the right person is the essence of marketing, and using segmentation will allow for higher response rates with a lower marketing spend overall.

With mass marketing, you are using budget and resources to send a generalized message to capture only a few people, losing most of the audience you were hoping to connect with. By segmenting your audience, you are able to customize and personalize your messaging to speak directly to the ideal individual. Coordinating the right message, at the right time, with the right person is the essence of marketing, and using segmentation will allow for higher response rates with a lower marketing spend overall.

If you were to run a marketing campaign for orthopedic services, you would attempt to reach those individuals who are in need of orthopedic services. However, those needing knee replacement surgery may be different than those needing hip replacement surgery. Often times these services are lumped together as a general orthopedic message, but being able to split the campaigns and target your audience with the right messaging will result in a better conversion rate.

Knowing who to suppress from your campaign is just as important as speaking to the right individual. For instance, if you are promoting a birthing center, you would want to suppress any woman who has had a miscarriage or stillbirth. It would be very upsetting to a recipient to receive a mailing about a birthing center if they just had a miscarriage, resulting in a negative impression towards your brand.

When it comes to segmentation, make sure you have a partner who is well-versed in building out healthcare campaign strategies and can offer their insight and value to your campaigns.

If you would like more information about segmentation and targeting, call 800-928-0712.

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it 100 times — “my CEO is pushing back and asking for quantifiable evidence that CRM is going to pay off in dollars and cents.”

It’s a valid request and one we poise ourselves to answer with every CRM database that we launch.  While this question may seem simple, there are actually a multitude of ways that you can show your C-suite the money. Value isn’t only limited to direct profits. CRM is a strategic investment with many layers of contributing value.

Traditional Return on Investment (ROI)
Still the workhorse metric in CRM land, ROI is going to give you that 1:1 payoff from your marketing campaign to downstream payments. Just always remember to set aside a control so you can answer the “they would have come anyway” question.

Value isn’t only limited to direct profits. CRM is a strategic investment with many layers of contributing value.

Strategic Priority Support
Seek out opportunities to help your organization achieve its most important objectives. One client helped support the Patient Portal Growth priority to the point that marketing has become responsible for over 30% of the portal sign ups. Revisit your organizational strategic priorities to see where you can make an impact.

Indirect System ROI
While traditional ROI will give you the single campaign level return, looking at it from an indirect system view will yield an ROI more inclusive of your associated CRM operating expenses. The calculation can include varying levels of depth, but for this example, consider the following:

• Select a representative sampling of campaigns, based on messaging, audience segmentation and costs.
• Measure within a snapshot of time. Take note, and include in your findings, that results are indicative of that limited timeframe and that marketing impact was limited to X number of campaigns during that timeframe.
• Combine and dedupe to a global mail and control. Run utilization analysis. Include system utilization to account for the halo effect from initiatives.
• Incorporate amortized and prorated CRM acquisition and operating costs effectively shifting these costs from the liability side of the ledger to the asset column.

Operational Savings
If your organization has specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tied to operational goals, think outside the box and develop initiatives that will deliver on those goals. One such example would be a goal tied to converting “live” or call center scheduled appointments to online scheduled appointments. Launch a relevant program that supports that goal and ultimately deliver quantifiable results from the Marketing Department that contribute to an operational goal.

New Patient Acquisition by Service Line
Does your campaign require immediate ROI to be considered successful? Determine the lifetime value of a variety of new patients (e.g. primary care, joint replacement, bariatric surgery, urgent care, etc.), then consider how much your system invests to attract new patients through other marketing and non-marketing pathways?

It’s a rare industry that doesn’t “lose” money on new customers; breakeven can be 3-5 years away. As a result, healthcare execs need to understand the dynamics of their new patient base. What are the investment (acquisition) costs through the most common pathways of access? Where is the breakeven for each? This view helps not only with comparisons of marketing to non-marketing pathways, but also when an immediate ROI doesn’t seem to tell the whole story.

While you might not find all of these examples applicable to your situation, hopefully a few are and perhaps they can springboard some additional ideas. It’s no secret that delivering value beyond traditional ROI marketing will continue to elevate marketing’s role at the leadership table. So, if you’re up for it, carve time out of your already overloaded calendar to consider some “out of the box” value metrics you can deliver from your CRM system. Who knows, you might see some light at the end of the tunnel or get a better seat at the table!

To learn more about CRM and delivering “ROI value” system wide, visit our CRM page or contact us at 800-928-0712.

Do you want to attract new, unique patients? New movers, people who have recently moved into a healthcare system’s defined market area, are the perfect audience who will be seeking out healthcare services – when the need arises make sure they seek out yours. Increase volume to your entry points (primary care, urgent care and ER) and connect with these high-value consumers to drive brand preference. There are many components and metrics that contribute to new mover success. Below are a few to consider for your strategy and audience selection.

• Multiple Touchpoints: In this case, a touchpoint refers to marketing sent out to targeted consumers (either direct mail or digital). Although single-touch programs are successful, our years of testing and analysis shows that the more touchpoints to new movers the higher their utilization rate of healthcare services. The more your brand is in front of new movers with multi-touch direct mail, digital and nurturing campaigns the more likely they are to use your services.
• List Selection Criteria: Our targeting capabilities help you identify the new mover segments that matter. Whether including an income screen for those with a desired payer mix, presence of children in the home for pediatrics or long-distance moves for “true” new movers to your market, we’ll help you find the right segmentation plan to maximize your budget.
• Lifetime Value: Our healthcare new mover clients see a higher percentage of new patients to the health system from new mover campaigns when compared to other consumer marketing campaigns. New movers often enter the system through primary care, urgent care and the ER. Converting the new mover to a new patient creates lifetime value to your health system.
• Utilization Rates: Every marketing dollar is precious, so we determine the utilization rates per zip code and compare them to the marketing spend for each of those zips. When it doesn’t make sense to spend marketing dollars to go after a zip or area that historically doesn’t respond, we adjust our strategy and target audience.

Talk to your new mover neighbors before your competitors do. You can get started by calling 800-928-0712. Or, visit our New Movers page to learn more about these services, and complete the form at the bottom of the page to receive a free new mover count request.

Look, ma, no hands! What every busy marketer wants is a way to have continuous engagement and make meaningful connections with valued consumers. With the amount of communication touch points it takes to nurture and engage consumers, what we need is a hands-free option. That’s where marketing automation comes in.

With minimal resources needed for set-up and only a little maintenance, it helps take a few to-dos off marketers’ plates while adding an army to your engagement arsenal. Automating certain tasks gives you the ability to put your brand in front of consumers with a frequency that would be otherwise impossible.

Automation and trigger campaigns go hand in hand. For example, a consumer is on your website and signs up for a women’s health e-newsletter. That action then triggers an email with the most current e-newsletter. The same consumer clicks through links on the e-newsletter to information about diabetes, and that action triggers a follow-up email with specialized content about diabetes. This helps you keep in close contact with your consumers and allows you to serve up relevant, timely content to them.

Automating certain tasks gives you the ability to put your brand in front of consumers with a frequency that would be otherwise impossible.

Another example involves consumers visiting your website to find out more about events. Perhaps someone clicks on a diabetes event, but doesn’t register. The action of viewing the page triggers an automated email thanking her for her interest in that event and offers another opportunity to register. This helps close the loop and increase conversion rates.

Whether you want to start small or want a robust marketing automation nurturing campaign, LionShare has solutions that will help you maximize your reach and minimize the time and resources needed from your team. Contact us at 800‑928‑0712 to get started.

When was the last time you checked to be sure all of the stop lights were green before you left the house for work? Never, right? If only it were that simple, and we knew that there was a wide open path for us to follow, free of obstacles, wherever it is that we are planning to journey. The reality is that there are barriers, and in the world of healthcare marketing, the journey to CRM is often full of them. Budget, time, employee resources, IT and executive support, content, strategy, and did I mention budget?

As I speak with marketers across the country, it is interesting to hear the different definitions of CRM. In my world, CRM means the marrying of each of a health system’s disparate data sources, into one centralized system, allowing for a single point of view of an entire market footprint. Whether we are looking at physicians, patients, potential patients (prospects) or employees, this singular point of view enables us to mine the data, identify appropriate audience segments, create personalized, automated communications with those segments, measure responses to those communications, and ultimately calculate a Return on Investment (ROI) for all of our efforts.

For many healthcare marketers, what I’ve described above could be considered the “holy grail” of CRM, but this can sometimes come with a price tag that is out of reach. What many don’t realize is that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. DIATA^TM, LionShare’s marketing automation and analytics platform, has the flexibility to provide scalable solutions, regardless of where you are on your CRM journey. DIATA Lite is best suited for hospitals with limited resources, or for large health systems with the desire to start on a small scale and prove results before committing to a full-scale CRM investment and implementation. With DIATA Lite, users get the benefit of a CRM platform, without a lack of functionality, all at a reasonable price.

We offer DIATA Lite as a Service Bureau Model, which is another great benefit for those just getting started. This means LionShare will manage and maintain the database, and our Client Services team will also be responsible for all deliverables such as defining audience segments, marketing automation implementation, data analytics and ROI reporting. For those who are not only short on budget, but also employee resources, this means you won’t need to allocate extra manpower to implement your CRM solution. LionShare does the work for you.

There are several potential implementation possibilities with DIATA Lite. Depending on your goals, it may make sense to start with a pilot marketing automation campaign focused on a particular effort such as promoting pediatric specialty clinics or increasing volumes for total joint replacements. Perhaps there are particular high-value audience segments it makes sense to start with, such as new movers or new parents. Or, perhaps it makes sense to focus on those who may already be in your pipeline and build out a nurturing campaign to ensure online leads aren’t lost on the path to conversion. The point is – you have to start somewhere – and DIATA Lite likely has an option for you.