Transforming Health Insurance Marketing

The healthcare sector has reached a seminal point. Customer communication has never been more crucial in a world shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, customers empowered by wearable devices and emerging technologies are eager for better experiences that mirror the level of service they’re used to from other industries. Customers expect empathy, patience, and trust at every touchpoint.

The bottom line is that health insurance customers want to be treated as individuals. Achieving this requires accurate, effective, and personalized communication. For payers, getting this right is essential to retention and growth. Getting it wrong means losing business. But how do you communicate with millions of customers personally in a sector where customer data is highly sensitive and personal?

Our client — a top 5 health insurance provider — faced disjointed communications and communication overload. This was causing poor customer experiences and message fatigue, hurting trust and satisfaction.

To address this, the provider planned to revamp their communication strategy. They aimed to improve marketing by creating personalized experiences for their members. They wanted to boost customer satisfaction by ensuring relevant messages, reducing message fatigue, and improving health outcomes. The goal was to improve healthcare standards in North America and build stronger connections, making customers feel valued and acknowledged.

Addressing message fatigue

With each Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plan (MADP) member receiving an average of 115 communications annually, the risk of overload was significant. This threatened to weaken the impact of critical health messages and erode member engagement.

Prioritizing impactful communications strategy

The insurer faced a critical challenge in balancing its extensive communication network. The goal was to shift from a volume-centric approach to one emphasizing quality and personal relevance. Given the past overwhelming and disjointed messaging strategies, this move was crucial for restoring trust and satisfaction among members.

Balancing scale and personalization

Even with the goal of quality over quantity, the insurer would still distribute over 650 million communications annually to a member base with diverse needs. This highlights the daunting task of ensuring that each message stays relevant and personal.

We performed in-depth customer research to uncover the intricacies of the client’s communication and data and processed gaps within the marketing landscape. Through extensive interviews with 15 stakeholder teams, we gained deep insights into our marketing campaigns, shedding light on customer perceptions and values.

This investigation helped us find and fix internal system problems blocking smooth communication. It culminated in developing a comprehensive Next Best Action (NBA) engine. Immediate improvements were realized, such as the simple yet impactful step of displaying the insurer’s name on caller ID. This alone significantly boosted transparency and call acceptance rates.

What we provided:

A ‘Next Best Action’ for personalized customer engagement

A structured approach helped find useful insights to improve customer engagement. The client could redefine their marketing strategy using cutting-edge technology and analytics for heightened personalization and efficacy.

Deployment led to a shift in how personalized communication is handled by leveraging centralized data resources, optimizing campaign strategies with the NBA Engine, and enhancing performance visibility through automated PowerBI dashboards. This approach streamlined the communication process. It ensured that each message would be as relevant and impactful as possible.