Instead of promoting healthcare services to as many people as possible regardless of their wants and needs, a strategy that focuses on the individual patient has become the most impactful marketing approach in the healthcare industry.
After seeing the success from other industries, healthcare marketers are beginning to leverage data and technology to implement patient-centric marketing strategies.
But, what exactly is it? And how does an organization implement it? Let’s give you an example.
Take Netflix. On the verge of extinction in 2011, Netflix turned things around by arming itself with data-driven insights from its customer base. Those insights enabled Netflix to recognize that a one-size-fits-all (aka product-centric) business approach doesn’t work. As such, it started collecting information about customers' likes and dislikes, along with interests and passions to grow its business, and ultimately, its customer base.
But healthcare marketing isn’t as straightforward as it is for companies like Netflix. With a number of complicated legal regulations in place, connecting with patients through personalized marketing initiatives while ensuring compliance with state and federal law, can be a difficult task.
To learn how top healthcare marketers from hospitals, clinics and the insurance industry are utilizing data-driven print to implement patient-centric marketing strategies, continue reading below.
The Product-Centric Marketing Approach vs. the Patient-Centric Marketing Approach
The product-centric healthcare marketing approach delivers a quick, one-size-fits-all message about why one brand or product is best. It focuses on what it brings to the market, rather than what it brings to the individual.
In contrast, a patient-centric marketing approach tailors messaging to address the unique health needs, preferences, and concerns of each patient based on their medical background and history. This approach has many benefits, including:
- Enabling patients to become more engaged in their health to make more informed decisions.
- Building greater trust between patients and HCPs.
- Increased patient retention.
So when a patient has a change in their medical situation– be it a new diagnosis, their needs tighten. Healthcare marketers that are able to support them in this change with tailored and personalized information at the right time, using the right channel, will be seen as valued partners in their healthcare plan.
The best part? Implementing a patient-centric approach is easier than you think using the data you already have.
How Data-Driven Printing Technology Fuels Patient-Centric Marketing
With hundreds of patients across multiple practices and networks, it can seem like a resource-draining task to create, manage and distribute personalized marketing materials.
Whether you’re looking to deploy large-scale, high-volume campaigns or set up trigger-based campaigns that print-on-demand, Jet Mail can help you create personalized, patient-centric marketing collateral with ease.
1. Variable Data Printing (VDP) and Variable Data Imaging (VDI)
Variable data printing (VDP) and variable data imaging (VDI) use advanced data processing software and digital printing technology to personalize each and every printed piece. In other words, you’re printing a single run, but each printed piece has variations based on your customer data (gender, age, location, policy, or any other data that you have). You can print anywhere from hundreds to thousands or more personalized pieces. Names, colors, office locations, images, and messages can be changed from one printed piece to the next, without interrupting or delaying the printing process. Everything from postcards, envelopes, brochures, flyers and more can be personalized for your patients.
Use Case
Healthcare benefit providers frequently need to send packets to members with important updates to their policies. VDP technology quickly integrates customer data and automatically applies member information to pre-determined templates, resulting in a seamless process that delivers accurate information to members.
2. Trigger-Based Direct Mail Automation
Healthcare marketers can automate triggers, define custom templates, and achieve lightning-fast delivery just like they can with email–but without it getting lost in an inbox. Simply upload patient data from your CRM and set up trigger-based workflows to send personalized direct mail pieces to patients without any manual work. Robust reporting features allow healthcare marketers to make data-driven decisions to optimize their mail performance. They can report on mail status (i.e. delivered, opened, etc.), while still remaining compliant with regulations.
Use Case
To break it down for you, take appointment reminders as an example. Simply upload a pre-approved, pre-designed postcard template, and set up triggers to send a reminder one week prior to the patient’s appointment. The data from your CRM will auto-populate the template with information like:
- Patient name and address.
- Operating hours and services.
- Practice location and HCP name.
- What to expect from their visit.
- What to bring.
3. Jet Mail Marketing Portal
Similar to an e-commerce storefront, the Jet Mail Marketing portal empowers HCPs, sales reps, office staff, and other stakeholders self-service access to order pre-assembled collateral from inventory and print personalized materials on-demand. Custom-built for your business, the portal gives users the power to personalize while admins maintain full control of permissions, budgets and approval workflows for each user to control what, when, and how much they can order.
Use Case
Multi-location facilities can upload pre-approved, pre-designed brochure templates that individual locations can personalize with office location, hours of operation, HCP names and bios, services, equipment, and even swap out images in the brochure that better represent the local health population (swap out bariatric patient images for geriatric patient images, for example). Admins can set non-modifiable elements of the template to ensure things like logos, taglines, mission statements, fonts, and colors can’t be changed.
Patient-Centric Healthcare Marketing with Jet Mail
Jet Mail understands the importance of a patient-centric approach in the healthcare industry, and we specialize in creating custom solutions that make it easy for healthcare marketers to create, manage and distribute personalized assets.
Beyond personalization, the speed at which you distribute information is critical to a patient-centric approach.
Sudden changes to insurance policies and plans are important updates to communicate to patients, but without a centralized location to house marketing collateral, this can be difficult to do. Additionally, should there be a change in service offerings, staff, or location, it’s important to communicate these changes quickly to patients.
Jet Mail’s in-house print, mail, fulfillment and distribution capabilities enable us to process orders for same-day fulfillment, which is essential for important updates that need to get out the door fast.
We also understand the importance of ensuring that your deliverables and data are secure, which is why we implement compliance policies and systems to protect everything we handle including:
- HIPAA and SOC 2 compliance.
- Data transfer and physical security measures.
- Encryption, SIEM, and endpoint protection.
- Individual and secure sorting rooms.
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