Award-Winning Content Strategies from Trinity Health of New England and Walmart Health

March 3, 2025

Insights from healthcare marketing leaders on how to reach and engage audiences.

// By Susan Dubuque //       

Connecting with healthcare audiences has never been more challenging — or critical. With consumers expecting personalized, relevant information and experiences, marketers must craft content that captures attention and builds lasting relationships.

In a recent Member Roundtable, panelists shared their approaches to content strategy — what works, what’s evolving, and how they navigate challenges of today’s ever-changing healthcare landscape. From leveraging data-driven personalization to optimizing content, these experts offer practical insights into effectively reaching patients, providers, and communities.

Presenters were two recipients of the 2024 eHealthcare Leadership Awards and an executive from Private Health News, the Best Healthcare Content category sponsor.

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• Emilie Ansel, CEO, Private Health News (PHN)
• Julie Williams, Regional Marketing Manager, Trinity Health of New England
• Diana Jones, CEO, Petrastella Communications, and Marketing Strategy & Planning for Walmart Health & Wellness

In this recap, we explore key takeaways from the discussion, including strategies for improving engagement, measuring success, and staying ahead. Whether you’re refining your current approach or building a strategy from the ground up, these insights can help guide your next steps.

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eHST: How would you describe your overarching content strategy?

Williams/Trinity: At Trinity Health of New England, we have a lot of different audiences that we’re trying to reach, but one priority is pushing out content to our network of private and employed physicians. This can be challenging. Like all of us, physicians are inundated with content. We have been able to break through using several touchpoints. Our partnership with PHN allows us to deliver valuable and tailored content that is of interest and piggybacks on current physician behavior. It’s leaning into their day-to-day lives and making it simple and easy for them.

Jones/Walmart: Our content strategy is from the perspective of the world’s largest retailer. The big question was whether people would trust Walmart to deliver relevant health and wellness content to them and whether they would be willing to engage with that content on a regular basis.

We started with a monthly newsletter containing curated content around various topics that the subscriber could self-select. As a funny but relevant side note, we were talking about developing this strategy and testing this newsletter in January 2020. We all know what happened in March of 2020. This was the perfect moment in time.

We launched the newsletter about two weeks after the shutdown, and it immediately took off. We had open rates well over 50 percent and click-through rates that well surpassed industry benchmarks. It showed us that if we delivered the right content that people wanted to see, they would engage with it and read it on a regular basis.

eHST: How do you define and prioritize target audiences for your content marketing efforts?

Williams/Trinity: We start with our strategic goals, identifying the service lines we aim to support for the year. We then pull personas for those service lines, seek input from service line leaders, and begin defining marketing plans. Content is a huge component of our planning. We consider what message we are trying to convey and how we can best reach our audience — through a blog, display banner, 30-second commercial, or a 15-second social post.

We also have goals related to colleague engagement, which is very important from an organizational standpoint. To help support retention, we provide our colleagues with messaging that is of interest, but we present it so they aren’t overloaded. One strategy was to launch an internal website where colleagues could submit stories. They love to see themselves! That has proven to be one of the best ways of driving engagement. Having these touchpoints in places where colleagues participate in the content creation has been beneficial for our strategy.

Ansel/PHN: For one health system in the Midwest, reaching prospective employees was a high priority. Like everywhere, nurses in this market are in short supply. It’s expensive when they leave, and it’s hard to hire them. The organization used content in a creative way to address the problem.

The team produced videos featuring nurses who shared what it was like to work for this healthcare system. It was all about positivity. The campaign targeted a general consumer audience without any idea if they were nurses or not. They just dangled the content in front of the community and got extraordinary results. The two-month campaign generated 433 completed applications for RN positions. This served as a reminder that positivity attracts and that nurses are consumers, too.

eHST: How do you develop audience personas to help guide your content marketing efforts?

Ansel/PHN: We work with physicians, nurses, and consumers of every demographic, psychographic, and generation, with every manner of health needs and health status. It comes down to the research. Where are these people? What are they doing? What media are they consuming? We use web analytics, surveys, and community analyses on social media to learn about our audiences continually.

Sometimes, the findings are surprising. We recently evaluated the most subscribed topics for our 65-plus group of consumers, and “Parenting” was number three. I never would have thought that initially. These individuals are having grandkids, and they’re interested in learning what’s going on. It’s important to pay close attention so you can meet them where they are.

Jones/Walmart: As you can imagine, we have some pretty robust personas that are constantly evolving. Understanding how we can deliver content to thrill and delight them and make their lives easier is an ongoing process. You can’t set it and forget it. Don’t be afraid if you don’t get it right the first time. The next time, you will get closer.

eHST: How do you ensure your content remains relevant in an industry that changes daily?

Ansel/PHN: AI is a great tool for research to help keep your content up to date. Here is a four-point test I use to make sure content is always relevant:

• Audiences want information that is up to date, not 18 months old.
• Widely sourced. People don’t only want information from your health system. They want to know you did your homework. Widely sourced content feeds into the next factor — trust.
• Trust is also established by connecting with consumers between moments when they need your services. Send an email or mailer to let your patients know you’ll be there for them when the need arises.
• If you send a patient or a physician a lot of clutter that is not relevant to them, you will lose their attention in a minute.

Williams/Trinity: We use surveys to solicit what consumers and physicians are interested in to help us keep our content fresh. We used to have our physicians on the same content calendar as consumers when we realized that didn’t make sense. The physicians were already familiar with many of the services and programs we promoted to patients. We optimized our content, such as offering physicians information about new providers in the area. When we pivoted our strategy, we saw a huge uptick in engagement.

eHST: What metrics and KPIs do you use to measure success for your targeted campaigns?

Jones/Walmart: For Walmart, open rates are a big one, as well as click-through rates and tracking the next step a consumer takes. We incorporate shopping links in the Health & Wellness newsletter. For example, if you’re reading an article on a healthy diet, you can click to see how we can help you on that journey. Many people look at impressions as a key metric. I understand how useful impressions are, but I like metrics that demonstrate engagement.

Williams/Trinity:  The metrics and KPIs we use depend on the audience and the goals of the initiative. We look at traffic to both our internal and external websites, as well as time spent. We focus on open rates and click-throughs for our internally generated emails and our partnership with Private Health News. With our physician audiences, we look at additional metrics like active subscribers, total articles read, and actions taken, including CME credits earned.

Of course, there are major HIPAA considerations with leads and tracking patients, but with our consumer campaigns, we know how many leads are generated through form fills. On the back end, we partner with our service lines to determine whether a user became a patient — always making sure we are compliant with using health data. There is a delicate balance between delivering a personalized response based on a consumer’s behavior and being too intrusive.

eHST: How does influencer marketing fit into your targeted content marketing?

Jones/Walmart: Walmart uses influencers within Health & Wellness to augment our existing marketing. One example is using influencers to help us make people more aware of all the health and wellness offerings available at Walmart — such as showing them walking into the store and coming to the pharmacy. Awareness of the pharmacy is surprisingly low in some instances. We also use influencers to drive specific product and service offerings, like flu shots and immunizations.

eHST: How do you leverage AI for content development?

Williams/Trinity: One of the biggest benefits of AI is using it as a starting point for writing. We don’t leverage the exact copy, but it can be helpful to break through writer’s block. Once you’re over the hump, you can make it your own. We also use AI for simple tasks like creating social posts or brainstorming ideas for a tagline.

Jones/Walmart: To build on that, AI is great to fill in the gaps. When I pull something together, I ask, “What did I miss that’s relevant to this topic or what we are trying to do.” I’m using it more and more every day. It’s a little terrifying but fun and exciting at the same time. When it comes to starting or revamping your content strategy, don’t be afraid. Don’t worry that you’ll make a mistake or not do it perfectly right out of the gate. It’s all about testing, learning, and pivoting.

Watch the full webinar here: Content That Connects: Strategies for Reaching and Engaging Your Audiences 

Susan Dubuque is a strategist and writer specializing in healthcare and behavior change. She serves on the editorial advisory board of Strategic Health Care Marketing and co-chairs the 2024 eHealthcare Leadership Awards. Connect with Susan on LinkedIn.