Marketing Automation Can Help Create Personalized Patient Journeys

A prospective patient interested in weight loss surgery finds out your organization holds bariatric surgery seminars. He fills out the online form to attend the upcoming session.

Now what? If your organization uses a marketing automation (MA) platform, you have an opportunity to create personalized patient journeys.

The use of marketing automation is growing steadily. According to the fifth edition of Salesforce’s State of Marketing report, 44 percent of marketers across industries use an MA platform. That’s up 15 percentage points from the prior year.

Rachel Neely, senior healthcare consultant, Evariant

With a marketing automation tool, marketers can connect with potential and existing patients online, filter leads based on the level of engagement, and measure the revenue contribution of marketing campaigns.

Though marketers are flocking to this technology to identify, track, and engage users online, most healthcare organizations have yet to buy in. A survey conducted by Evariant found that 75 percent of respondents from healthcare organizations did not have a marketing automation tool or were unsure if they had marketing automation software.

But the need for MA in healthcare is great. An Evariant survey of healthcare organizations found that 65 percent had no defined lead nurturing process or toolset, and 79 percent of marketing leads are never converted to sales.

“There are really two parts of marketing automation,” says Rachel Neely, senior healthcare consultant at Evariant. First is lead generation and nurturing the acquired consumer. “But longer term, how do we then shift that technology into using it to engage and maintain existing patients?” Neely asks.

Learn more: How Scripps Health Uses Marketing Automation to Drive Results

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Matt Humphrey
President