Joe Healthcare Marketer, You Are Cordially Invited to the C-Suite

// By Jane Weber Brubaker //

In a March 2016 article, “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines! Lehigh Valley Health Network Revs It Up with Integrated CRM/PRM Strategy,” we got right up to the starting line with the health system’s CRM selection and implementation, and learned about its ambitious plans for the future.

It’s been 18 months, and we wanted to find out how it’s going. The short answer is, it’s going well, and the C-suite is fully on board. “The biggest accelerator of our success has been the buy-in of executive leadership,” says Dan Lavelle, marketing administrator. Through the CRM tool and “C-suite dashboard,” the leadership team has gotten a taste of marketing analytics and verifiable results. With this information, executive leadership can correlate marketing’s performance with other growth metrics, and can help marketing prioritize campaigns that yield the highest return.

The health system has launched 30 campaigns through the CRM so far, and each campaign generates new learnings that help improve results for the next. “Lehigh Valley Health Network has come out of the gate faster than any existing Evariant client,” says Gary Druckenmiller, vice president, marketing practice lead.

In this article, we’ll learn how LVHN is achieving impressive conversion rates, reducing its cost per acquisition, and generating an ROI that more than justifies ongoing investment.

Dan Lavelle, marketing administrator at Lehigh Valley Health Network

Overall, the 30 campaigns have garnered impressive results. “We are seeing lead-to-patient conversion rates above 40 percent, and overall aggregate return on marketing investment (ROMI) north of 7:1. These metrics, when presented back to our C-suite, validate our new data-driven approach to marketing,” says Lavelle.

360-Degree View

Lavelle attributes the results to the availability and use of rich data in the CRM. The CRM has ingested data from multiple sources, including Epic, the call center, consumer data, claims, marketing subscription data, and the PRM legacy system. “We now have a 360-degree view of our patients as consumers,” says Lavelle. “This helps us deliver convenient messages to our patients across multiple touchpoints in our organization, from our digital platforms to our call center to clinical sites where we offer care. Said simply, we’re using data to help us build better relationships with our patients.”

Learnings From Ortho Campaign

One of the first campaigns to launch was an orthopedics effort that generated 2,500 leads at a cost per acquisition of $79, for an ROI ratio above 10:1. “The ortho campaign was a tremendous learning experience related to demand generation marketing,” Lavelle says.

Digital Channels

Facebook and paid search were the primary channels. During the campaign flight, the team evaluated the results weekly and readjusted the media spend according to the results. “For the first time, we had almost real-time insights about what people react to,” Lavelle says.

Testing and Optimization

Marketing ran A/B tests to learn which messages resulted in the greatest number of conversions, for example: How can we help you with your knee pain? vs. Here’s our U.S. News designation for orthopedic surgery. “We were talking about our expertise,” Lavelle says. “People were looking for how to help my knee pain.”

Conversion

Each discrete interaction patients have with LVHN is tracked through the CRM, shedding light on conversion points. “It’s been helpful to see that people will Google a condition, ask for physician recommendations on Facebook, click through to a landing page to learn about your team, but they will ultimately convert through a different channel,” says Lavelle. “With that insight, we can tailor our calls to action to be more effective.”

Tracking Campaign Efficiency Through CPA

LVHN is paying close attention to cost per acquisition, or CPA, and establishing its own internal CPA benchmarks to assess campaign efficiency. “If we start a campaign and our cost per acquisition is floating in the $400 range, we know that we have to be a lot more targeted with our messaging,” Lavelle says. “If we see our cost per acquisition decrease, we know we’re optimizing our creative and channel mix effectively.”

Evariant tracks CPA for its clients nationwide. Druckenmiller notes, “We generally see anywhere between a $100 to $200 [CPA] if you’re really doing well. And that’s exactly where Lehigh is right now.”

The C-Suite Dashboard

Gary Druckenmiller, vice president, marketing practice lead at Evariant

“LVHN has had success not only in terms of actual results, but in selling it into the organization, particularly the C-suite, and gaining additional buy-in from places outside of marketing,” Druckenmiller says. “They’ve done this by quantifying and reporting on the results, which is possible now because all touchpoints are connected within the CRM.”

The C-suite dashboard quarterly reporting includes an executive-level summary with key takeaways, such as:

• X campaign(s) were completed and Y were started for a total of Z campaigns with active attribution periods.
• Cumulative leads increased X percent from last quarter while we maintained a lead-to-patient conversion rate of more than Y percent.
• X leads/campaign on average converted to patients and we realized ROI of more than Y percent for all campaigns with active attribution periods.
• X percent of patients from campaigns were commercially insured—this is consistent with Q1 performance.

The dashboard creates charts and visualizations of KPIs such as:

• Rolling performance
• Payer mix
• Total campaigns
• Leads and ROI
• Cost per acquisition
• Campaign metrics
• Lead metrics

Lavelle emphasizes that the work to validate all the data is a heavy lift but essential to establishing credibility. “You never get invited back to the C-suite to present edited numbers,” he says.

“The dashboard has really changed our standing in the organization. It’s no longer marketing as order-takers; it’s marketing as an essential business function to drive revenue, with everything summarized and visualized in our quarterly dashboard.”

Jane Weber Brubaker is a contributing editor at eHealthcare Strategy & Trends, and chair of the eHealthcare Leadership Awards.