Marketing Operations Management Helps Hospitals Streamline Projects

// By Althea Fung //

The marketing technology (MarTech) industry is booming. The landscape has grown from 150 solutions in 2011 to 7,040 in 2019. It’s easy to see why — marketing departments need systems to provide oversight of projects. More and more companies are turning to marketing operations management systems to oversee the marketing process from start to finish. For healthcare marketers, it can help teams work more efficiently while also ensuring that usage of data and patient information is compliant.

Todd Eckler, general manager of marketing technology at IntelligenceBank

“A marketing operations platform is a holistic platform that includes project management, review and approval, compliance, digital asset management, brand management, and workflow,” says Todd Eckler, general manager of marketing technology at IntelligenceBank, a marketing software company.

That integration was one of the driving forces that prompted Baptist Health, an eight-hospital system based in Kentucky and southern Indiana, to choose IntelligenceBank.

Katie Jimenez, director of digital engagement at Baptist Health

“Our hospitals were used to operating individually, with their own personnel and their own processes. They were their own brands. We were looking for a way to govern our brand guidelines internally and externally, as well as find a cohesive way to save and file assets and manage marketing projects,” says Katie Jimenez, director of digital engagement at Baptist Health. She says after reviewing a number of solutions, Baptist settled on IntelligenceBank in part because “we wanted a platform that could be tailored to our needs, not just an out-of-the-box software program.”

A Marketing Solution For Regulated Industries

“If you look at any healthcare department, there is a core technology that does the bulk of the work that department needs to do — like the customer service department has a CRM and finance has an ERP platform,” Eckler explains. “On the marketing side of things, historically, it’s been a bunch of little things like Adobe, spreadsheets, email, other things not working together.”

With offices in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, IntelligenceBank has been providing marketing operations software to companies in regulated industries such as finance and healthcare for more than 10 years. Because of the regulatory challenges of these industries, the company ensures its web-based products are HIPAA compliant. Marketers can assign controlled access to assets with protected health information (PHI). IntelligenceBank’s security monitoring system can detect when PHI has been inappropriately used when it violates usage rights, and notify the health system.

Integrated Tracking, Editing, and Reporting Capabilties

IntelligenceBank’s marketing operations software includes digital asset management (DAM), a brand portal, a marketing request automation system, and a project management tool. The DAM uses keyword tags, which makes it searchable like any search engine but also relies on a folder system so users can go directly to the image or video.

Because hospital marketing departments are responsible for managing patient information when disseminating marketing materials, the products make it easy to track data no matter where it’s published.

“Let’s say you’re hosting a community event. You do a photo shoot at the event. You have to get permission from the people in the photos. The photos have to be matched back to those permission and release forms. Then you use the photo on your website and in other media. Now let’s say, six months later something happens to one of the people in the photo. You don’t want to be using the photo anymore. How do you find it? Without a system that’s integrated, you’ll likely have to send around emails hoping to find every place the photo was used,” he says.

IntelligenceBank’s advanced reporting tracks expiring assets, talent usage rights, and usage across all channels.

IntelligenceBank delivers on that. The product is modular, so clients can use all or just some of the products the company offers. And the product can be pulled directly into external systems like Adobe® Photoshop® or Microsoft Word.

With the DAM, users can resize, crop, and edit images within the tool. The system stores pre-loaded template sizes so users can easily create images for social media and email campaigns. The DAM also allows for minor video editing to create shareable videos for various channels. Public link tracking allows users to run reports to see how well an asset is performing online. Each asset can be labeled with rights restrictions and metadata.

Integration with CMS Platforms and Brand Assets

The system can directly plug in with several content management systems — WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, and Adobe Experience Manager. It can also connect to other CMSs through a Chrome extension.

The brand portal allows the marketing department to share brand materials and styleguides with the whole organization. “This allows organizations to not just say here’s an image to download, but also sets an expectation of how it is to be used,” Eckler says. Marketers can include instructions on proper usage and placement of logos.

“A logo isn’t just a logo. There’s the grayscale; there’s the one with the tagline, the one without the tagline. There are all these variations, and inevitably someone is going to use the wrong one in the wrong place. This makes it easy for people to use the right one with a single click,” he says.

Online brand guidelines and workflow approvals ensure the entire team stays on brand.

User-Friendly Features Paired with Customer Service Excellence

Eckler says that all these features are designed to be easy to use, no matter your technical level. Jimenez agrees, saying IntelligenceBank provides several user guides to explain everything from how to add keywords and filters to how to submit a project request. Also, its 24-hour customer support allows Jimenez’s team to get help at any time.

“IntelligenceBank excels when it comes to customer service. It’s one of the primary reasons we chose them. Their technicians are available directly,” Jimenez says. “Plus, they have a dedicated support team available by email. Response time is almost immediate. Communication is thoroughly tracked until issues are resolved.”

Increased Efficiencies at Baptist Health

Since getting the marketing operation system, Jimenez says her team has been able to do more work more efficiently.

This view of the reporting dashboard tracks workload for each team member, and summarizes media spend and throughput.

“We have seen significant improvement for both our creative services team, as well as our digital marketing team. Before working with IntelligenceBank, we were submitting paper proofs or emailing large, cumbersome files back and forth,” she says. “Everything is now in one central location with a seamless proofing and approval workflow. Our projects have increased by more than 10 percent each year, and this year we will surpass 1,000 projects for the first time, which is pretty significant for a small in-house team. Our digital team is now managing all of its project requests/intakes within the platform, as well.”

Althea A. Fung is a digital content strategist and healthcare journalist. She is a senior editor at NewYork-Presbyterian.