Healthcare Marketing Automation: The Role and Tips for Successful Implementation

When you think of marketing automation, your first thoughts probably turn to e-commerce. After all, most e-commerce companies use a wide breadth of marketing automation tools to nurture their customers. However, physicians can also benefit from marketing automation healthcare tactics to improve the patient experience.

Healthcare marketing automation offers several benefits, such as strengthening the connection between doctors and their patients and improving scheduling efficiency. With the right strategy, physician practices can grow their clientele and enhance patient awareness of their services.

The Role of Marketing Automation: Healthcare

There are multiple ways that medical practices can implement marketing automation. Let’s examine a few.

Automating Patient Communication

Physicians should stay in regular communication with their patients between appointments. That way, patients will remember to schedule their checkups and necessary treatments for their conditions.

Medical practices can implement automation tools into their processes. For example, they can send an automated email when it’s time for a check-up and send follow-ups if the patient doesn’t reply.

Depending on the physician’s practice type, newsletters containing educational content can also be beneficial. For instance, a dermatologist might send a newsletter offering skin care tips for teenagers and adults.

Streamlining Administrative Marketing Tasks

A physician’s team typically handles many administrative activities, including patient onboarding, scheduling,billing, and marketing tasks. Automation tools can eliminate many of the more tedious tasks.

Especially when it comes to marketing, so much of the content and creative creation processes can be either streamlined or digitilized using a marketing asset management platform. The biggest benefit of these platforms is that they are very flexible towards the business model or general organization structure, which makes the adoption really smooth and easy.

Customizing Patient Engagement

Like other industries that rely on marketing automation, healthcare can benefit from better personalization strategies that are deployed in reach marketing channels. As you learn more about your patients and their healthcare needs, you can provide dynamic custom content that addresses their concerns or helps them better understand their medical condition.

Depending on your practice type, you might provide your patients with personalized recommendations they can act on. For instance, an OB-GYN practice might advise pregnant clients of available classes for new parents.

Best Practices for Healthcare Marketing Automation

Marketing automation for healthcare lags behind other industries due to privacy restrictions, among other factors. If you implement automation into your healthcare marketing strategies, you’ll want to be mindful of a few best practices.

Ensuring HIPAA Compliance

Physicians and other companies in the healthcare industry must follow HIPAA compliance rules concerning patient data. HIPAA rules require those who work with electronic personal health information (e-PHI) to keep it strictly confidential and only share it with the patient’s consent.

Before implementing any marketing automation for healthcare activities, it’s wise to speak with a knowledgeable attorney or another professional who can determine whether your marketing practices comply with HIPAA.

Personalizing Patient Experience

To make the most of your healthcare marketing automation, you’ll want to personalize your communications as much as possible. A lot of automation platforms offer this feature but it is often overlooked by healthcare institutions.

Measure your patient’s interactions with your marketing content to determine what they’re most interested in. For example, if they click on links in your newsletter concerning healthy diet and exercise, you can use email automation to send them more content about those topics.

Your notifications should be timely. If your client is due for a checkup in six months, you aren’t going to send them a reminder to schedule an appointment then — you’d wait until the date gets closer.

Measuring and Analyzing Your Results

Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure your results to determine whether your healthcare marketing automation is working. Some helpful KPIs to measure include new patient levels or collection time for open bills. You can also measure client engagement with your website and emails.

Use the data you obtain to make decisions about your future marketing activities. For example, if your clients respond well to SMS appointment text reminders, you’ll want to continue providing them.

Challenges of Healthcare Marketing Automation

While healthcare marketing automation offers many benefits that can improve patient retention and appointment compliance, there are a few difficulties to be aware of.

Maintaining Patient Privacy

One of the biggest challenges medical practices face when implementing marketing automation is securing patient data. Physicians and other companies who interact with e-PHI must comply with many stringent regulations. Violations can lead to thousands of dollars in fines, something no physician wants.

You’ll want to work with an attorney or other professional with experience in marketing automation for healthcare. They can direct you toward vendors with active e-PHI protections that work exclusively with healthcare companies.

Managing Patient Data

When implementing new marketing automation tactics, you must manage patient data appropriately. Of course, you’ll want to introduce personalization into your strategies but also be mindful of HIPAA restrictions.

Working with a competent marketer experienced in healthcare advertising is advisable. They’ll be able to implement techniques that make the most of the segmentation available while respecting your patients’ data privacy.

Staying Current with Emerging Technologies

Healthcare marketing automation is relatively new, and technology is constantly changing. Staying current with healthcare trends can therefore help you maximize your marketing strategies.

If you’re a physician or a similar medical professional, you probably don’t have much time to spend on marketing efforts. However, you can work with an agency or contractor who can inform you of new general or marketing trends that may benefit your practice.

Healthcare Marketing Automation Improves Communication with Patients

While healthcare marketing automation provides numerous benefits, one of the best is improved communication.

Better correspondence is beneficial for both you and your patients. For example, you may find your patients are more proactive with scheduling appointments, and you’ll likely have fewer customers who don’t show up. Likewise, better scheduling improves your processes and ensures that patients get the care they need.

Need help managing your healthcare marketing assets? Learn more about MarcomCentral’s all-in-one marketing asset platform.