Marketing Effectiveness case study: Optimizing member outreach campaigns improves health outcomes
Despite investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing outreach campaigns, measuring effectiveness was a challenge for this Fortune 50 payer. See how Marketbridge leveraged marketing analytics to empower the payer to enhance outreach, increase preventive screenings and optimize marketing spend.
Creating healthier campaigns
to drive healthier outcomes
Quality member care is a crucial part of the long-term success of healthcare payers. Better member health outcomes not only mean healthier members but also lower medical costs, less member disenrollment and improved Medicare Advantage star ratings and bonus payments from the federal government. A Fortune 50 healthcare payer sought to improve member health outcomes by engaging members with specific gaps in care.
The payer invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in outreach campaigns that asked targeted members to complete certain preventive screenings. The hypothesis was that these marketing-funded campaigns would make a meaningful difference in closing member gaps in care. However, the ability to measure the effectiveness of these marketing campaigns was a challenge for the healthcare payer.
Unraveling
the challenge
The campaigns consisted of multiple touchpoints across offline (direct mail, phone calls) and online (digital media) channels, which made determining which tactics were contributing to preventive screenings difficult. In addition, the long-tail response curves of these campaigns, coupled with the time it takes to receive claims data, meant having to wait months to capture and analyze results. This hindered the payer’s ability to make optimizations in a timely manner.
Measurement challenge accepted
Our team began by identifying the three key objectives that would enable the marketing team to measure and optimize the marketing-funded campaigns.
Determine campaign effectiveness
Are certain marketing campaigns effective in persuading members to take a breast cancer screening, colorectal cancer screening or address diabetes maintenance (A1-C and retinopathy)?
Drive continuous improvement
How can we infuse timely data-driven learnings into our ongoing marketing cycles so we can continuously test and learn?
Understand audience-level response
Which segments are responding to which marketing tactics, and how do we capitalize on each using data?
Implementing a two-part
measurement approach
MTA
A multi-touch attribution (MTA) model assigns fractional credit to each touchpoint in gap closure campaigns, revealing each channel’s influence on preventive screenings. However, the long maturation period for response data (member claims) delays insights until after the next campaign cycle, limiting timely optimizations. To address this, Marketbridge proposed a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) alongside the MTA model.
RCT
The RCT proved effective, showing that three out of four campaigns successfully drove incremental gap closures. This allowed the Marketing team to reallocate funds from the ineffective campaign to successful ones, enabling timely adjustments. The MTA model’s long-term results validated the RCT findings, confirming most campaigns were effective.
Two is better than one
The RCT analysis helped this Fortune 50 payer prove that all but one of the four campaigns in-market were successful in driving an incremental lift in gap closures. These results allowed the Marketing team to quickly reallocate funds away from one campaign that was not working and toward the other three campaigns that were working. This bought the Marketing team time to “retool” the unsuccessful campaign for testing in a future campaign cycle—an opportunity that would have otherwise been lost without using the RCT approach. As for the MTA model, the overall long-term results validated the findings of the RCT analysis and proved that most of the marketing campaigns were working.
We looked at member segments, too
We applied a propensity model to understand marketing impact by member segments. It showed that members with a higher likelihood of closing care gaps had lower cost-per-closure rates. As a result, the marketing team tested sending more notices to high-likelihood members and fewer to low-likelihood members, aiming for cost-effective strategies.
Optimized campaigns.
Healthier members.
Improved member outcomes:
Marketing care gap campaigns were successful in driving members to get preventive screenings, improving their health outcomes.
Optimized marketing spend:
Members with a higher likelihood of closing a care gap had lower cost-per-incremental-closure. This gave Marketing more room to invest in touchpoints to this segment.
Timely test-and-learn cycles:
The Marketing team was able to work around long-tail response curves to enable year-round testing and learning, which is critical in the pursuit of health outcomes.