As healthcare companies revamp their digital strategies to provide seamless experiences to their patients and customers, they need powerful technology solutions to enable them.
Proactive digital communications can not only streamline operations, and decrease unnecessary patient calls and visits, but can also improve patient sentiment and increase retention. Omnichannel engagement enables a smoother patient journey and enhances the overall experience. This is all powered by enterprise digital marketing platforms like customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, digital experience platforms (DXP), customer data platforms (CDPs), marketing automation solutions, data warehouses, content management systems, and more.
Navigating the Sea of Solutions
Digital marketing solutions come in all shapes and sizes. You may be looking to upgrade your CDP to centralize patient and member data for a unified view, enhancing targeting and personalization. Perhaps you’re shifting to a more scalable CRM to manage and analyze digital interactions, streamline communications, and improve the patient/member relationship. An enhanced omnichannel engagement strategy might have you investing in a new DXP to deliver seamless and personalized user experiences across various channels.
Each platform serves a specific function within the digital marketing ecosystem. Whatever enterprise digital marketing solution you need, finding the best one depends heavily on your organization’s unique criteria and existing tech stack. Considerations can include everything from integrations and features to data security and compliance.
Prioritizing Requirements for Strategic Evaluation
There are several considerations to ensure the solution you’re looking for will support effective omnichannel marketing efforts. Start by developing evaluation criteria based on prioritized requirements and features. Some of these may include:
Regulatory Compliance
Healthcare companies deal with sensitive patient information, so it's crucial to choose a solution that complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations to safeguard patient privacy and data security. Given the prevalence of regulations in the healthcare industry, ensuring regulatory compliance is a top priority. Conduct extensive reviews with multiple vendors to find the ideal balance between features and necessary compliance.
Interface and Customization Options
Decisive factors in your platform evaluation could include the preferences of team members that will be interacting with the platform regularly. Features such as an intuitive UI, customizable templates, and drag-and-drop components might be top of the list. The ability to create and manage workflows without the need for additional code or development resources (low-code or no-code), might also shape your platform selection.
Advanced Analytics
The ability to track and analyze engagement and performance is crucial. Choose a solution that provides comprehensive analytics and reporting features to measure effectiveness, understand patient / member behavior, and improve strategies. Leveraging data-driven insights is instrumental in identifying areas for improvement when optimizing campaigns.
Data & Integrations
The chosen solution should seamlessly integrate with existing marketing, healthcare and data systems, such as Electronic Health Records (EHR), data warehouses, and others. This ensures a smooth, unified approach to your patient engagement and marketing efforts. Data integration efforts may span both existing and new datastreams, so centralizing and rearchitecting your data infrastructure might be the first step in this process. Additionally, harnessing more data types, such as zero-party data, will be essential for personalization.
Automation
Automation plays a crucial role in delivering timely and relevant messages. Implementing automated workflows for communications enhances engagement. Automation not only ensures consistency but also frees up resources, so there are cost-saving benefits as well. Look for solutions that have automation, and AI and machine learning technology built in.
Security
Ensure that the digital marketing technology solutions you consider have robust security measures in place to protect against data breaches and unauthorized access. Encryption, secure transmission protocols, and access controls are essential components. Security features are standard in most of these types of platforms, but the details matter, so be sure to include subject matter experts in your evaluation process.
Personalization & Segmentation
In recognizing that patient and member relationships thrive on personalized content, segmentation and personalization features are key. While these features are commonplace in enterprise marketing communication platforms, the distinction for you may rest on your unique data strategy. Look for a solution that allows for segmentation and personalized content delivery to match your strategy. With these features, you’ll be able to engage patients based on their specific needs and preferences.
Scalability
Consider the scalability of the solution or platform to accommodate the growth of your organization. It should be able to handle an increasing volume of data, users, and marketing activities without compromising performance. Some solutions offer tiered services or packages, so consider both present and future needs when selecting a platform.
Determining the Best Fit: Selecting High-Performance Enterprise Digital Marketing Solutions
Once you have your evaluation criteria set, look for solutions built for companies of your size. Often enterprise platforms are the way to go. Some platforms will advertise being specific to healthcare, others might have testimonials or case studies from healthcare companies successfully using their platform. These are good indicators that they’ll have the features you need.
The process of elimination might come in handy if there are many that meet your criteria. Evaluate the options and select a high-performance digital marketing platform that has the capabilities you’ve identified. Many platform providers will offer a demo or free trial so you can test the features and interface.
Once you’ve narrowed the options and made a selection, you’ll be ready to create a detailed migration plan to integrate the solution of your choice with your existing marketing tech stack and systems. Make sure your engagement strategy is ready to be put into action.
What’s the Best Fit For You?
If you’re ready to start delivering seamless experiences to patients and clients with the right digital marketing platform for you, you’ve come to the right place. We’re here for everything from the evaluation and selection process through to implementation and beyond. Get in touch today to discover how our deep expertise in enterprise marketing technology, coupled with a profound understanding of the distinct challenges and intricacies of the healthcare industry, will empower you to confidently choose solutions that not only align with your objectives but also fit your budget.
