Leveraging CRMs & CDPs for Better Patient Retention

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite podcast, the only health care marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex: What’s going on all of our Igniters? It’s so good to have you with me. The podcast has been awesome lately. I’ve gotten some really great interviews, and I’ve been learning a lot. This is my favorite venue because I get to learn a ton from our listeners, and everybody says that in their interviews. For me, it’s very much true because I’m not in as much client work as we were 15 years ago. This is where I learn the latest tips and tricks. We’ve got Kelly Green on today. This is cool. She’s done the big thing at the big thing, which you’ll hear more about in a second.

This is cool. That’s where a lot of the innovation comes, because there’s more budget, there’s more bandwidth, and they care more about the high acuity brand awareness type stuff. Which my low acuity retaily type health care buddies, I’ll need to learn because that’s the way things are going. Kelly, welcome to Ignite.

Kelly Green: Thanks, Alex. I’m glad to be here.

Alex: I just got beautiful new mugs and I’m using the Walmart cup. This makes no sense. God, the cups are in the other room.

Kelly: I thought those were the beautiful new mugs, and I would be like, “Wow.”

Alex: No, no, no. Budgets are tight this year. Budgets are tight.

Kelly: Everywhere.

Alex: Kelly, tell them where you hail from and where you’ve been and what you’re doing now.

Kelly: I am in the great state of Oklahoma, northeast part of the state, Tulsa, Oklahoma. As far as my professional background, I’ve been in health care marketing for about 10, 12 years. The majority of that time was with one of the nation’s largest Catholic health care enterprises, and got to serve in a number of roles, both locally, sort of boots on the ground role, and then nationally on our enterprise wide [inaudible 00:01:41]. I’m not a toot your own horn kind of girl, but I feel like I’ve got a broad base of experience, both micro and macro.

Alex: Did you know that Tulsa King is actually shot on my street in Atlanta, Georgia?

Kelly: Really? See, that’s interesting because that production group reached out and wanted to use the very office building that we were in because it was a very mid-mod kind of vibe. They were like, “This would be perfect.” It didn’t end up working out in the end, but yes, Tulsa King is a big deal. [unintelligible 00:02:09].

Alex: Yes. I was still at it. We live in horse country, and they used all of those barn and farm scenes are all on the street because we live in horse country, and they shut down the street. I would drive by it every day with the kids and be like, “Is Sly in there? Can we talk to him?” They’d be like, “No, guys.” Anyway, so you work at Ascension now doing what, because I think it covers both the big thing and the hustler small thing? What are you doing now?

Kelly: Yes. Stepped away from my role at Ascension a few months ago with really just a desire to take what I’ve learned and apply it to small, medium-sized businesses who really, to your point, don’t have the size, the scale, the bandwidth maybe to try to launch and develop some of the things that I was fortunate enough to be able to do in my role with Ascension. The business is new, still trying to get my feet under me and figure out what that looks like.

Like a lot of your content, it’s very insightful and helpful in helping to just move the thing forward. Just taking one step at a time and seeing where the journey takes me.

Alex: That’s fun. You’ll never regret being on your own. I regret it every day. I wish I had some friends. I would rather work for Cardinal than own it, so good luck.

Kelly: Thank you.

Alex: That’s a fun challenge, and also it is really cool to get on the ground level and start to put those big things in small ways into practice, and you’re really going to help. You’re working with provider groups now,  all kinds of health care?

Kelly: Yes, yes, yes, and also some local things in my local community, just trying to– I have found that tends to happen, people say, “Hey, what are you doing now?” You get pulled into those things. Those things are fun too, and so I’ll just enjoy it all.

Alex: Hey, roofers need new roofs too.

Kelly: That’s right, 100%. 100%.

Alex: I love it. We started with all of that, and some of our first roofing clients and doctor groups, provider groups are still clients 15 years later. I’m like, “Do you know you’re still paying those guys?” See the PPC lights on, very fun. Let’s talk [unintelligible 00:03:49] a little bit. You guys, I mean huge organization, lots of centers, lots of providers. The patient journey has evolved so much, and now mama’s finding care in a bunch of different ways. It’s not just going to Google and typing in, “Cardiologists near me.” She’s getting ads from every [inaudible 00:04:02].

We call us the sandwich generation, taking care of mama and kids. How do you make sure you cut through the noise and you’re meeting mama or whomever, whatever patient on the channels they prefer? How did you identify that? What did you guys do there?

Kelly: I know this is a little bit of a no-brainer, but the first thing we looked at is where are we seeing conversions? That’s where we want to spend a lot of our time, is where we’re seeing conversions. Then, we really leaned into personas and thinking about, “Okay, this is the type of patient that we want.” Then, we built out profiles for those personas, and based on what our data was telling us about where they were converting, we’re saying, “Okay, so depending on where that target audience is, that’s what our tactics look like.”

A lot of the things that we found is, we’d be surprised, people will say email is dead. It’s really not in that 65 plus population, which is a prime audience for a lot of the specialty care services that we were marketing. They love email, they respond to email. Now, the alpha moms, as you were so adequately describing them, email is not as successful for them. They want more of that push notification, they want more of that, “Can I text to make an appointment?” That kind of thing. It really was just leaning into those personas and thinking how can we connect with the group of people that we’re really trying to speak to?

Alex: Yes, absolutely. That’s interesting. The Medicare population 65 and up loves email. I haven’t heard that. That’s so interesting. Why? That was their first digital interaction type thing and they’re good with that?

Kelly: It would be interesting to do a case study deep dive, but just looking at the data, that’s what we found out.

Alex: Yes, [inaudible 00:05:36] [crosstalk]

Kelly: 65 plus population was one of our personas. When we looked at email, it was like, man, the most engaged group on email is that 65 plus.

Alex: So cool.

Kelly: I don’t know if it’s just– you’re probably like me, email can be overwhelming. I’m not throwing any criticism toward our 65 plusers, but they just have a little more time on their hands to dive in and dig in, and some of that longer form content was resonating with them.

Alex: Yes. That’s so interesting. Yes, our age group I think is texting, and we expect to do everything through text and chat and all that fun stuff. Also, I think the 65 and up, they have more complex conditions, and what do they call multiple conditions like this– what is that called? Multiple conditions?

Kelly: Comorbidities.

Alex: Yes, comorbidity. They have a lot of stuff going on, and how does this interact with that and all that, and so email like texting doesn’t work for that when you need to ask thoughtful questions, so I get it. That makes a lot more sense. Let’s stay on email for a little bit. I think you guys did a large thing with CRM. Is that accurate?

Kelly: Yes.

Alex: I want to talk about CRM.

Kelly: We did.

Alex: Everybody’s starting to find out, “Hey, pixels are off. We need to own our first-party data and do more with it.” Tell us what you did with CRM.

Kelly: Yes, so that was really exciting. I had the very unique opportunity to be a part of the implementation of Salesforce Marketing Cloud within Ascension. I’ll be honest, when I started that role, I didn’t know a lot about first-party data. What I learned absolutely blew my mind. You and I were chatting about it earlier, there’s a lot of focus on that retail-type approach. We want to market primary care, urgent care, and ER, those front-door services, but as we started to look at margins for the type of care that we offer, we really saw that there was more opportunity in those specialty care services. Well, that’s difficult to market top of the funnel.

Alex: Correct.

Kelly: Right?

Alex: Yes.

Kelly: CRM was really helping us drive, and that first-party data, was really helping us drive, okay, how do we reach to people who need that specific orthopedic treatment, or that specific neurosurgical procedure, or that specific heart care surgery? It was just really helping us to inform those types of decisions. Then, also, it really helped with patient retention, so we could see that if we have a loyal patient who’s trusted us for primary care and urgent care and things like that, they are likely willing to trust us and choose us for the specialty care services as well.

Capturing that captive audience, giving them the information they need at the right channel at the right time was really helping us drive growth and conversion in those specialty care services.

Alex: Specialty care, were you looking at the CRM data and EHR and all that stuff and saying, “Hey, listen, this neurosurgical, this spine surgery, it started out with this kind of visit, and so that’s the way in and let’s go.” Or did you use it more for like, “Hey, listen, yes, we know that, and that’s the entry point, and now let’s hit them with ER emails and ads and stuff?” What’s the practical application of how you guys used that to get more of the specialty service higher reimbursement stuff?

Kelly: The thing that we also learned was the CRM process, it’s just that, it’s a process [inaudible 00:08:32]. What we initially did was your second example. We said, these are the types of patients who would be eligible for this kind of care. That was really just based on the limitations of our ability to query and target at the time. You have to have your CRM going for a while and get all the data integrations into place. Data is king, right? Ultimately, what we wanted to do was look at the entire patient journey, every touch point, but tracking all of that is a work in progress.

Ultimately, the goal would be to get there, and I think health care will, it’s just going to be a process of making that dream become a reality.

Alex: Yes, because the CRM isn’t the end point. It houses a lot of stuff and helps you know, “This person came in for this and they exist, and they ended up being that,” and “Hey, this is a base of people to email from,” but it doesn’t create the journeys on its own. It doesn’t segment people out. It doesn’t help you advertise to them in a HIPAA-compliant way, like a CDP and stuff.

Kelly: Correct.

Alex: Did you start to see like, “Hey, we are missing the CDP thing, and if we want to advertise,” was there more steps to it?

Kelly: Yes, there was.

Alex: The reason I’m asking here, to frame it up, a lot of people are like, “Do I go get CRM and that solves everything?” The answer will be no, and it’s not easy to stand it up, and it needs what else? I want them to know.

Kelly: We did embark on the CDP journey. In my experience, the CRM without the CDP is helpful, but it is not the end-all be-all, and it’s not going to fix all your problems. A lot of times, you still need third-party data too. I think that, just speaking for me, like I told you, I was wowed by first-party data. Then, you realize first-party data is great, but it’s not everything. You’ve got to have a CDP that can bring in your third-party data, bring in your first-party data. Hey, how does a new patient become a current patient? Then, which journeys are they on? How do we architect those journeys in a way that makes sense to people?

There’s just a lot to it. Definitely, CRM with the CDP is going to be huge, 100%.

Alex: Yes, and not cheap, not easy. I went to Dreamforce once or twice, and I would sit with all the health care marketers in those breakouts. We’d sneak in there because they didn’t want agencies in there. A lot of them said, “Yes, shelfware,” because it takes a whole engineering team to even stand on Marketing Cloud and do the journeys correct. What does it take? I don’t want to take too long on tech, but it’s becoming super important for the next two years to really do effective health care advertising outside of just more PPC and SEO.

Real quick, what is the talent? What do you need? Can you get it by contractors? What’s the full-time thing? How much lift is this to bring on these techs?

Kelly: It’s a heavy lift. It’s a heavy lift. I won’t lie. At Ascension, we did try to do it with just the resources we had, and it just was too heavy of a lift. We did bring in some contractors short term. Then, we were, again, migrating to the point where you really need a dedicated team. You really need a MarTech team working in direct collaboration with your marketing team to make this thing go, because what we found is a lot of the tech folks, they understand the tech, but they don’t understand the marketing strategy behind why we’re trying to do what we’re trying to do.

They’re very focused on the HIPAA compliance and, “Hey, can we do this?” As marketers, we like to push the limits on that as much as we can, and so there was just a lot of alignment and collaboration that was needed. There’s a lot of energy, at least in my experience, [inaudible 00:12:02] [crosstalk]. It’s just like, “Oh my gosh, this is going to blow the roof off.” It can, and it will, but you got to have the right infrastructure in place to make that happen, and that is not a snap of the fingers, overnight type of achievement.

Alex: Yes, because it takes marketing, IT, and some legal and ops to know where capacity is and what’s the ongoing thing. It’s like someone has to be almost full-time dedicated, in my mind, to managing the tech, like a marketing ops person. Yes, they’ll use contractors to stand it up and all that. They can’t actually be doing the integration, but someone has to be really dedicated. Marketing director, don’t do this on your own.

Oh, Kelly, this is a question I get all the time. Because now you’re an SMB, so this is a good question. What do you think the first, at a provider group, multi-site provider group, what should the first marketing hire be? Then, I’m going to ask the second one after that. What level, what capabilities? I’ve been getting asked this a lot because the CMO thing’s not panning out as well as people thought.

Kelly: Yes. I think, in my experience, what a lot of these small, medium-sized businesses want to do is they want to bring in somebody to produce video content, do social media posts, and recreate their website, right? 100%, but I feel like you’ve got to have someone who thinks about that strategically and how it all works together. Otherwise, it just seems like you’re throwing random darts at a wall, right? The way I describe it is you’ve got to have the full geese formation, where they’re flying all in a V.

That’s what you need, and I feel like that’s what I would encourage a small provider group or, “Hey, I’m a standalone [inaudible 00:13:37] practice.” I’ll be honest, I tell folks that I talk with about my freelance business, I’m not the world’s best tactician. I can write some content, I can do some things, but what I’m going to help you do is get a strategy for all those things to work together in concert. I feel like if you don’t have that role, everything else is less effective. That’s what [inaudible 00:14:00] [crosstalk].

Alex: That’s exactly it. You’re keeping the group focused on the business outcome that’s needed, not just on making brand stuff or making brand– I just gave a presentation in Miami a few weeks ago, and that was the problem we heard time and time again, is, “Man, this marketing director came in, and they love brand, and I love them because they love my brand.” I was like, “Exactly. That’s the problem. Brand is cool, but if it’s not activating a market and generating patients, guys–” A lot of people don’t come with the patient acquisition mindset, and it’s all about brand, and pretty, and social posts, and wrong, wrong, wrong.

I love what you’re saying. You’ve done the big thing at the big thing. For those out there, Kelly, that want that kind of job, what would you say was paramount to you ascending the Ascension ranks?

Kelly: Oh, gosh, that’s a difficult question to answer. I think, just for a little bit of context, I started working with a local hospital system before Ascension was what they call an operating company. They were more like a holding company. Right? When Ascension made that transition to being an operating company, that is when the corporate mindset came into play. I would just say, don’t be afraid of change, right, because the way that we were doing marketing 15 years ago is not the way that we’re doing marketing today.

I just latched on to the coattails of the brilliant people that were there and continue to be there that are really pushing the envelope in what it really looks like to do marketing effectively in a health care space. When they started talking about people want to schedule their doctor’s appointments the same way they would schedule their hair or nail appointment, that was like– you know what I mean? A lot of folks in health care were like, “No way. We’ll never be able to do that.” You can. It’s hard in any industry, but it is hard in health care. Believe in the opportunity and just buckle up and get ready to ride the roller coaster of making it work in health care.

Alex: Adaptability and innovation. Guys, that’s not no for an answer, but we can’t take the old ways of doing things. It can be as simple as buying something online. It really can. I’ve seen some of the most innovative DSOs and provider groups that allow you to do everything, even reschedule, via text. It should all connect, guys, like the HIPAA compliance stuff. It makes it trickier, but it is not impossible to track everything, including online scheduling, to advertise to your first party, and bring in third-party audiences.

Kelly is absolutely right. Latch onto the people around you, make buddies with ops, finance, legal, and then we can get it done. Kelly, one more question for you that’s been on my mind. This is early 2025. What are you most excited about in marketing? Because you’ve always stayed ahead of the curve, what is going to be the most effective thing, new or otherwise, for provider groups this year?

Kelly: Maybe it’s because I’m still wowed by CRM and things, and forgive me, fellow marketers, if this sounds rude, but I feel like as marketers, we like to focus on that initial conversion, get them in the door. I feel like when it comes to health care marketing, it’s about keeping them, not just getting them. It’s about keeping them. I think CRM is a huge part of that. It’s why I loved the opportunity to help Ascension with that for the time that I did. For me, it’s about patient loyalty, brand loyalty, all those things, and how do we short circuit that in our favor, right, in the favor of the brands and the systems that we support?

Again, I think that, hey, that retail-type approach is great, and we need to lean into that and think more like that to capture patients, meet them where they are. Don’t make them make a phone call if they can do it online, if they can do it by text or whatever. Then, it’s also let marketing come alongside strategically to keep those patients so that you can really reap the benefits and the rewards of their long-term care.

Alex: We’ve heard about MOps all the time, marketing and ops alignment. We’ve got to really sit down with ops and make sure that we can help along the journey. Yes, not only are we looking at generating that new patient volume where they need it, in the service lines they need it, but also we can be a thought partner and help them retain clients and patients longer. I love what Kelly’s saying, and I get a different answer every time. Some people are like, “Review management. We just try to be 0.1 higher. PPC is changing so much.”

This is cool, and it’s not an answer I’ve gotten yet, so this is really fun. I believe in it too, because if you can increase long-term value, LTV, as they say, that means you can pay more for the initial patient visit, which means you can crowd out all your competitors in Meta and Google advertising and everything else because you can spend more there because you know you’re going to keep them longer. CRM is a good way to do that, education and making sure you’re staying front of mind with the patient so she refers her mama and her sister and their kids and everything else.

It’s not just getting more out of her. You are the educational prowess, and so they will refer you out more. Kelly, to sum everything up, this was phenomenal. We heard about things that we don’t typically hear about, CRMs and CDPs, and how to stand up the right team, and how to care for patients much long after their initial patient visit and reaction. I know you also care about content, making sure we’re educating. Guys, marketing is not simple. The fun thing that Kelly said is marketing is also part of the business enigma.

If you really want to succeed, it’s not just doing the marketing things. It’s understanding where the needs are and partnering with ops, and legal, and finance, and all that stuff to drive the business forward, not just net new patient volume. Kelly, this has been a blast. My one takeaway for all health care marketers is if you’ve only worked at the big thing, work at the small thing too, because they’re more business focused, and so that helps you in the big thing. If you’ve only worked at the small thing, work at a big thing because they focus on systems and process, and that helps.

Also, I don’t know that it’s a good thing if people are just in health care forever because they don’t see the retaily side, and we take everything for, “Oh, no, we can’t do that.” I like that you’ve done things outside of health care. I don’t know. Just very cool. I think you’re very well-rounded, experienced. I’ve been rambling. Kelly, thank you for joining us on Ignite. I’m sure all three listeners loved it.

Kelly: Thanks, Alex.

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