Crafting a personalized healthcare marketing strategy while following Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rules needs careful handling. It’s crucial to respect the privacy of the information users provide. Effective personalized experiences can also consider where users come from, what time they visit, if they come back, and where they’re located.

Follow these 10 tips to get you started.

1. Get Permission: Before delving into any patient’s health details for marketing, informed consent is essential. Offer a comprehensive explanation of why you’re collecting their data and how you will use it. This ensures patients are comfortable with what they’re agreeing to.
2. Limit the Data You Record: Uphold the ‘Minimum Necessary’ principle set by HIPAA. This principle advocates collecting only the essential data required for your marketing purposes. You ensure compliance and minimize potential vulnerabilities by narrowing down the data collection scope.
3. Secure Incoming Data: Handle all user-provided information as if it were gold, meaning you must protect it. Use robust encryption and stringent security measures to safeguard against data breaches and maintain its integrity throughout its lifecycle.
4. Be Transparent: Build and foster trust by articulating how you will use user information. This should encompass the type of communications they can expect, how often they’ll hear from you, and via which channels.
5. Provide Easy Opt-Outs: No one likes feeling trapped. Give patients a clear, hassle-free mechanism to withdraw their consent from personalized marketing campaigns. And when they do, honor their decision without delay.
6. Prioritize Regular Training: As healthcare regulations and technologies evolve, keeping your team updated is crucial. Host regular training sessions to delve into HIPAA’s intricacies and how to ethically incorporate personalization into marketing endeavors.
7. Perform Routine Audits: It’s prudent to consistently evaluate your marketing practices to ensure they align with regulatory and evolving standards. And if you collaborate with third-party entities, establish they uphold these rigorous compliance norms, too.
8. Avoid Over Personalization: There’s a fine line between being relevant and appearing invasive. While personal touches can enhance communication, going overboard can alienate patients. Always aim for a balance with a data-driven and goal-oriented approach.
9. De-Identify Data: When you can, use data that doesn’t directly identify an individual; this tactic provides a buffer, ensuring you don’t inadvertently reveal patient details while still allowing you to convey your core message.
10. Feedback Mechanisms: Create channels for open conversations with patients. By gathering their input on your marketing tactics, you can refine your strategy and make sure it remains effective and respectful.

Ultimately, the art of healthcare marketing lies in intertwining touchpoints with steadfast compliance adherence. This balancing act is not just about meeting legal requirements; it’s about cherishing and nurturing the profound trust patients instill in their healthcare providers.

How Geonetric & Optimizely Can Help Your Team

Navigating the digital healthcare world is complex, but the personalization path becomes clearer with Geonetric by your side. Optimizely delivers rich digital experience optimization, testing capabilities, smooth integration and innovation records that other CMS’ and digital experience platforms lack.

As the digital engine behind over 500 healthcare websites and intranets, Geonetric understands the balance between personalized patient experiences and the complexity of other products. Marketers prefer Optimizely for its ease of use in traditional and headless deployments without heavy reliance on developers. And it’s more affordable than its competitors.

Beyond technical solutions, Geonetric brings a human touch to digital engagements. If you’re ready to elevate your personalized healthcare marketing, discover the Geonetric difference today!

We’ve covered a variety of topics related to this guidance including, a general overview of the guidance, impacts to the MarTech stack, the use of Pixels for Tracking purposes, and web & digital analytics platforms. On March 18, 2024, updated guidance was released in an attempt to further clarify the intended message from HHS.

Does it clarify much? Not really. In fact, it may raise even more questions, unfortunately.

For those of you hoping for an official policy document or an exhaustive list of Q&As that provides clearer direction, you’ll be sorely disappointed. From our review, the updated guidance appears to be a modest editorial pass with some minor adjustments and other complete reversals of language. Still, it’s another in a series of tea leaves that we need to read as we attempt to interpret their regulatory intent.

There are a few updates that seem to be related to the lawsuit from AHA, Texas Hospital Association and others from 2023. And the new guidance removes some of the more problematic internal contradictions from the original guidance and tones down some of the less believable statements.

To incorporate some recognition of reality, for example, the following statement has been changed

from:

• “… when a regulated entity collects the individual’s IIHI through its website or mobile app…it is indicative that the individual has received or will receive health care services or benefits from the covered entity… and thus relates to the individual’s past, present, or future health or health care or payment for care.”

to:

• “But the mere fact that an online tracking technology connects the IP address of a user’s device (or other identifying information) with a visit to a webpage addressing specific health conditions or listing health care providers is not a sufficient combination of information to constitute IIHI if the visit to the webpage is not related to an individual’s past, present, or future health, health care, or payment for health care.”

You’re undoubtedly just as confused by this adjustment in language as you were by the original guidance release. The above changes amount to a complete reversal of viewpoint.

The updated HHS guidance continues by using “students doing research” as an example of what isn’t IIHI/PHI while other examples identify “health consumers engaging with content” as an example of what is IIHI/PHI.

We used to believe that if we didn’t know the reason a consumer was visiting a page, the fact that they were there did not constitute PHI. However, the change in December 2022 dictated that we must assume every website visitor was there in relation to current or future personal health needs, making that consumer’s information PHI. Now, the updated guidance acknowledges that consumers visit healthcare web pages for a variety of reasons, many not relating to healthcare needs current or future. Yet the guidance still fails to tell us how we translate that information into acceptable and unacceptable (or compliant and non-compliant) actions.

HHS also seems to realize that people became overly focused on IP address as an identifying attribute. IP Address has always been “on the list” but isn’t a very strong identifying attribute, thus very few digital marketers were treating it as PHI. The original guidance came as a shock to many of us as a result. The updated guidance refuses to back down on that position but has added stronger reminders that there are multiple identifiers, including “…an individual’s medical record number, home or email address, or dates of appointments, as well as an individual’s IP address or geographic location, device IDs, or any unique identifying code.”

The updated guidance seems to give more attention to the information an app or a page has vs. what information is sent to a third party through tracking technologies. This intersects with a statement added to the end of the updated guidance stating they’re prioritizing the HIPAA security rule for enforcement actions. The point? You need to first determine what information exists and its classification – is it IIHI or PHI? Then make sure that data is secured properly and not shared inappropriately. For example, a mobile app might have biometric data which then needs to be secured and not sent to Facebook.

An addition we were excited to see is a validation that it is acceptable to “…de-identify online tracking information that includes PHI and then subsequently disclose only de-identified information to tracking technology vendors that are unwilling to enter into a BAA with a regulated entity.” This is the strategy we’ve already employed with Geonetric Privacy Filter for GA4.

In the end, this updated guidance changes very little in terms of the guidance or the clarity required to implement it. We hope to see additional information throughout this year which may help HIPAA regulated entities implement mitigation strategies with greater confidence than is possible today.

In the digital age, healthcare providers face an intriguing challenge: marrying the appeal of personalization with protecting privacy principles. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is at the forefront of this challenge. HIPPA standardizes using and storing private patient health information while avoiding legal penalties and security threats.

Let’s take a look at how HIPAA impacts the patient experience.

Privacy: A Paramount Concern

As personalization potential grows, so does your HIPAA responsibility. Healthcare organizations must protect the disclosure and security of sensitive patient health information (PHI). You must balance leveraging patient data for customized experiences and complying with HIPAA regulations. A breach of privacy can significantly impact your reputation and patient trust.

HIPAA’s Role: Drawing the Line

HIPAA sets clear parameters for how to approach personalization:

• Informed Consent: Obtaining explicit consent is essential before using patient data for marketing purposes. Your organization should communicate how you will use patient data and get their consent to use their PHI. This approach ensures patients maintain control over the use of their data.
• ‘Minimum Necessary’ Rule: HIPAA stipulates that you only access the specific patient data necessary for your operations, which includes marketing initiatives. This principle helps maintain data confidentiality and protects you as a healthcare organization.

Healthcare organizations must apply data security measures to protect PHI from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. On top of these measures, you need to be transparent and accountable by informing patients about your data privacy practices and any breaches or violations.

Personalization: A Clear Advantage

Personalized healthcare marketing strategies aim to tailor messages and services to individual patients’ needs, preferences, and behaviors. This customization can improve and streamline their healthcare journey because they are more likely to:

• Pay attention and act on messaging relevant to them
• Manage their health more effectively by making informed decisions
• Follow treatments and take medications
• Feel satisfied with their patient-provider relationship

The value of personalization is evident. By tapping into your CRM system, you can identify target groups to improve satisfaction and cultivate trust through personalized marketing.

The ROI of Personalized Healthcare Marketing

Get a big return on investment (ROI) with personalized healthcare marketing. Personalization boosts the effectiveness of healthcare organizations’ marketing. Companies in all industries that grow faster attributed 40% more revenue to personalized marketing than their slower-growing counterparts.

Delivering an outstanding patient experience has value and can amplify your:

• Brand strength
• Profitable services market share
• Favorable patient health outcomes

Like everything else in healthcare, marketing strategies are evolving. Personalization has emerged and is here to stay. You don’t have to choose between ensuring patient privacy and personalized healthcare. By striking the right balance between the two, healthcare entities can deliver individualized experiences and uphold privacy, paving the way for patient trust and engagement to grow.

How Geonetric & Optimizely Can Help

Navigating the digital healthcare world is complex, but the personalization path becomes clearer with Geonetric by your side. Optimizely delivers rich digital experience optimization and multivariate testing capabilities. It has a proven track record of integration and innovation that other CMS’ and digital experience platforms lack.

As the digital engine behind over 500 healthcare websites and intranets, Geonetric understands the balance between personalized patient experiences and the complexity of using other products to achieve your objectives. Marketers prefer Optimizely for its ease of use in traditional and headless deployments without heavy reliance on developers.

According to Gartner and Forrester, Optimizely has the strongest upward trajectory in the market. Yet, it’s more affordable than competitors whose capabilities lack differentiation.

Beyond technical solutions, Geonetric brings a human touch to digital engagements. If you’re ready to elevate your personalized healthcare marketing, discover the Geonetric difference today!

In the healthcare world, where everyone has a unique story and needs, personalized marketing emerges as a refreshing, empathetic voice. As healthcare leaps towards a more patient-centric ethos, it’s exciting to delve into the transformative benefits of personalized marketing.

Here are 10 reasons why personalization is reshaping healthcare:

1. Enhanced Patient Engagement: Messages are more powerful when they feel crafted just for you. That’s the magic of tailored content. It captures hearts, kindling a deeper bond between patients and their healthcare providers.
2. Championing Proactive Health: Armed with insights into individual health journeys, healthcare providers can suggest timely health checks and preventive steps. It’s all about nudging folks toward a healthier tomorrow!
3. Increased ROI: Why cast a vast net when you can find what you’re looking for with a well-aimed throw? Targeted campaigns lead to better engagement and a more efficient use of marketing resources, giving more bang for the buck.
4. Building Trust: Imagine a friend who remembers little details about you; that’s how trust builds. Through personalized communication, patients feel seen, heard, and cherished.
5. Smart Resource Allocation: When you know what someone needs, you can prepare better. Healthcare organizations can fine-tune their services, leading to happier patients and streamlined operations.
6. Targeted Digital Experiences: A digital journey should feel like it’s paved just for you. That’s the delight of personalized online interactions, which enhance the digital experience.
7. Structuring Brand Loyalty: When people feel catered to, they stick around. Personalized touches mean patients are more likely to continue their healthcare journey with providers they’ve grown fond of.
8. Improved Treatment Adherence: Receiving a gentle nudge or health advice makes patients more inclined to stick to their doctor-prescribed treatments or medications. It’s like having a personal health cheerleader by your side!
9. Better Feedback With a tailored touchpoint, patients often feel more comfortable sharing their needs, concerns and preferences with healthcare providers. This open dialogue leads to valuable feedback, helping service providers evolve and adapt.
10. Data-Driven Decisions: Behind every personalized message is a wealth of data. This treasure trove helps healthcare organizations refine their strategies, ensuring they’re always at the top of their game.

The wins of personalized marketing in healthcare are evident: it’s about communicating in a way that feels personal, relevant, and comforting. As the healthcare world turns this exciting page, championing this approach will undoubtedly make waves, fostering business growth and warm patient relationships.

Geonetric Can Help With Your Personalization Efforts

Navigating the digital healthcare world is complex, but the path becomes clearer with Geonetric by your side. As the digital engine behind over 500 healthcare websites and intranets, Geonetric understands the balance between personalized patient experiences, data privacy and product capabilities.

Marketers prefer Optimizely for its ease of use in traditional and headless deployments without heavy reliance on developers. And it’s more affordable than competitor CMSs and platforms with similar capabilities.

Beyond technical solutions, Geonetric brings a human touch to digital engagements, prioritizing the patient’s journey and the healthcare provider’s goals.

Ready to elevate your healthcare marketing with genuine care and top-tier compliance? Discover the Geonetric difference today!

The healthcare world is quickly realizing just how important digital marketing can be. It’s a powerful way to connect with patients and meet business goals. But to really make the most of digital marketing, it’s essential for healthcare organizations to get a good grip on what digital healthcare analytics is all about.

Digital marketing is a lot like a toolbox. Inside, you’ve got various tools (like websites, social media, and online ads) that help you reach out to patients. But to use these tools effectively, you need to know what’s working and what’s not. That’s where healthcare marketing analytics comes in.

Digital Analytics: At a Glance

Digital analytics involves examining data from online sources like websites, mobile apps, and social media. This process gives a clearer understanding of user behaviors and preferences in the digital space. By analyzing this data, we can learn what users are searching for and how they’re interacting with digital platforms. This knowledge is crucial for improving customer experiences and refining our marketing strategies.

This data is collected from various channels, providing a comprehensive view of the customer’s online journey. By analyzing different sources, we gain insights into the most effective paths that lead to a customer deciding to engage with our services or products.

Digital analytics, which includes analyzing website data, is a subset of behavioral analytics. Behavioral analytics focuses on all forms of customer interactions with a business, not just digital. It’s about understanding and responding to customer behaviors and needs, enhancing our ability to serve them effectively.

What Are Digital Healthcare Analytics?

By extension, digital healthcare analytics involves gathering, studying, and making sense of data from various digital sources that provide information about how patients and healthcare providers interact with digital marketing channels. The main aim here is to delve into the behaviors, preferences, and needs of patients and providers. This deep dive helps us understand what they’re looking for and how they respond to different digital platforms.

By analyzing this data, we can pinpoint what’s working well and what’s not in our digital marketing strategies. For example, we might discover that patients are more engaged with certain types of email content or that providers prefer specific features. This insight is invaluable. It allows us to tailor our digital marketing efforts more precisely, ensuring they are more effective and resonate better with our audience.

The ultimate goal of digital healthcare analytics is to enhance patient engagement and meet our business objectives more efficiently. Through understanding and responding to the digital footprints of patients and providers, we can create more personalized, relevant, and effective digital marketing campaigns. This not only helps in building stronger relationships with our audience but also drives better outcomes for our healthcare marketing efforts.

Why is Data Mining Important for Healthcare Marketing Analytics?

Imagine your healthcare organization is launching a social media campaign to introduce a new service. If they don’t use digital healthcare analytics, they won’t know if their campaign is hitting the mark. But with analytics, they can track how many people like, comment, share, and click on their posts. This data is key to understanding how well the campaign is doing and helps in making informed decisions for future marketing efforts.

Digital analytics plays a crucial role in fine-tuning these campaigns. It helps in delivering content that’s relevant to the audience and drives them to take action, like signing up for a service. Analytics provides a comprehensive view of the campaign’s performance, ensuring that patient experiences are engaging and memorable.

Additionally, digital analytics is invaluable in managing the financial aspect of digital advertising. It tracks metrics like cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM). These figures are essential for understanding the return on investment (ROI) for ad spending. Knowing this helps shape a more effective and efficient digital marketing strategy, making every dollar count in reaching and engaging the target audience.

How Do Digital Analytics Work in Healthcare Marketing?

In digital healthcare marketing, the success of campaigns is gauged using various metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Let’s look at some of the most commonly used ones:

• Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click on a link or call-to-action (CTA) in an email or digital ad.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as filling out a form or making an appointment.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The cost of acquiring a new patient or customer through digital marketing channels.
• Return on Investment (ROI): The revenue generated by digital marketing campaigns relative to their cost of implementation.
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): The revenue generated for each dollar you spend on an advertising campaign.
• Website Traffic: The number of visitors to a website.

Choosing the right metrics and KPIs depends on what your healthcare organization aims to achieve. For instance, if your goal is to boost patient engagement with a specific service, focusing on conversion rate and CTR might be most useful. However, if reaching a broader audience is the target, then website traffic and social media engagement are key metrics to monitor.

Best practices in tracking these metrics include using tools like Google Analytics, setting up goals and events to monitor conversions, regularly reviewing data, and basing decisions on the insights gathered. This approach ensures that healthcare digital marketing efforts are not only effective but also aligned with the organization’s engagement goals.

Types of Digital Healthcare Marketing Analytics

In digital healthcare marketing, we often talk about three types of analytics: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. Each of these plays a unique role in shaping effective digital marketing strategies.

Descriptive Analytics is all about looking back at what has already happened. This includes checking out website traffic, how people interact on social media, and the rates at which emails are opened. By examining past performances, healthcare organizations can figure out which digital channels and campaigns have been most successful in engaging patients and healthcare providers.

Predictive Analytics takes things a step further by using statistical models and machine learning to guess what might happen in the future. In healthcare digital marketing, this could mean scoring potential leads, segmenting customers, or modeling behavior patterns to predict how likely patients and providers are to interact with certain digital channels and campaigns. It’s a great tool for identifying who is most likely to respond to your marketing efforts.

Prescriptive Analytics goes even beyond descriptive and predictive analytics. It doesn’t just analyze data or make predictions; it actually suggests specific actions to enhance patient and provider engagement. Using a mix of data analysis and decision-making algorithms, it guides organizations on the best steps to take to meet their goals. In healthcare digital marketing, this might involve using marketing automation, personalizing content dynamically, or making real-time bidding decisions.

Together, these three types of analytics provide a comprehensive approach to understanding and optimizing digital marketing in the healthcare sector, ensuring that efforts are not just effective, but also highly targeted and efficient.

Healthcare Marketing Analytics VS HIPAA-Compliance

Recent updates to HIPAA guidelines, and on-going changes to state-level privacy regulations, have presented a formidable challenge for healthcare marketers, especially in the realm of web performance tracking. These changes have tightened the regulations around the use of Personal Health Information (PHI), posing significant hurdles for marketing professionals accustomed to leveraging detailed patient data for targeted campaigns and analytics.

This regulatory shift has not only constrained the traditional methods of digital marketing but also necessitated a fundamental rethink in strategies that hinge on the accessibility and utilization of PHI. The impact is far-reaching, affecting everything from ad retargeting to personalized content, and forcing marketers to navigate a complex landscape where compliance is critical and the margin for error is increasingly narrow.

In a recent post, Ben Dillion took a deep dive into these challenges, highlighting the need to harness the power of digital analytics tools without compromising the sanctity of patient data. Additionally, organizations need to leap over these compliance hurdles without further impacts to their performance metrics and patient experiences.

Tips for Implementing Privacy-Conscious Digital Healthcare Marketing Analytics

Start with a thorough understanding of the latest HIPAA regulations and how they impact digital marketing. This foundational knowledge is crucial for ensuring compliance in all marketing activities.

1. Prioritize Data Privacy and Security: Implement robust data protection measures. This includes secure data storage, handling, and transmission, especially when dealing with PHI.
2. Practice Good Data Governance: Ensure analytics are not overly applied to areas where it’s not needed and that the proper amount of oversight is utilized during implementation. If the need for analytics changes, minimize risk by removing analytics tracking.
3. Leverage De-identified Data: Use de-identified or aggregated data in your analytics to gain insights while respecting patient privacy and complying with regulations.
4. Invest in Secure and Compliant Technologies: Choose CRM systems and analytics tools that are designed for the healthcare industry, ensuring they meet all necessary compliance standards.
5. Develop a Strong Content Marketing Strategy: Create valuable, educational content that addresses general health concerns, which can help in SEO and patient engagement without the need for PHI.
6. Optimize Social Media Engagement: Use social media platforms responsibly to provide general health information, avoiding the sharing of PHI.
7. Employ Predictive Analytics: Integrate predictive analytics to forecast trends and patient behaviors, guiding marketing strategies without relying on sensitive data.
8. Conduct Regular Team Training: Ensure that your marketing team is continuously trained in the latest HIPAA regulations, data handling practices, and digital marketing techniques.
9. Utilize Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Measure the success of your marketing strategies with KPIs and use these insights to refine and improve your approaches.
10. Collaborate with Legal and Compliance Experts: Work closely with legal and compliance professionals to ensure that all marketing efforts are in line with regulatory requirements.
11. Stay Abreast of Emerging Technologies: Keep an eye on new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that can revolutionize healthcare marketing while maintaining privacy standards.
12. Incorporate Telehealth and Digital Health Trends: Integrate the growing trends of telehealth and digital health into your marketing strategies to connect with a tech-savvy patient base.
13. Focus on Multichannel Marketing: Diversify your marketing efforts across multiple channels (email, social media, web, etc.) to reach a broader audience while tailoring messages to each platform’s norms and audience preferences.

By following these comprehensive steps, healthcare marketers can successfully create effective, privacy-conscious marketing plans that leverage digital analytics to their fullest potential, ensuring both regulatory adherence and marketing efficacy.

Who Can Help a Healthcare Organization Implement Privacy-Conscious Digital Marketing Analytics?

Implementing a digital analytics strategy for healthcare marketing can be approached in different ways, each with its own set of advantages and considerations. The choice between an in-house solution or leveraging a vendor agency depends on various factors such as the organization’s resources, expertise, and specific needs.

In-House Solution

• Expertise: An in-house team is made up of employees who are intimately familiar with the organization’s goals, culture, and specific healthcare context. They can tailor analytics strategies closely aligned with the organization’s unique needs.
• Control and Integration: Having an in-house team allows for greater control over the analytics process and ensures that the digital marketing strategy is seamlessly integrated with other organizational strategies.
• Cost: While in-house teams provide better control and alignment, they can be more expensive in the long term due to salaries, training, and technology investments.
• Time and Resource Investment: Developing an in-house team requires significant time and resource investment, particularly if the organization needs to train staff or hire new talent.

Agency-Led Solution

• Specialized Services: Agencies often bring specialized knowledge and tools tailored to healthcare digital marketing. They can offer innovative solutions and insights that an in-house team might not be aware of.
• Broader Perspective: Agencies work with a variety of clients, which can provide a broader perspective and innovative strategies that have been successful in other contexts.
• Coordination Efforts: Working with an agency requires coordination and clear communication to ensure that their strategies align with the organization’s objectives.
• Cost-Efficiency: It can be more cost-effective in the short term, as it eliminates the need for extensive training or hiring.
• Data Privacy and Security: It’s vital to ensure that any agency understands and complies with healthcare regulations, especially concerning patient data privacy and security.

Ultimately, the choice between in-house or agency-led digital analytics for healthcare marketing depends on the organization’s specific context, resources, and priorities.

Need Help?

Healthcare organizations continually grapple with how to effectively track and analyze their digital performance without stepping over the critical boundaries set by privacy regulations like HIPAA.

This is where a hybrid approach to digital analytics for healthcare really shines.

Geonetric, a digital healthcare marketing solution, has over two decades of experience helping healthcare organizations like yours innovate and evolve. With Geonetric at your side, your organization will have access to HIPAA compliance-friendly performance tools like Geonetric Privacy Filter, which can unlock the full potential of your digital marketing efforts while firmly adhering to privacy guidelines.

If you want to learn more about how Geonetric Privacy Filter can help you supercharge your digital marketing efforts, contact us to learn how we can help to align metrics with your goals.

Throughout our HIPAA Guidance series, we’ve been discussing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) guidance relating to the use of online marketing tracking technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and its implications for healthcare digital marketing professionals. The topics we’ve covered so far – our overview, our insights on how to manage your analytics under the new guidance, and our recommendations for your MarTech stack – are pretty straightforward as we have several strong approaches to embracing the guidelines.

Things start to get a little messy as we dive into how to track the effectiveness of our digital advertising efforts.

Why You Should Track Ads

Before we explore why the guidance makes tracking digital advertising complicated, it’s worth reminding ourselves why we use the different tracking tools available to us.

For a start, you want to know what’s working, and not working, in your advertising portfolio. Digital advertising makes it easy to target different groups of people, deliver creative messaging, and test different campaigns to find what works best. It also makes it easy to learn how many people see an ad from a particular platform, how many people click on the ad, and what people do when they land on your website.

To understand what’s working, you don’t need your site to send data to the ad platform. By carefully using UTM codes, you can connect the dots between the view and click data that exists in the ad platform and the on-site activity tracking that exists in a HIPAA-compliant analytics solution.

This allows you see what efforts are working best, and then optimize campaigns (sometimes using automated tools) to maximize click-throughs or minimize cost per click. You can even adjust campaigns for desired on-site activities (usually conversions), although this is a manual undertaking.

The challenge is that we don’t care much about click-throughs. You want to optimize for conversions, and you want to be able to do so at scale. That ability requires automated tools, and those tools need data from your sites. The more data, the better.

How Pixels Track Conversions

Facebook/Meta, Google, and other advertising platforms introduced the tracking pixel to monitor conversions. This code sits on the pages of your website and relays information about every site visitor and every page they visit to the ad platform. It also sends information when someone completes the conversion tasks, such as downloading a brochure or completing a form.

The pixel closes the loop for the ad platform. It knows who saw an ad, who clicked on it, and who converted, so it can use advanced algorithms to present the ad to people who are similar to those converting, thereby mining more conversions for every dollar invested.

And these pixels go further. They also monitor people who complete tasks without viewing or clicking on the ad. This gives the platform even more data on which to build target audiences for the desired ads.

There are additional benefits to this pixel-powered approach as well. For example, it allows for much more sophisticated marketing attribution for conversions. A user may see an ad several times before clicking on it and may come back to a site later to complete a conversion.

Pixels provide data to support the consumer journey and share with advertisers a complete picture of how their campaigns guide consumers towards interaction.

Of course, advertising platforms need to identify specific individuals who are taking these actions. Connecting conversions to a specific user allows them to use data from other sites with tracking pixels to build a profile of what a high-value marketing target looks like.

The Problem with Ad Tracking in Healthcare

Let’s say your organization wants to use Facebook’s suite of tools to optimize campaigns for on-site conversions. To do so, you need to send information that will identify visitors. At a minimum, you’ll need to pass along the ClickID, name, or email address.

This is where the Health and Human Services guidance makes it difficult. To comply with the guidance, there are a few options:

• Hosting analytics yourself
• Selecting a HIPAA-compliant cloud analytics solution that will sign a BAA
• Anonymizing your analytics data before sending it to the analytics platform using a tool, such as Geonetric’s Privacy Filter

As we look at ad tracking:

• You can’t host your own ad platform
• There aren’t any ad tracking solutions (that I’m aware of) that will sign a BAA
• You can’t anonymize the data without losing very valuable features of the platform.

So, we need something different in our toolkit. We need to flip the playbook.

Our Solution

Information needs a few characteristics to be considered PHI:

• It’s individually identifiable
• It tells us something about that individual’s health
• It’s stored or transmitted electronically at some point in its lifecycle.

For the “anonymization” strategy that we talked about in our analytics post, we remove the individual identifiability element. For ad tracking, however, we need to remove the health information component.

This requires an approach similar to the approach used for analytics where information is intercepted between the browser and the ad tracking platform. However, the controls that are applied to the data are different. For instance:

• We only send data when a conversion occurs, not for every visitor to the site on every page they interact with.
• The data sent is the minimum necessary to utilize the automated campaign optimization tools. Typically, a type of ClickID and what conversion occurred.
• We also mask the actual conversion. Instead of sending something like “$99 heart screening,” we send a more generic phrase like “Conversion 123” which only the people in the organization recognize as a heart screening.

Many healthcare organizations are comfortable with this approach. However, with a wide range of interpretations of the new guidance, not every organization is on board. We’re happy to hop on a call and talk with your team as well as your legal and compliance leadership about your options.

Learn More

In today’s digital age, when people interact with healthcare services online, they expect a smooth and user-friendly experience.

Traditional content management systems (CMS) make it easy for organizations to organize and manage website content to support their strong digital presence. Organizations that want to take their digital efforts a step further and create tailored experiences across multiple touchpoints, however, are adopting modern digital experience platforms (DXP).

Before we get too far with our comparison between a CMS and DXP, let’s cover the basics.

What is a DXP?

A DXP enables you manage and deliver digital experiences. It relies on a framework of modular and interchangeable components rather than a single, all-encompassing solution. This approach empowers organizations to create a digital experience ecosystem that fits their unique requirements, because you can easily add or replace components as necessary.

Here’s a breakdown of the crucial aspects of a DXP tailored for healthcare:

• Agility: Teams can work independently and efficiently because changes can easily be made to one component. This facilitates quick adoption of new features, updates, and improvements.
• Flexibility and Scalability: Adapting to shifting needs is straightforward. Components can be augmented, modified, or removed without the need for a platform overhaul. This flexibility ensures resilience in the face of future technological advancements and changing customer expectations.
• Interoperability: Components are designed to seamlessly communicate and integrate through well-established APIs, ensuring consistent data and functionality flow throughout various parts of the digital experience platform.
• Modularity: Key components like content management, personalization, analytics, and more are distinct modules that work together harmoniously. This gives you the freedom to select the most suitable solutions for each function.
• User-Centric Design: Thanks to the platform’s ability to integrate various tools and technologies, organizations can create a user experience tailored to their specific audience. This leads to enhanced personalization and user engagement, leveraging relevant data and content across multiple touchpoints.

Healthcare organizations that embrace a DXP position themselves to build a digital experience that not only aligns with their mission, workflows, and patient needs but also ensures seamless integration with healthcare-specific systems. This enables compliance with industry regulations and the delivery of a secure and user-friendly experience.

DXP vs. CMS

A CMS focuses on managing and storing content, making a clear distinction between the content itself and how it appears on different platforms. Content is easily shared across channels and devices using APIs, offering flexibility in how the content is presented.

On the other hand, a DXP takes a more comprehensive approach, weaving together a variety of tools and features to create, manage, and deliver a complete digital experience. It supports the modular connection of different services and functionalities, ensuring a seamless and customized experience across all digital interactions.

Which Platform is Better for Healthcare: CMS or DXP?

In healthcare, making the right choices when it comes to digital tools is essential for delivering excellent patient care and improving operational efficiency. To help you determine which option suits your organization best, let’s explore who might benefit the most from either a CMS or a DXP.

A CMS is an excellent fit for healthcare organizations that:

• Are undergoing a digital transformation and require a flexible system that can adapt quickly to changes.
• Work with a tech-savvy team capable of working with various front-end technologies to deliver content seamlessly across multiple channels.
• Need to ensure their content is easily accessible not only on websites but also on mobile apps, patient portals, and other digital platforms.
• Seek a cost-effective solution that still offers robust functionality and flexibility.

On the other hand, a DXP is a better choice for healthcare entities that:

• Operate within complex digital ecosystems with various integrations, requiring a robust solution to bring everything together.
• Aim to provide highly personalized patient experiences by leveraging data from different sources.
• Wish to orchestrate intricate digital health campaigns and patient engagement strategies.
• Seek a solution that not only consolidates their digital tools, but also provides advanced capabilities for analyzing, optimizing, and enhancing patient interactions across the digital landscape.

While a CMS offers simplicity, flexibility, and the ability to distribute content widely, a DXP provides a more comprehensive and integrated approach. It ensures that every aspect of your digital presence is considered and optimized. Choosing between the two ultimately depends on understanding your organization’s specific needs, goals, and the complexity of your digital initiatives.

Getting Started with Optimizely + Geonetric

If your healthcare organization is thinking about stepping up its online game, the partnership between Geonetric and Optimizely could be just what you need.

Optimizely is a versatile DXP specifically crafted for creating captivating and personalized websites and digital interactions. This platform empowers content creators to generate, modify, and oversee content across multiple websites. Optimizely also offers a wide array of customizable tools to help your organization streamline digital experiences and enhance customer retention.

However, it’s essential that healthcare organizations adhere to specific regulations, such as HIPAA compliance, when selecting a DXP. That’s where Geonetric comes in.

This partnership provides clients with a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) built within a fully-managed, one-stop solution for healthcare organizations. Here are a few notable benefits you can look forward to:

• Flexible Setup: This partnership gives you a DXP that you can shape to fit your healthcare organization needs. It’s a digital platform that’s custom-made, ready to adapt to whatever you need for your patients and services.
• All-In-One Solution: From setting up easy-to-use patient portals to managing your online content and using patient data smartly, we offer one big toolbox where everything works together seamlessly.
• Grows with You: Your healthcare organization is always changing and growing, right? Optimizely DXP can change and grow with you. It’s designed to keep up with new demands and trends in healthcare.
• Smart Use of Data: This partnership makes ethical (and compliant) use of patient data to give more personalized care. Think of it as being able to automatically intuit what each patient needs and prefers, to give them better care.
• Safe and Secure: With all the patient information you handle, security is super important. This partnership makes sure patient data is kept safe and follows the rules, like HIPAA.
• Easy for Patients to Use: A fully-managed DXP can help your organization make sure the digital information your patients will find (make?) it easy to use your services online.
• Help and Support: Starting with a digital platform can be tricky, but Geonetric, an Optimizely partner, is here to help. We guide you through implementation and keep your sites running smoothly.
• Better Marketing and Communication: This solution also helps you get the word out about your services and talk to your patients better using digital marketing tools.

In short, Geonetric and Optimizely joining forces means your healthcare organization can get a digital experience platform that’s easy to change as needed, keeps data safe, and makes your online healthcare services better and easier to use.

Check out our FREE eBook to learn more about how Geonetric and Optimizely can supercharge your digital footprint, today!

Personal touches make a significant difference, especially when it comes to healthcare. It’s all about connecting genuinely with your audience. By shaping your messages and offers to fit your audience’s needs, you boost their interest, trust, and willingness to act.

Let’s tackle the basics of personalization.

What is Healthcare Marketing Personalization?

Personalized healthcare marketing is about creating tailored messages for patients and healthcare consumers. Instead of a “one-size-fits-all” approach, it focuses on understanding each person’s unique needs, likes, health conditions, and backgrounds. It’s a way of recognizing that everyone is different and ensuring how we talk about health and wellness matches their interests.

These insights help marketing teams pinpoint the right audience and guide them throughout their healthcare journey. Plus, with personalized marketing, healthcare organizations can connect to people without wasting money on ads that reach the wrong crowd or don’t resonate with audiences.

Why is Personalization Important in Healthcare Marketing?

In healthcare, nurturing trust and establishing relationships are keys to attracting, retaining, and keeping patients engaged. Personalization helps healthcare organizations connect better with individuals and groups of consumers in their communities.

When your healthcare organization has a solid, personalized marketing strategy in place, you’ll enjoy:

• Added value from your campaign spend
• Brand experience that reflects the personal nature of healthcare
• Increases in targeted audience engagement
• More high-value conversions (e.g., appointment booking)

Using personalization to enhance your patient experience can also reduce the burden on your frontline staff and call centers.

In addition to a solid business and content strategy, you need a personalization platform to support it all. Many legacy CMS/DXP systems offer personalization platforms, but they’re designed for web developers to set up on behalf of marketers, which means organizations can be at risk of “developer dependency” where only very technical users can design, test, and deploy personalized content or experiences. On some legacy systems, even experienced web developers can struggle with the product architecture and face challenges trying to realize the full potential of the software due to technical complexities.

When selecting a CMS or DXP with a personalization engine, healthcare marketers should look for one that’s fully modern and designed for non-technical users to manage day to day.

Is Personalization Just a Short-Term Trend in Healthcare Marketing?

Google estimates that 7% of all daily searches center on healthcare. That’s over 1 billion searches every day. And 58% of American adults readily turn to the internet for health and medical information. When consumers seek this information, the following statistics highlight the value they place on healthcare marketing personalization:

• 92% of consumers lean toward brands that cater to them with pertinent offers and insights.
• 80% of individuals are more likely to make a healthcare appointment if offered a personalized experience.
• 79% of consumers expect healthcare websites to personalize their experience to deliver more relevant information and services.
• 68% of consumers get frustrated when healthcare websites show or recommend actions that aren’t relevant to them.

These data points emphasize that personalization isn’t a healthcare marketing trend that will quickly disappear. Consumers demand personalization. By integrating a tailored approach, healthcare organizations can craft experiences that align more closely with patients’ needs and concerns.

How Does Personalized Healthcare Marketing Work?

For many healthcare organizations, personalized marketing centers around their CRM and marketing automation efforts. These systems allow for targeting groups of healthcare consumers within a geographic service area in a HIPAA-compliant way based on demographics, history, and their likelihood of needing a particular medical service.

Aligning your website personalization strategy with your CRM-based tactics presents a frequently overlooked opportunity. By establishing this alignment, the website can maintain consistency with other creatives, brand messaging, and actions used across other channels. Geonetric can help create this alignment.

Personalization Process

How can you personalize your healthcare marketing effectively? At its core, personalized healthcare marketing aims to enhance patient engagement and trust by delivering customized messages and services. Geonetric follows this approach:

• Start with a strategic approach by asking “why.” Why do you want to implement personalization? What business outcomes do you want to improve (appointments booked, access to urgent care information, increased blog pageviews per session, etc.)?
• Identify the involved patient audience.
• Collect data for online interactions, surveys, email marketing, feedback, and any other sources you can access for the target audience.
• Analyze the data to identify patterns and segment your patients into distinct groups. Each group shares specific health concerns, demographics, behaviors, or interests.
• Craft targeted marketing campaigns, choosing the right channels and messages for each segment.

Throughout the process, we prioritize the most valuable outcomes and focus on the groups with the greatest potential for improving the results. These actions make certain patients receive information and engagement offers that match their health journey, making interactions more meaningful and efficient.

How Geonetric & Optimizely Can Help

Navigating the digital healthcare world is complex, but the personalization path becomes clearer with Geonetric by your side. Optimizely delivers rich digital experience optimization and multivariate testing capabilities. It has a proven track record of integration and innovation that other CMS’ and digital experience platforms lack.

As the digital engine behind over 500 healthcare websites and intranets, Geonetric understands the balance between personalized patient experiences and the complexity of using other products to achieve your objectives. Marketers prefer Optimizely for its ease of use in traditional and headless deployments without heavy reliance on developers.

One of the biggest challenges of launching a personalization program is simply the time, effort and strategy it takes to get it off the ground. Many marketers worry that by the time they figure out personalization and get it implemented on their current CMS or DXP, the trend will be dying down or that it’s just too much work to make it happen. From creating an overall strategy, setting up data tracking, and defining audience segments to building out the necessary CMS fields and creating personalized versions of content, there’s no doubt making personalization a reality for your organization will take some time.

But with a solid partner and a top DXP that does much of the logistical legwork for you, personalization doesn’t have to be a pipedream. With Optimizely, you can get started with personalization and see the value much faster than other DXPs’ personalization systems, which is why Gartner and Forrester have said it has the strongest upward trajectory in the market. Yet, it’s more affordable than competitors whose capabilities lack differentiation, offer many similar-sounding products, or insist you use their DXP’s built-in personalization platform.

Beyond technical solutions, Geonetric brings a human touch to digital engagements. If you’re ready to elevate your personalized healthcare marketing, discover the Geonetric difference today!

Technology is making big changes in healthcare. It’s becoming increasingly clear that patients are looking for healthcare services that really focus on their needs and make things easy for them, just like online shopping does.

Think about how simple it is to shop online or set up deliveries and appointments with just a few clicks. This kind of easy and quick service is what people love about buying things online.

This same idea of getting what you need quickly and easily is starting to change healthcare too. It’s making a big difference in how patients get involved with their healthcare and how services are given to them.

These factors collectively contribute to the growing influence of eCommerce on healthcare, as they align with broader consumer expectations in a digital-first world.

The Intersection of eCommerce and Healthcare

The intersection of eCommerce and healthcare is rapidly expanding, significantly influenced by the rise in digital technologies and changing consumer behaviors. Globally, the healthcare eCommerce market has been experiencing substantial growth, driven by factors such as the increasing adoption of telemedicine, the convenience of online shopping for medical products, and the overall shift towards digital health solutions.

As of 2023, the global healthcare market is expected to grow from $309.62 billion in 2022 to $366.94 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.5%. This growth is projected to continue, with the market expected to reach $732.3 billion by 2027. North America currently leads the market, with the Asia Pacific region not far behind.

This growth is powered by several trends. Firstly, the demand for home healthcare is rising, especially due to an aging population and an increase in chronic diseases, which have led to a surge in the online purchase of medical equipment, supplies, and prescription medications.

Additionally, there’s an increasing focus on wellness and preventive care, further fueling the growth of healthcare eCommerce. This sector mainly involves the sale of drugs and medical devices, along with applications like telemedicine, caregiving services, and medical consultation. The convenience of accessing these services online, coupled with the affordability and wide range of products, is a significant driving factor.

The COVID-19 pandemic also played a crucial role in the acceleration of healthcare eCommerce. The pandemic led to a significant increase in the demand for online healthcare services as people sought to avoid physical healthcare facilities.

What these statistics tell us is that healthcare is not only changing, it’s evolving in lock-step with consumer demand.

Why is eCommerce Driving Healthcare?

What this really boils down to is convenience. Today’s consumers (who are also patients) rely on digital tools to arrange, organize, purchase, and schedule the goods and services they require on a daily basis.

They want what they want quickly, easily, and efficiently… just like an eCommerce platform.

To illustrate this point, a significant 88% of online shoppers in 2022 said that personalization makes them more likely to continue shopping on retailer sites. Furthermore, 45% of Gen Z shoppers are likely to leave a website if it doesn’t align with their interests, wants, and needs. This highlights the crucial role of personalized experiences in retaining customers and enhancing their shopping journey .

By extension, healthcare consumers increasingly prefer the convenience and control offered by digital platforms. In fact, a recent survey tells us 72% of patients want more personalized care that is specifically tailored to their individual clinical needs. Not unlike retail applications in eCommerce platforms, personalized healthcare products and scheduling options allow patients to arrange their healthcare needs around their schedules and preferences, through the most accessible, personalized, and easy-to-use platforms possible.

Personalization can have a direct impact on patient loyalty, too. When a healthcare provider does a good job of personalizing customer interactions, 49% of patients feel like they care about earning their business and 47% are more likely to choose them.

These factors collectively contribute to the growing influence of eCommerce on healthcare, as they align with broader consumer expectations in a digital-first world.

10 Major eCommerce Trends Shaping Healthcare

In 2024, we’re seeing an array of eCommerce trends that are not just influencing healthcare but reshaping it. These trends are redefining what patients expect from online healthcare services and product catalogs, setting new standards for accessibility, convenience, and personalized care.

Here’s a glimpse at the top 10 eCommerce trends that are currently shaping the healthcare landscape: 

1. Increased Accessibility and Convenience: Online healthcare services and products are now more accessible due to digital and logistical advancements, enhancing user-friendliness and availability.
2. Growth in Telemedicine and Digital Health Applications: A surge in healthcare-related web and mobile apps, ranging from basic health tracking to advanced digital care and virtual health assistance, is evident.
3. Expansion of Online Services: Digital platforms are broadening healthcare services, including remote consultations and personalized AI-driven care.
4. Enhanced Patient Engagement Through Digital Marketing: Digital marketing strategies like personalized emails and phone interactions improve patient engagement and create seamless journeys.
5. The Role of Online Reviews in Patient Decision-Making: Online reviews increasingly influence patient choices, making reputation management crucial for healthcare providers.
6. Adaptation to Evolving Marketing Trends: Healthcare marketing adapts to trends like voice search optimization and advanced Google Ads campaigns for continued visibility and accessibility.
7. Focus on Multigenerational Marketing: Healthcare services and marketing address the unique needs of different generations, improving patient engagement and satisfaction across all age groups.
8. Leveraging Data Analytics for Personalized Care: Data analytics in healthcare eCommerce enables providers to offer personalized and predictive care, enhancing patient outcomes and satisfaction.
9. Integration of Wearable Technologies: Wearable technologies in healthcare, like fitness trackers and smartwatches, allow providers to monitor patient health remotely and offer timely interventions.
10. Emphasis on Cybersecurity and Data Privacy: As healthcare goes digital, ensuring the security and privacy of patient data is crucial. Organizations invest in cybersecurity, and regulations like HIPAA evolve to address digital healthcare challenges.

Healthcare Challenges Introduced by eCommerce Platforms

The integration of eCommerce platforms into healthcare, while offering numerous benefits in terms of convenience and accessibility, also introduces a range of challenges. The healthcare sector, unlike typical retail environments, is bound by a complex web of legal, ethical, and clinical considerations.

For one thing, healthcare involves handling sensitive patient data. The use of eCommerce-like platforms for healthcare services necessitates stringent data protection measures to comply with regulations like HIPAA in the U.S. A healthcare provider must at all times be conscious of and proactively protective of a patient’s PHI and guard against the commercialization of that data in any context. With that in mind, must adhere to various legal standards and regulations that govern medical practices and patient confidentiality. This includes compliance with laws related to telemedicine, online pharmacies, and digital health records.

Threading eCommerce Lessons into Healthcare Platforms

Despite the above challenges, healthcare organizations, suppliers, and telehealth operators can still derive significant value from the strategies and approaches developed in the eCommerce sector. Such a shift would be characterized by a more holistic, patient-focused approach that prioritizes convenience, accessibility, and personalization, mirroring the success seen in the digital retail space.

But how can your organization take advantage of these benefits?

A fully-managed digital healthcare management solution powered by Geonetric and Optimizely DXP can significantly aid healthcare organizations in blending eCommerce practices within a HIPAA-compliant framework.

Here’s how: 

• Personalization and Patient Engagement: Geonetric, in combination with Optimizely DXP, offers robust personalization capabilities. This means healthcare providers can tailor their online interactions to the individual needs and preferences of patients, much like an eCommerce platform. This personalization can extend to various aspects of digital engagement, such as personalized content, targeted health program recommendations, and individualized patient portals.
• Data Security and HIPAA Compliance: The platforms provide a secure environment for managing patient data. HIPAA compliance is critical in healthcare, and these solutions ensure that patient information is handled securely, with proper encryption and data protection measures in place. This allows for the safe handling of sensitive health information, just as securely as financial data is managed in eCommerce transactions.
• Integrated Healthcare Experiences: By using these platforms, healthcare organizations can create integrated digital experiences that streamline patient interactions with their services. This can include everything from appointment scheduling to access to medical records and telehealth services, mirroring the ease and efficiency of eCommerce platforms.
• Content Management and Marketing: The content management capabilities of Geonetric and Optimizely DXP allow healthcare organizations to effectively disseminate information and market their services. This can include educational content, health program promotions, and targeted campaigns, all managed through a user-friendly interface.
• Analytics and Optimization: With robust analytics tools, healthcare providers can analyze patient behaviors and preferences to continuously improve their digital services. This mirrors the eCommerce approach of using data-driven insights to optimize the user experience.
• Scalability and Flexibility: The platforms are scalable and flexible, allowing healthcare organizations to expand their digital offerings as needed. This is particularly important in the rapidly evolving digital healthcare landscape, where adapting to new technologies and patient needs is crucial.
• User Experience Design: Geonetric and Optimizely DXP focus on creating optimal user experiences, which is a cornerstone of successful eCommerce platforms. A well-designed user interface that is easy to navigate and accessible can significantly enhance patient satisfaction and engagement.

A digital healthcare management partnership like the one offered by Geonetric and Optimizely DXP enables healthcare organizations to meet the rising demands of eCommerce within a secure and compliant framework. It allows for personalized, efficient, and secure digital healthcare experiences that are patient-centric and data-driven, aligning with the best practices of eCommerce while adhering to the stringent requirements of healthcare regulations like HIPAA.

If your organization could benefit from a supercharged patient-experience, download our FREE eBook today to learn more.