Penrod Blog

Orchestrating Exceptional Member Journeys

Seven Marketing Tips for Health Insurance Companies

Written by Matt Fiel

As a health insurance marketer, your primary task is constantly looking for ways to improve member engagement and loyalty. But genuine engagement is not always easy, especially across 1000's of lives. You must navigate through challenges created by healthcare reform, economic uncertainty, and technology shortfalls.

Futhermore, traditional marketing strategies often fail to reach members meaningfully, leaving them feeling disconnected from their health plan.

Illustration showing woman meditating

Fortunately, achieving your health insurance marketing goals is possible thanks to modern marketing platforms that orchestrate and automate meaningful member journeys. 

By leveraging these tools, you can create personalized experiences that will help build relationships with your members and drive loyalty over time. In this article, you’ll learn the best practices for developing successful member journeys using digital marketing automation tools.

Challenges of Health Insurance Marketing

Health insurance marketing is never without its challenges, especially in today’s congested digital landscape. With healthcare reform and changing legislation, it can be challenging to keep up with the latest trends in marketing and compliance. 

Additionally, budget constraints make it hard to create effective campaigns. On top of all this, there are privacy considerations that you must address when dealing with members. And, of course, you’ll need to manage member expectations while keeping up with the ever-changing digital marketing landscape. 

How Member Journeys Help Overcome Challenges in Health Insurance Marketing

Member journeys provide a powerful way to overcome health insurance marketing challenges. Digital marketing automation tools help you create personalized member experiences that help build relationships and drive loyalty. 

By creating personalized email and website campaigns, you can easily engage members on a personal level. You can also automate member onboarding, reminders, and follow-ups to ensure they stay engaged with your brand. Additionally, digital marketing automation tools help you track and analyze each journey so you can adjust them as needed. 

Top Marketing Automation Strategies for Health Insurance Member Journeys

Now that you understand how digital marketing automation tools can help create successful member journeys let’s look at the best practices. 

First, it’s essential to start by creating a comprehensive action plan. This should include setting goals, identifying target audiences, forecasting desired outcomes, and outlining the journey for each type of member. 

From there, you can leverage automation to achieve the following:

1. Personalized Member Onboarding

A key element of successful health insurance marketing is addressing each member’s unique needs and concerns. Generic messaging does not achieve this, resulting in churn.

To combat this, use automated member onboarding to collect critical data and create personalized messages for each individual. In so doing, you’ll enhance their journey and foster loyalty. 

2. Automated Reminders and Follow-Ups

When your members face decisions related to their healthcare, providing them with relevant information at the right time is essential. Automated reminders and follow-ups that correlete with open enrollment, life events, and more help ensure members make the most of their health plan. 

3. Targeted Segmentation

Digital marketing automation tools come with segmentation capabilities. This allows you to segment members into different categories based on their preferences, allowing you to send targeted messages and create personalized journeys. 

4. A/B Testing

A/B testing is an crucial part of any digital marketing strategy. It helps you determine which campaigns are most effective, so you can tweak them as needed. This is especially important in health insurance member journeys, as you’ll want to ensure that your campaigns drive the desired results. 

5. Cross-Channel Integration 

Cross-channel integration is another crucial element of successful health insurance marketing. This allows you to automatically sync data across multiple channels so that members have a consistent experience no matter where they are engaging with your brand. 

6. Lead Scoring and Management 

As a marketer, the more leads you generate, the better. However, not all leads have the same potential of converting. This is why lead scoring and management is essential. It helps you prioritize the leads most likely to convert so that you can focus on them. 

As a result, your marketing efforts will be more personalized, successful, and cost-effective. 

7. Analytics Tracking

Finally, analytics tracking ensures your member journeys are working as intended. With the right analytics tracking tools, you can monitor the progress of each member’s journey and make adjustments as needed. 

This will help you obtain better campaign results and ensure that all your members remain engaged.

Best Practices for Creating Orchestrated and Automated Member Journeys

When creating member journeys, it’s essential to start with a plan that outlines your goals. Once you have your plan in place, you’ll need to determine which digital marketing automation tools best suit your needs. From there, you can create personalized campaigns that will help you engage and retain members. 

When creating campaigns, include relevant content such as educational videos, helpful tips, and upsell offers. In addition, you should include automated reminders and follow-ups, targeted segmentation, A/B testing, cross-channel integration, lead scoring, lead management, and analytics tracking. 

These tools will help you create a compelling member journey that will ensure your members remain engaged and loyal to your brand. 

Benefits of Health Insurance Member Journeys

Creating orchestrated and automated member journeys can positively impact your health insurance business. When done correctly, you’ll experience:

  • Higher member satisfaction and loyalty, as members feel their needs are being taken into consideration 
  • Increased engagement with members that result in more conversions
  • Improved communication between members and the health plan, resulting in greater trust 
  • Greater efficiency by leveraging automation tools to reduce manual labor
  • The ability to track and monitor results, allowing for more informed decision making 

Marketing Automation Success Begins With the Right Partner 

Member journeys are an essential part of any health insurance marketing strategy. By creating orchestrated and automated member journeys, you can ensure that your members remain engaged and loyal to your brand. 

For best results, partnering with the right digital marketing automation company with the expertise and resources to help you create effective member journeys is essential…this is where Penrod comes into play. 

We have the technology and expertise necessary to help you create successful member journeys that will engage and retain members, resulting in improved satisfaction and loyalty. 

About The Author


Matt Fiel

EVP of Marketing

With over 15 years of experience in marketing strategy, web development, and creative design, I lead the marketing team at Penrod, a boutique Salesforce partner focused on the healthcare and life sciences industry. My core competencies include marketing strategy, creative direction, web development, and search engine optimization, which I use to create engaging and effective campaigns, websites, and content for our clients and partners. As a Salesforce Certified Pardot Consultant, I have deep knowledge and skills in leveraging the platform to optimize marketing automation, lead generation, and customer engagement. I aim to deliver ROI through marketing strategies that align with Penrod's vision and values. I am passionate about healthcare and life sciences. I enjoy collaborating with cross-functional teams, industry experts, and thought leaders to drive growth and success for Penrod, our customers, and the Salesforce ecosystem.

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