How a Fast Growing Hospital Personalizes Every Interaction

The Problem

For any health system, patient acquisition and retention are key to growth, and for our client, it was no different. Their marketing team faced an uphill battle. The current marketing platform was disconnected from their other systems, forcing them to send the same generic email to a massive list of nearly 50,000 people. There was no way to segment, personalize, or know if the messages were hitting the mark.

Everyone received the same messages, regardless of their preferences. Their technology stack was holding them back, making it impossible to connect with the people who needed them most.

This fragmented approach caused a ripple effect. Patient data was often a mess, full of duplicate records and missing information. When a new patient lead came in from a web form or a list, everything was done manually. There was no way to track where leads came from, what happened to them, or what campaigns were driving new patients.

The Solution

The community hospital needed a unified platform that could fuel personalized marketing with segmented patient data. They partnered with Penrod to implement Salesforce Marketing Cloud and connect it to their existing Salesforce Health Cloud platform.

Our project started with understanding their goals, their current challenges, and their vision for a more connected patient experience. From there, we designed a solution that would become the foundation for their new marketing efforts.

We integrated Marketing Cloud with their Health Cloud to create a single view of the patient. This meant that for the first time, marketing could see clinical and demographic data in one place, allowing them to segment their audience and create more personalized messages. We also configured a Sender Authentication Package to ensure their emails were secure and compliant.

A Native Preference Center was a key part of the marketing improvements. The preference center gave patients the power to manage their own communication preferences across different interests. Instead of receiving every email, they could choose which ones were most relevant to them.

We built custom, on-brand email templates in Email Studio and Content Builder with dynamic content to make personalization easy. The hospital could now trigger personalized emails based on patient actions, like submitting a web form. The result? Less manual work during lead intake and instant follow-ups.

Throughout the process, we worked side-by-side with the community hospital’s team, providing hands-on training and creating documentation to ensure they were comfortable with the new system.

The Results

The partnership with Penrod gave our client a scalable marketing engine that is HIPAA-compliant and built for a new era of patient engagement.

Now, their marketing team can:

• Send targeted communications to segmented lists, ensuring the right message reaches the right patient.
• Automate patient journeys triggered by specific actions, freeing up staff from manual data entry and follow-up.
• Offer a centralized preference center, giving patients control and building trust.
• Gain valuable insights from their campaigns to make data-driven decisions and prove the value of their marketing efforts.

As a result, the community hospital is now able to connect with its community in a way it never could before. They are driving higher patient acquisition and engagement while also reducing manual processes and technology overhead.

Today, patients get a personalized experience all along their healthcare journey, not just during doctor visits.