Health Org Leverages Direct Mail to Level Up Patient Engagement

PROBLEM

Limited Targeting, Low Engagement

Eleanor Health is a mental health and addiction organization with more than 40 clinics in seven states. Its mission is to help people impacted by these struggles live amazing lives. They use a comprehensive, evidence-based strategy that helps thousands of patients via local, virtual, and in-community support. 

Eleanor Health’s primary goal is to intervene early in their patients’ journey with addiction. This provides the opportunity to improve lives and reduce the total cost of care. The company contracts with insurance companies to identify high-risk patients who would benefit the most from their services. 

The primary strategy for reaching these vulnerable populations was cold calling, which often felt abrupt to patients who weren’t quite ready to speak with a medical professional. Even with a dedicated outreach team, low trust and response levels made this method ineffective. 

Paid search was also a challenge, as the regulations behind this marketing channel meant Eleanor Health couldn’t target specific individuals.  

Kristin Garcia, Senior Growth Marketing Manager, explains: “We had an audience that was quite sizable, but we couldn’t use our traditional digital advertising channels to reach out to them. We weren’t able to engage with nearly as many patients as we were contracted to engage. So where do we go from here?”

In order to properly reach potential members, the Eleanor Health team needed to explore printed marketing materials. But they didn’t have the resources or the staff to manually mail thousands of letters and brochures per week. 

To reach more patients and successfully fulfill their new contracts, Eleanor Health turned to PFL. 

‍SOLUTION

Personalized, Welcoming Outreach to Patients at Scale

Tavy Bastos, Eleanor Health’s Digital Marketing Associate, realized the team needed a seamless, automated solution to handle physical mail campaigns. Any software they might use would need to be reliable and support continuous learning through data and reports. Most important, it had to tie in with Eleanor Health’s customer relationship management (CRM) software, as well as various digital campaigns. 

Thanks to PFL’s integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Bastos and the marketing team can perfectly coordinate their online and offline outreach. Every piece of mail is automatically triggered, personalized, and tracked in Marketing Cloud. 

Eleanor Health has used this technology to launch a multi-part introduction mailer. First, a potential patient receives a personalized letter that comes directly from a nurse. Each version of this letter mentions that Eleanor Health services are eligible for insurance coverage. 

Over time, the patient will receive an informational brochure, a letter from a health advocate, and other pieces of mail that encourage them to get in touch and discover how Eleanor Health could help. 

‍RESULTS

High Response Rates, Healthier Patients

PFL’s deep integration with Salesforce allows Garcia and Bastos to view who receives each mail campaign and when it arrives. They’re also able to track appointments and calls resulting from direct mail. 

The marketing team can also easily analyze outcomes and improve their outreach strategy over time. For example, the introductory mail campaign originally began with a brochure. But when the team realized the nurse’s letter received a higher response rate, they swapped the order to send the letter first–resulting in 3X as many leads. 

By seamlessly integrating with Salesforce and Marketing Cloud efforts, Eleanor Health has been able to tackle a widespread mail campaign with very little manual work. This allows the team to spend more time on other value-added strategies and efforts. 

Eleanor Health also uses PFL dashboards to compile data and share comprehensive reports with their partnering insurance companies. 

Finally, the mail campaign has had a significant impact on patients’ lives. It increases community awareness about access to care and reduces the total cost for the individual and the overall health care system. 

Most important, patients are more comfortable with the softer approach and more likely to reach out when they’re ready. Every additional response means another person getting the help and care they need. 

‍Continuing to Benefit Lives 

Eleanor Health will continue using mail as an outreach strategy. The team is excited to explore new ways to integrate mail in their mission to engage and help patients. And with plans to expand into two new state markets in 2023, they hope to change more lives for the better. 

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