Marketing and communications in the Medicare Advantage space have evolved significantly in the past five years. Leaving behind a one-size-fits-all outreach approach, today’s best practice is messaging for a journey of one—targeting unique individuals or groups of individuals with similar needs. For example, health plans would want to communicate differently with members who have chronic conditions versus healthy members. Deploying specific-to-the-member messaging engages the member, grabs their attention, serves them up with relevant information, and guides them through a progression of messaging including calls to action.  

Messages are deployed via a number of digital channels such as email campaigns, social media, and newsfeed ads. Make note, that the depth of modern-era outreach is expanding rapidly to include cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence voice technology bots and care robots.  

It’s important to remember that all of these digital tactics are not just forms of communication flowing back and forth. It’s a form of optimizing and understanding the communications. Most digital interactions leave a trail of data that can be analyzed with machine learning and artificial intelligence tools.  

What that means ultimately, the member journey with the plan and with their own health no longer needs to be an isolated journey. The member’s health trajectory with the plan can be smooth, seamless, and guided by the hand of these digital tactics and insights.  

Host: Hi, thanks for joining us. This is Episode 2, Digital Tactics For Member Engagement. We’re joined by Dre Wallace, the Manager of Product Development for the Business lab, an innovator in solutions for healthcare organizations. Wallace has served in a variety of roles across the technology industry as an innovator, investor, and strategist. Dre, thanks for joining us on the show today.  

Dre: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.  

Host: It’s very interesting to historically recap where marketing has been in the Medicare Advantage space. One can’t help but marvel at how technological advances are changing the entire landscape of outreach today.  

Dre: Yes, it’s true, the past five years have evolved swiftly. The range of tools and techniques that we have today, in some respects, are much different than even a half-decade ago. You see marketing approaches of plans evolving rapidly to reflect these powerful new realities. There are ways we can connect with a member today that respect the unique needs of members and build those into the dialogue. Data-driven engagement is one of the key foundations of digital tactics for today, and digital outreach can be fueled by informed data analysis targeting a journey of one, as it’s called. Messages can be cost-effectively targeted to a unique individual or group with similar needs. For example, taking data and segmenting with an approach that treats your high chronic condition members differently than your healthy members because they have different needs and requirements and face different decisions. This type of targeting—targeting to an individual, micro-segment, or a broader segment versus a onesize-fits outreach has become best practice today. Behind the scenes are advanced data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence tools that help inform, evolve and shape waves of outreach to members. On the front lines of that outreach—the digital tactics that are applied to engage the member, get their attention, to serve them up with relevant information, and consume that information—are an increasing array of methods. Traditionally digital engagement was thought of as email outreach (for members that happen to have emails). The depth that email outreach can go to today has greatly expanded. Far more members in the senior ranks have email addressability today than they did in the past. Additionally, the breadth of other types of digital engagement we can surround them with has grown.  

Host: That’s true. I read a statistic from Pew Research that said smartphone ownership among seniors has more than doubled in the past five years.  

It’s incredible to see things evolve so quickly. Can you elaborate on the different types of outreach tactics for seniors?  

Dre: There are outreach tactics to drive digital awareness and digital persuasion for a member that includes placement of social media ads that would serve a member. At the same time, they use social media such as Facebook and newsfeed ads with targeted messages. And while those methods in their typical forms do not allow for unique addressability—meaning you can’t reach out specifically to Jane Doe or John Doe—those digital channels do allow for segmented outreach so you can target similar groups of people so that your messaging has a high likelihood of reaching Jane Doe or John Doe. The digital outreach of an email allows plans to reach specific individuals. One modern-era technique that we’re seeing applied now is the orchestration of these types of messages. Specific, influential messages appear on social media feeds with a progression of messaging and calls to action.  

It’s also worth noting that in addition to these traditional outreach channels that reach individuals when they’re on the internet, there’s a whole new range of possibilities for interacting with members through digital mediums. That includes outreach such as using a voice bot rather than having a call center or a customer service individual call to talk to a member.

Host: That’s interesting. So, what would be an example of a use case for a voice bot in the health plan setting?  

Dre: It’s possible with today’s technologies to do the outreach digitally with an artificial intelligence bot that has unique scripts, can branch its conversations, and can respond to emotions picked up from the user. This kind of artificial intelligence is a digital language that’s called sentiment analysis.  

Host: In other words, it sounds like a person and it feels like a dialogue with an actual person?

Dre: Exactly. It can be a meaningful dialogue that extracts information, provides a lift from social isolation, and lets the user know they are not alone. It’s an avenue for letting their voice be heard. And it can raise an alert back to a human care manager. All of this is possible with digital outreach and artificial intelligence voice technology.  

The value propositions have clearly been established for this type of outreach.  

Another new era form of digital outreach that will have increasing traction is Care Robots. It sounds like an exotic concept, but there are elder care platforms—mobile robots that can monitor, provide feedback, provide two-way interactions, provide support and companionship.  

Host: That’s extremely cutting-edge. Can that integrate with a plan’s other digital outreach methods?

Dre: Yes, I purposefully painted a broad brush of the traditional—email, social, newsfeed ads and then some of the new ways of engaging by voice, telephone, with an AI bot by a mobile robot monitor-helper that rolls along with you in your home. The power really comes into context when you think of that span of approaches being used all in concert together based on member needs. Plans can combine these techniques on behalf of their members when members opt in. This can really impact member health in a big way.  

The other important note that I want to share about digital tactics is that it’s not just a form of communication flowing back and forth. It’s a form of optimizing and understanding the communications. Most forms of digital interaction leave a trail that can be analyzed.  

An email can indicate whether the user opened the email, clicked, or dug deeper. A social media ad or newsfeed ad can contain a link to a landing page that we can measure whether a user dives deeper and with what frequency. We can collect additional information on landing pages, and certainly, the technology, such as voice-level conversations or monitor-level robots, provide rich insights into dialogues and interactions. All of that information turns into data points that can be analyzed to understand the members’ responses, interests, and needs. Even a decade ago, our methods for sifting through that data was relatively primitive. But today, using the powerful machine learning frameworks, we’ve reached a point of unparalleled value for engaging members digitally. What that means ultimately is that the member journey with the plan and with their own health no longer needs to be an isolated journey. The member’s health trajectory with the plan can be smooth, seamless, and guided by the hand of these digital tactics and insights.  

Host: Dre, this has been so amazing—thank you for sharing your expertise and insights with us.