Hello Health provides an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) app to doctors. The EMR is free for doctors, and doctors charge their patients to access their medical records. Hello Health & the doctors share patient revenue.

OUR WORK

Interim VP of Marketing • Customer Acquisition (patients)

PROBLEM

Low Conversion Rate (10%)  & high Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) ($67).  Hello Health paid jr. sales reps to sell to patients in the doc’s waiting room.  Sales reps used a Mac computer to demo the app.  No data or reports to track conversions or ROI.

OUR OBSERVATION

1.  Patients didn’t want to be ‘sold’ at a doctor’s office and felt the doc or insurance should pay, especially when other docs (who used other EMRs) didn’t charge.  2.  The reps were college students without sales skills.  3.  Reps + macs were expensive.

OUR MARKETING SOLUTION

Our idea was to make it less disruptive, and instead, easy for patients – ‘business as usual’.  They were used to filling out check-in forms at doctor visits & they trust doctors more who are ‘compliance-based’, so we tapped into that psychology, Obama Care as the force behind the change…and the added benefits the patient would receive.  Our solution was a 1 page sign up form:

1.  Tell, don’t sell → we removed the sales reps, and trained front desk staff to ‘tell’ patients at check-in that they were upgrading to comply with Obama’s IT Healthcare Act.  2.  One-page check-in form → the staff then handed check-in forms, which the staff asked the patient to complete to have access to their records online.  3.  Patient Purchase → the form included consent, credit card & demographic data.

Eventually, the paper form was converted to an iPad check-in.

COMPLEMENTARY MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

1.  Automated calls → using the doctor’s voice, before the doc was installed, to inform patients of the upcoming change and let them sign up thru an 800# or website.  2.  Mailed letters – that came as follow up to the doctor’s automated call.  3.  Mailed invoices → with a similar “tell, don’t sell” invoice format.  4.  Auto-renewals → of patient’s annual subscriptions.  5.  Doctor website → we gave each doc their own website where patients could sign in/up.  6.  Staff incentives → paid doctor staff for sales.  7.  Data mine & email market (proposed future solution) → to increase the doctor’s revenue.

RESULT

Lowered average CPA from $67 to $8, and increased conversion rate from 10% to 21% in 2 months.  Some docs had 50-80% in-office conversion rates.  We tracked conversion rates for each type of campaign and overall averages, per doctor.

WHY DID IT WORK?

Patients were already used to filling out check-in forms – it was ‘business as usual’ and more natural for the staff.