How Audience Segmentation Can Drive Medicare Advantage Campaign Success: Case Study and Downloadable Tip Sheet
In healthcare marketing, identifying and understanding your audience is the cornerstone on which nearly all other aspects of strategy and planning are built. We helped a Medicare Advantage (MA) payer enhance their marketing efforts by applying segmentation to the prospect universe and creating rich, actionable personas. By breaking the audience into distinct demographic and psychographic groups, we were able to deliver more personalized, effective messaging across multiple channels.
Case Study: Creating Personas for Medicare Advantage Audiences
Our approach to this MA campaign highlights the five key steps to our Audience Identification and Segmentation process.
1. Discovery and Data Analysis: Illuminate the landscape
Member data and responder data was gathered from the client, along with prospect data from a third-party partner. This step involved appending hundreds of consumer data points (such as homeownership, car type, magazine subscriptions, etc.) to each record. The result was a super-rich data set of members, past responders and prospects that was just waiting to be analyzed and dissected.
2. Segmentation and Model Building: Start to paint a picture
With the data in place, we worked with a data analytics partner to group consumers into distinct cohorts based on shared attributes. By recognizing patterns in the data, we were able to identify a universe of consumers who had a strong propensity to become members. Using this data, an algorithm or predictive model was built that would allow us to identify prospects who fit this profile within the total addressable universe.
Looking within that prospect universe of likely-to-be members, we dug deeper to find subsets of people that coalesced around certain demographic and psychographic attributes. Three subsets or cohorts emerged, from which rich personas began to be built.
3. Persona and Journey Building: Dig deeper into the details
Up until this point, the process is shaped by data science. It’s at this stage that the “art” of the process begins. Our team took the cohorts from Step 2 and transformed them into detailed personas. By understanding the demographic and psychographic attributes that contributed to each cohort, we began hypothesizing the emotional and rational motivations – the needs and wants of these consumers – to better understand their Medicare shopping and decision-making process, even deducing which plan benefits would be of greatest interest.
For example, one persona might prioritize access to a broad provider network, while another persona might focus on additional coverage options. These personas were used to guide our creative strategy, ensuring that every communication resonated with each unique audience.
Additionally, by analyzing the data and overlaying MRI Simmons insights, we were able to identify the media channels that are of greatest interest to each persona. We now had the messages we thought would resonate the strongest and the media channels to use to distribute those messages.
4. Implementation: Turn insight into action
Based on these personas, we built and executed a multi-channel campaign, tailoring the media preferences to each cohort. Tracking mechanisms were added to track the performance of the campaign as a whole, as well as individual media channels and tactics. Taking a persona-based marketing approach, if done successfully, should lead to either an increase in lead volume or an increase in marketing efficiency (lower cost per leads) – and, in a best-case scenario, both.
5. Tracking and Reporting: Scrutinize and optimize
Modeling and persona-building requires ongoing refinement. By tracking campaign performance, we further understood our targets and were able to refine models and further optimize messaging. This feedback loop allowed us to make adjustments and optimize messaging across all channels for future campaigns.
Keep these tips handy: Download our Audience ID and Segmentation tip sheet
Effective audience segmentation can drive better results in healthcare marketing, as shown by this MA case study. By leveraging rich personas and targeted messaging, you can reach your audience in ways that truly resonate.
Download our tip sheet to keep these five principles of segmentation handy as you plan your next campaign!
For more insights into evidence-based healthcare marketing, check out our blog. Recent articles include consumer perspectives on Medicare benefits, important takeaways for New-to-Medicare marketing and information on the media habits of older adults in 2024.
Any questions? Reach out to Media Logic today.
