Text message marketing or SMS marketing has gained a lot of ground in the past few years and is now a common way to communicate promotional or informational messages to your audience base. This is a strategy that’s grown in popularity due to its ability to foster better relationships and enhance engagement.
For health insurance companies, incorporating text message marketing into your strategy can transform the way you interact with patients and streamline operations. We’ll be exploring this useful tool and its applications to a traditional industry that’s evolving with the times.
Can Health Insurance Companies Use Text Messages?
Taking advantage of text messages is not only possible for health insurance companies, but it can even be beneficial for communication with patients and increase satisfaction. Texts are a quick and easy way to relay information.
Those that choose to leverage this tool can easily reach out to policyholders with updates, reminders, and information. This creates a unique experience for the patient and can include personalized touchpoints that contribute to customer loyalty, trust, and satisfaction.
Interested in learning more about the healthcare industry and digital marketing? Check out our blog post for tips on upleveling your strategy.
How is Text Messaging Used in Healthcare?
Text messaging is a valuable tool for those in healthcare. It allows you to communicate with patients in a timely manner and share useful health education information.
Here are a few ways text messages are useful:
- Reminders: Whether it’s an appointment reminder, enrollment reminder, payment reminder, etc. This can ensure that patients stay on top of what’s needed and can enhance overall patient satisfaction.
- Status Updates: Sending out real-time updates on the status of important processes like claims can keep patients informed. This can help relieve any anxiety surrounding payments and let them know if there are issues that arise.
- Information: There is all sorts of information that can be sent by healthcare companies (other than protected health information). Wellness tips, health resources, and company-wide news are just a few examples.
How to Get Started
It’s simple to kick off your text messaging campaigns as long as you have the right resources in hand. We’ll go over how to get started and touch on some important points to keep in mind as you build your campaigns.
Text Message Marketing Best Practices
Marketers are always looking to adhere to best practices in all aspects of their campaigns. However, it’s especially important for health insurance companies to be conscious of additional factors to keep in mind.
- Consent: Stay in compliance with regulations by obtaining permission from your recipients before sending any text messages.
- HIPAA: This is an important best practice to keep in mind. HIPAA compliant texts omit protected health information so be conscious about what’s being sent. Reminders, confirmations, feedback requests, etc. are considered HIPAA compliant. If you’re sending anything beyond that, you’ll need to ensure you’re using a HIPAA secure system that offers safeguards like encryption, data controls, secure databases, or user access permissions.
- Timing: Send text messages at appropriate times and frequency. This will ensure that they are read each time and aren’t seen as intrusive or annoying.
- Call-to-Action: Include a clear call-to-action with each message that directs recipients to the next steps. Do you need them to review a new claim, confirm information, or follow up? Include that at the end of your message so they know what’s expected.
Creating a Text Message Marketing Campaign for Health Insurance
When creating a text message marketing campaign for health insurance, you’ll want to reference materials like your customer journey map and buyer personas first. These will help fill in the background knowledge on where the campaign fits and who it is meant for.
Define what you want to achieve with your campaign beforehand. This can be something as straightforward as, “this campaign should provide updates” to something as multi-dimensional as “this campaign is meant to promote a new policy”. Have clear objectives in place so you know what you’re aiming for and can measure the results.
Next, work on segmenting your audience so that the content you deliver is relevant and targeted. This helps you personalize the campaign and keeps your audience engaged. For example, you may have different updates for those who are already enrolled versus those that are enrolling mid-year or have yet to enroll.
Once you have the pre-work set up, it’s time to craft content. Valuable messaging comes across when content is concise and engaging. Work on creating a variety of content that resonates with your audience and either brings awareness, shares information, or provides a solution.
Finally, consider streamlining the process by automating your campaign. Automation tools like the emfluence Marketing Platform help you schedule messages and build them into automated workflows. This ensures that messages are reaching your recipients in a timely manner without much manual effort on your end.
Healthcare Text Message Marketing Solutions
There are several platforms that offer specialized solutions for text message marketing. These tools help you manage campaigns, build in automation, and analyze data. The emfluence Marketing Platform is HIPAA compliant which makes it ideal for those working in the healthcare industry.
We’ve built a platform that allows companies to maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns all from one spot. This was a solution that was created by marketers, for marketers, which means we’ve experienced all the same pain points and purposely developed features that address them. The best part is that the platform is always being updated and we regularly take requests from clients to build out features that fit their growth needs.
The Takeaway
Text messages stand out as a powerful communication tool for health insurance companies, especially in an age where information is expected immediately, and attention spans are short. Not only does utilizing this innovative tool enhance the policyholders’ experience, but it can also help you achieve business goals.
For those looking to implement an effective SMS marketing strategy, check out what the emfluence Marketing Platform has to offer!
