It’s always validating to see expertise in action. Having worked with Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) for over four years, DMD’s teams have witnessed how the health system’s marketing has evolved throughout the tenure of our business relationship--with much success!
Recently, Johns Hopkins representatives Shannon Ciconte, Senior Director of Interactive Marketing, and Therese Lockemy, Director of Digital and Social Media--along with Edith Hodkinson, DMD’s Chief Digital Officer--showcased the health system’s marketing efforts over the last 18 months.
The trio discussed various adaptations that were required due to COVID-19, a pilot campaign centered on a specific service line, and why JHM puts a concerted focus on building relationships with their HCPs.
A Pivoted Focus on Digital
Prior to the pandemic, Johns Hopkins’ primary marketing goals included:
- Fostering relationships
- Building reputation
- Increasing referrals
- Delivering insights to guide future vision
These objectives did not change when COVID-19 put up obstacles—they just had to be slightly adjusted. For example, JHM became heavily reliant on targeted email marketing. The marketing team found ways to optimize learnings from virtual medical meetings, following up with HCPs via email regarding the specific topics and interests discussed at those events.
So, if a cardiologist attended an American Heart Association medical meeting, the marketing team would send that cardiologist an email regarding research that a JHM expert had presented on during the meeting.
Individual-Driven Multichannel Approach
Our data and email scientists know that the best way to build relationships is to connect behavior to an individual—the basis for using HCP email addresses as a unique identifier, across multiple channels. By combining targeted broadcast email, triggered email--empowered by Audience Identity Manager® (AIM XR), programmatic and display advertising, and both organic and paid social media, JHM was able to achieve incredibly impressive results.
- Reached nearly one million page views
- Overall subscriber lift to the Clinical Connection newsletter of 35.48%, with emails sent by DMD
- 26.78% open rate, 6.04% click rate, and 50.75% read rate using a triggered email strategy
Send time optimization (STO) was also a key contributor to the heightened performance. This feature enables emails to be sent to recipients at the time they are most likely to engage.
The Psych Pilot: A Use Case with Impressive Results
One specific example of how JHM implemented AIM XR and triggered email is represented by a specific target audience: psychiatrists. AIM XR identified when psychiatrists were visiting the JHM portal, as well as non-JHM resources within the ecosystem of AIM websites, and the different types of disorders or disease states they were researching. For the purposes of this campaign, the marketing team focused on the topics of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and binge eating disorder.
Based on that data, the marketing team developed content that would be most relevant to psychiatrists’ unique research activities. Triggered emails containing key opinion leader insights were deployed after 24 hours. This deployment garnered up to a 17.9% open rate, 28.3% click rate, and 58.2% read rate among the three topics.
While this pilot focused on the psychiatry service line, the strategy is applicable to any service line or overall message a health system desires to prioritize and promote. The important thing is to deliver the right message, to the right physician, at the right time.
The important thing is to deliver the right message, to the right physician, at the right time.
Future Goals and Key Learnings
As JHM moves forward with its marketing efforts, the health system will continue to partner with DMD in engaging HCPs. Using robust data sets, technologies, and the resulting insights, the health system is empowered to create hyper-personalized and targeted content—across multiple channels.
Ciconte and Lockemy also offered three valuable takeaways to round up their experience collaborating with DMD over the years:
- Digital identification at the individual level is the key to providing meaningful insights that inform and optimize marketing strategies.
- Always be innovating. Digital marketing is changing at a rapid rate—from technology to legislation. Investing in technology to drive deeper insights will benefit the multichannel strategy and continue to offer guidance on future vision.
- Choose a trusted and credible partner that has the skills and expertise to support your goals at a micro and macro level.
If you would like to view the full presentation with Johns Hopkins, click below.
