Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Wednesday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant, I'm the Co-founder and Managing Director of BWG Connect. We're networking and knowledge sharing group with 1000s of organizations who do exactly that we network and knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be this shaping the ever evolving digital landscape as a whole. And so it's a multiple different verticals. And, you know, encourage anybody reach out afterwards always love to have a great digital conversation as a whole. It's I talked with 30 to 40 organizations a week. And that's how we stay on top of the newest trends that are out there. It's also how we come up with the topics for our calls as a whole. So love those conversations, love to chat with anybody. A couple housekeeping items as we get started here. We want this to be as educational informational as possible. So at any point in time you have a question, you have a comment, drop it into the chat, drop it in the question section, or you can always email me aaron@bwgconnect.com And we can feel questions that way as well. The last thing is we're starting three to four minutes after the hour. And just so you know, we're gonna wrap up with three to four minutes to go in the hours while we're gonna give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. So looking at your watch, just know, we'll give you plenty of time. With that being said, we're going to go ahead and kind of kick off this conversation as a whole. As I noted, you know, speaking with 30 plus organizations a week, you know, healthcare as a whole is a huge topic right now, you know, obviously, anything in digital financial services, also huge, but coming up more and more and talking to a lot more organizations in the healthcare space as a whole around keeping patients engaged, right. A lot of that has to do with information and providing the information and being a resource. And so I've had a lot of different people reach out saying, Hey, be great to have a conversation around, you know, the whole informational piece and keeping patients engaged and how it goes together. And we've got some great friends over at the Hileman Group. Tom's with us today, as well as Sue from the Cleveland Clinic. And so it's gonna be a fun conversation. But you know, Tom, I'm going to kick it over you first if you want to do a brief intro on yourself and Hileman group and then we can kick it over to sue and then kind of jump into the conversation sounded.

Tom Hileman 2:27

Thanks, Aaron. We appreciate it. So I'm pleased to be here today, especially speaking with Sue. We're going to talk about one of my favorite topics is patient communications and engagement. And so today, Sue and I are previewing a little bit of the content. We're going to be talking about it at the conference at MPs while at the end of the session, but really, how do we keep people engaged? And how do we, how do we drive? How do we build that trust, and then continue with that trust? So I'm Tom Hileman, Hileman Group specializes in healthcare, marketing and helping health systems connect with patients and providers and a myriad of other folks in that space of zoobel. Introduce yourself.

Sue Omori 3:06

Thanks, Tom. Great to present with you. I'm Sue Omori, I'm the Marketing Account Services Executive Director at Cleveland Clinic and work a lot with Tom and his team at Hileman group. And today, as far as the agenda goes, is there instead we want to keep it pretty conversational. So if you have questions, please drop them into the chat. And we're happy to answer in real time. But we really want to talk about what's below the agenda Slide, please, we really want to talk about this very important topic of how to keep patients engaged. And really, in these unprecedented time is more important than ever, and even that trust element. So we're going to talk a lot about the importance of trust and trusted authorities. And then we're going to walk through a few examples that we've used with how to engage trusted authorities, and some really specific things. They're really getting the right message to the right audience at the right time using the right tool, then, of course, we want to hear from you. We want to answer your questions, and then had to have plenty of time for q&a. Tom, why don't you go ahead and kick us off with a discussion about some research on trusted authorities and healthcare.

Tom Hileman 4:10

Thanks, Sue. So one of the things we often talk about why the technical aspects of marketing and how to reach and, and the digitization, but I think it's the foundation of all communications who is trust, right, because if they don't trust you, it doesn't really matter how good we are getting the message out what the message is, or any of the technical bits and bytes in that. So when we look at the data and this comes from public opinions, strategies survey, one of the critical pieces is really is who do people trust. And if you look at the top three with the with the helpful red box, you can see it's all about our about the condition of the healthcare people that we interact with, which is really our doctors and nurses and hospital systems that we represent and work with. They dominate the top three and if you look at the two, the green and the blue, were there 85 plus percent of people trust these organizations. Why is that learn local, they know who they are, they know who they are. They know they're in your backyard, they trust them, you have personal interactions with them, as opposed to some of the folks at the bottom of the list, which may be more national, or more be more more abstract. So these are our neighbors and friends who are talking to us, and they also have expertise in those areas. So it's incumbent upon us to be that messenger and to understand, we understand our local area, and we understand the people and folks trust us explicitly. So if we go to the next piece, a little excerpt that was pulled out of this research report, really put a little context with the Coronavirus in this. People are starved for information, and they want to feel more in control of their lives. And so the world where you can't necessarily control the Coronavirus, you can control your understanding and what you can do about it personally, so much to get that information and control. The message is as are close important as who delivers the message. And I think we've seen in the era of Miss missing unprecedented times the amount of misinformation that's been in healthcare has never been like this today. The politicization of healthcare has never been like what we've heard heard today, right? Things we didn't as healthcare marketers have to think about two or three years ago, right. And today, our patients and the people who interact with us, they're getting information from everywhere, right? So we have to control what we're, what the message, we're delivering it with the people who resonate with them, and they trust and just make them make sure we're also not wearing them out, we're 15 to 18 months into this thing that's going to last a while. So it's incumbent on us as marketers to really keep that keep that message consistent, keep it trustworthy, and let people continue to feel more in control by getting the information they need from us. Now, these times, sometimes people specifically in health care don't necessarily want milk, they want to go out and foray into the world that we're in because of friends, family, and different opinions on what things are and misinformation in facts. But if you look at this data, this is pretty compelling to me. I mean, essentially almost 90% of the public, this is hard to believe, and I've spent a very degree in anything right? on public health issues, they want to hear from the providers of care period, full stop, like this, these, they trust us because we're in the backyard. We know them. They're our local institution, we're unbiased, and it's incumbent on us as healthcare marketers to communicate and to leverage this trust that we have, and to keep that sacred trust, to continue to communicate effectively with people. And I would encourage everybody to there's been a lot of hesitancy, specific Leyland as vaccine hesitancy, but communication that healthcare as an STI, this is something that we just have to do. If you look at the blue that that these are from August and then January, August last year, um, literally a year ago, in January of this year, it's only gotten better from an agreement, I mean, statistically, literally the same. So we have just, we have to fill that void. And I think see where that comes from is where I talk a little bit is how do we engage? What are some of the strategies? What are some of the tactics that we can do the levers at trust, to really get the message out?

Sue Omori 8:22

Yeah, and I think to start with that, because I think identifying that trusted source is really a great place to start. And a Cleveland Clinic, one of the things that we do is if you talk about the specific ways in which we do that, we almost always start with a broad based messaging strategy. And by that I mean, we really think about what's the problem we're trying to solve? That's a question we asked all the time in marketing, you know, as we think about we meet with clinical leaders, is what's really important to start articulate the issue or opportunity right up front. And so for example, one of the things that our clinical teams were telling us early on, well actually was like through the summer, just a few months ago, there was a big concern about people not returning for care. And I know you have some examples of this, we're going to talk about this. But one of the first things we do is, if we're hearing that we're going to say so step one, we're going to say, you know, let's look at our appointment data. Let's look at any our objective data, we have some qualitative data from clinical administration. And then we look at our own secondary research to so that's the first thing we're doing is just we're gathering and we're trying to understand what's happening here. And why is this happening? And then a really important element is at Cleveland Clinic. It's just a strategy that's worked so well for us is, is so we might talk about the problem. And then we work with our colleagues and patients and we develop our broad based messaging strategy first. So we'll say as we think about this problem of return to care, and we're going to talk a lot more about this and H NPS. By the way, we're going to have a whole section on this and hmbs but as we talked about that we're saying what's our messaging our broad based messaging under your messaging framework. So that would be developing a core message, developing proof points around that message, making sure we really understand our target market. And then you really talked about this a lot in your section of the clinic, who are those people that are going to be our spokespeople, or trusted sources for that information, because you really have to be spot on with who you're picking to be that source of truth. So in this case, we talked about returning for care, you know, if our overarching message is, your care is really important. It's safe to return to care, we're here for you. It's like who's going to be delivering that message. And then from a tactical standpoint, we really start so we always start everything from working with the corporate communications team and our content team of if we say your care is important, it's safe to return to care, we're here for you. We we've that been through every single tactic. And we almost always go with the multi prong approach of pay tactics on tactics and earned tactics. So we always think of those things together. And I think that's really

Tom Hileman 11:11

powerful. So if we stay there for just a second, yeah, if we're going to combat misinformation, right, and we want to reach people where they are, which is the Pater and unknown, right? We really have to, we really have to think about those proof points. And then also, I think we you mentioned there as the person delivering that is almost more important than the proof for critical.

Sue Omori 11:33

Yeah, yeah, it's totally Yeah. And, you know, you can see here one of the tactics, what we're doing now webinar. Yeah, just a

Aaron Conant 11:44

question that comes in. And I wanted to just bring it in and just remind others, if you have questions or comments as we along the way, just drop them in there. It says, What about trust and providers and PLC? You know, there are issues with distrust and providers versus friends and family? And I think, and I agree with that, and I think that's why this informational piece, it is. Right. So you know, yeah, PLC people of color. You know, there is, you know, thanks, really for clarifying. You know, there is this, you know, piece that's highly dependent on providing accurate and trusted information in the right manner. And if you have any comments on there as a whole and how you're addressing it, and we're probably getting into it right here, but I think it's a great.

Sue Omori 12:34

Yeah, actually, if we can, if I can, just in time, I can both address and actually specifically, it's actually it's actually in the next slide. I think we can

Tom Hileman 12:44

awesome, love it. Really? key question. Yeah, we'll talk about the, the Alexa, let us talk about the Hispanic community. Yeah, a few minutes. But people of color, obviously, there's a lot of history there when it comes to healthcare. And we need to make sure that we have people, we're communicating the message that is consistent with that level of trust.

Sue Omori 13:05

Yeah. And kind of spoiler alert on that one, it's really making sure that you understand that you're engaging community leaders in that discussion. And people of color, because you just want to, I mean, that's just such an important step. I mean, the webinars really do kind of play into that the example here that you see this webinar was done for business leaders and philanthropy, constituents. And this is just but this would be fairly typical. And what's interesting about the webinar strategy is we we hardly ever did webinars at the clinic at Cleveland Clinic prior to COVID. We did a lot of in person events, we did a lot we really tried to connect with people face to face. And we didn't do that many webinars. But you know, obviously, the pandemic has necessitated different strategies and tactics. And so we started doing webinars, actually, several times a week, and we would do them in kind of micro targets. But what we found what we were really unprepared for is how popular they would be. I mean, they're just incredibly popular. And most of the time we're getting in the hundreds. But you know, you mentioned how we micro target we were talking about people of color. We We did a lot with like faith based leaders early on, because the faith community is so important to engage them as partners. The last thing you want to do is talk at people we want to talk with people now understand the issues, the unique issues in that community, in any any particular target market. So webinars turned out to be a fantastic way to engage with all sorts of community constituents. You see one example here, but we were doing these several times a week for months, and still getting good attendance. We never saw attendance drop off. It's nice, and it was really gratifying. But you know, very, I think the the issue with webinars is making sure you have something really relevant to say If the target audience and the people speaking are the bright people speaking right

Tom Hileman 15:04

there people like the people in the audience, right? Yeah. They trust people that they that they can resonate with. And they would they find, they could hear the content from right. And so you'd mentioned we'll talk a little bit about audience and faith based leaders and the different ways to do that. Another example we'll talk about is Vanderbilt. They live in this Music City, USA. So part of their culture is bringing some of the music celebrities into that, right. So people, it's finding folks that folks can trust that that they identify within their community. And then I think what you mentioned here is just really the hyper targeting, right? Yeah. Because digital allows us when we when we had an in person event, it's much more broad based. Right, right, because we have to be by its nature to get the larger audiences you need larger. That's the hyper segmentation here, which is critical. This allows us to really move into that.

Sue Omori 15:53

Yeah. And I think the platforms are so much better now to Yes, we really found that quickly this. And there is a whole, you could do a whole webinar on platforms. But you know, we we quickly found which platforms worked well. And we're easy to use, easy for people to engage. So that's even Another thing to keep in mind, you know,

Tom Hileman 16:13

for certain that it's all evolved, right. So the technology has gotten a lot better, just like we have today. Right? And one of them but one of the tried and trued in the in the internet originals is email. Right. And we've seen is very interesting to me, because people have said email that long of email, right. We've seen tremendous adoption and usage of email in the last 15 months during the Coronavirus. I mean, people use it as a lifeline for information you guys publish weekly Yeah, you CEO talking about what's happening or weekly, bi weekly, depending on the time of the year. So one thing when the show here is we also we work with other healthcare organizations like North Scott, and white and Vanderbilt. And we've seen tremendous across all of our clients tremendous engagement, I mean, our average open rates, mid to high 40s, click through rates three or 4%, unsubscribes, less than half a percent, maybe lower point 1% many cases. So we've seen double or triple kind of industry benchmarks across this. And it hasn't, even though the frequency of email has been pretty consistent, there has been almost no drop off and engagement. People back to the theme we talked about earlier, people want to try to get some perceived perception of control in their lives. And they can control their information consumption and better understanding what's going on. So we're really seeing that and i would i would encourage the audience members that no email seems like a pretty trite tactic. But it really works really well, whether it's this kind of communications or so the acquisition work that we've done. And we just continue to see that actually, it's grown, it's gotten better, it's hard to believe I would have thought, if I was sitting in this room with you last year, I would have thought the numbers would have came down on engage. Yeah, but

Sue Omori 17:51

yeah, we worried a lot about communication fatigue, to our constituents. And we just didn't, you know, we just haven't seen it, people are really hungry for the trusted information. And you had mentioned our CEO email, and we sent that out for well over a year, every week to all our patients, over a million people received that email every Tuesday. And but it was very consistent. And so people knew that they could count on a topic. It's short, a very short email, links to more information really important. And I think it's that consistency. And then you have to have something to say, obviously, that's really important point to make here. And so what we, you know, we have backed off the cadence a little bit, but one of the things now we're kind of thinking about is, and we have been for some time is really understanding the whole communication ecosystem with, you know, it's like, how often are people receiving communication from us and about what you know, so that is a consideration. You know, how many emails are there getting from us? Have we layered in text messaging, and my chart messaging, you know, the electronic health record? So you really, email has been just tremendously successful for us as well. So you want to but it is one of those things that you want to stay vigilant that it stays relevant to the target market, and keeping in mind who it's coming from? Right, really important, and

Tom Hileman 19:18

the consistency of it. I think, I think one of the things that it's too easy to do with emails is do it do a bunch of layoffs. Yeah, do a bunch more. Right. But consistency, I think you guys have been great with a cadence being consistent, cuz then people expect that they've acted on Tuesdays, right, especially if something's happened in your local area where the numbers would have been going up, right? People want to, like are expecting you to say something, if you don't say something, yeah. Then they can. The vacuum gets filled with other people's messages. Yeah.

Sue Omori 19:46

It's really great way to, to continue that that messaging framework that I talked about a couple slides ago. The other thing that we've used

Aaron Conant 19:57

another question comes in is around frequency, right. So you're touching on that a little bit on the webinar side, and then the email communication side. So what is the frequency look like? And then how often are you reevaluated because I think you're hitting a great point is, you know, you can dial back, inconsistency is not a good thing. But a steady frequency is good, you can dial back a little bit, but delta variant ramps up, then you can ramp up communication again. But what is the frequency? And then how often are you evaluated the frequency? Yeah.

Sue Omori 20:25

And really, you did hit on it, you know, just and then Tom, I'm curious what you're finding as well. But with the cadence of communication, we look at those open rates all the time, are we seeing anything fall off? Are we seeing, you know, our metric do our metrics remain strong. And so it is, as long as people are demonstrating interest, we're going to keep sending to me that we have something to say I mean, we never send email just to send email. So I think that is part of it is just looking at the metrics. But we do reevaluate cadence. And we did decide to back off the cadence of those CEO emails, just a little bit, because we wanted to make sure that we weren't fatiguing people in that tactic. So it is something that we look at really all the time. It's not just occasionally we look at it all the time. And I think that consistency is, it's just so important. And then also making sure that we're talking to other areas in our organization, how often or maybe other areas, sending emails as well, you know, so that to the same group, so it's really, we have a really granular look at who we're talking to at what frequency and then always watching the metrics around that time. Do you find that with some of your clients as well?

Tom Hileman 21:44

We do. So we look at a couple things sending with we work with us, we have dashboards, essentially. So trend analysis of the week, month over month. So I would say if the question is, what's the right frequency, the quiet The next question is without ask is what tactic you're talking about. So the tactic of the frequency kind of go hand in hand, right? So we're talking about social frequency is going to be much higher daily, or a few times a day, right email, probably weekly or bi weekly, depending on what you're doing. optimism, the type of email for talking about acquisition, emails versus marketing, General communication, emails, more of a frequency. So I would suggest to the audience, the first thing to look at is to have a clear dashboard about your key engagement metrics. And then typically, that'll be things of your web visits, it can be for your email, you're talking about your open your click through rates and your unsubscribes, keeping an eye on that. And looking at that stuff, at least monthly. Yeah, making an adjustment to be careful week to week because other world sways. And so depending on how big your lists are, and how big the engagement is, the noise of the statistics might be in there. So I would look at it at least once, or at least monthly to hopefully you have a dashboard or some way to connect all the data together. And that we've worked a lot over that over the years, just getting all of our data in one place so we can make informed decisions. The other piece is and two, I think this is really talking about to the other areas of doing having a platform in place, whether the marketing automation or marketing platform that can actually throttle your emails to a different department that you're not over communicating. Yeah, any of the leading platforms allow you to say I'm not going to talk to anybody more than three to three times a week or twice a week or whatever you want to set, then you know that continuing medical education isn't blasting about their newest event. And we're also talking to international patients through that. And we're talking about the local market, right? So there's some things that you can do from a technology perspective to really manage that over communications and putting, putting some hard limits on the upside of

Sue Omori 23:39

1. I think you bring up an important point in the governance too. Yes. I mean, I think governance is just one of those topics that is, is really important, especially when it comes to patient communication. And we talk about it a lot. And we have all the voices we have, really everyone you can think of at the table. When we talk about that topic. And we we try to make sure that we have a good bird's eye view of who is trying to accomplish what you know, with respect to communication, whether it's business communication, or acquisition, communication, or just informative communication. So and I think people come to their communication tactics with a point of view, too, about frequency. It's like saying, when we when we start talking about how often we're going to talk to people about COVID, it was saying, we think we think once a week is the right cadence with the two

Tom Hileman 24:31

platforms tested, and we have the data that we can see right, and then we can go back and forth. So right hopefully that helped answer the questionnaire.

Aaron Conant 24:39

Another great ones, but I think you're I mean, a cool thing here time I think you were saying is testing and learning. This isn't. It doesn't take months and months to get data back. And the more you test and learn, the more you're going to the quicker you're going to hone into you know the patient as a whole and what they're looking for. And then you'll be able to better provide and set the test and learn those things. It brings up this just could you distinguish how you determine the patient communication sent through a typical email communications engagement tool versus what you might send specifically through a my chart type message.

Tom Hileman 25:12

The gray my chart questions are grown here. So we have no control over what my chart so epic, whether it's epic, epic as my chart cert or all scripts, they have their own patient portal versions of that. Yeah, so typically, my experience is the epic communications. But because let's let's let's differentiate a few things. One an audience epic, my chart communications make up what 10% of your patient population? That's

Sue Omori 25:41

a lot more now. 20%? Yeah, it's a lot more now. They Yeah, we're getting since COVID, we saw that go up.

Tom Hileman 25:48

Before it was before COVID is less than 10%. Probably maybe 20 to 30%, probably tops is my guess. So what's called let's call it a third just to be gracious in the world that we live in. Right. So Aaron, you're only going to hit a third of the people through my chart. And of that third that is potential of your patient population. And of that third, I don't know how many is really engaged with watching March or all that closely.

Sue Omori 26:11

Cuz usually you can look at in my chart, they will be able to tell you whose we'll look at how they open their my chart in the last year.

Tom Hileman 26:19

Yeah, and so the numbers I guess, firstly, I would say to most people, my chart usage is not very high, gotten better. COVID definitely gotten better and gotten better, but nowhere where I would think that nowhere, I think what I would do, I would confirm good. I wish more people were using it to it. If not, I would want to use my words carefully here. It's not a very good tool for marketing communications. And I really intended for that really attend for that for clinical communications, lab results, scheduling those kinds of things. So when folks, there's no real way to limit that have been through a process perspective that typically run separately. I mean, my chart vacations aren't even in your I don't think in your

Sue Omori 26:59

we talked to them. We talked about governance. So

Tom Hileman 27:01

governance, I think is key there. Since the comes my chart is really kind of independently operated it through a much different purpose. In my opinion, my opinion, the broad based communications through the marketing technology we have is the is really the place to deliver most of these messages. And my chart really should be focused on more of the personalized individual actionable medical care messaging. So that's what I would say so and then the only way to manage them. Because nothing really integrates with Epic at that level, if you can control that is really through a governance model. Yeah, we're the only way to heal that. Yeah.

Sue Omori 27:39

I mean, the one thing I will say, my charts an amazing tool, and we have gotten a lot more visibility into my chart and what they're doing. But you raise an important point, it's like, people expect a certain amount of I mean, that's their medical communication, you know, so you want to be really careful, we don't want to use my chart messaging inappropriately. But I will say we thought really skyrocket. So important communication around vaccine availability, scheduling, it's, I mean, it's amazing. And so we worked really hard to increase our my chart, enrollment and participation in my chart. So it's really quite appropriate for some of the things that are complementary to what we're talking about, right, the broader base communication. And but what's important is to understand, I was just working on a project yesterday, where I was looking at how many people have a phone number listed with us an email listed with us, our active users in my chart, that kind of stuff. So it's just important to understand where it may or may not fit, you know, in your own communication ecosystem. I do want to have a chance to get to hyper targeting a minute, which is it kind of goes into it. So it's really kind of a similar thing. I mean, the thing with around the pandemic with COVID, early on in January, one of the things we noticed right away, and it's one of the questions, they came up with this this opportunity in need for hyper targeting. Because think of it still a quite a scary time. But this was an incredibly scary time. And identifying those trusted resources for hyper targeting was really important. So the problem identified if you think you go back to our message framework, the problem identified was, there was just not enough information out in the Hispanic community about COVID, about symptoms of COVID, about where you could get a vaccine, and some of the reasons you would do that. And so we actually even that was brought up to us, but one of the things we do is we ended up we got into dialogue with the Hispanic community members, like leaders in the Hispanic community in the Northeast Ohio area. And we really talked about what would be helpful. What do you need, we really engaged a lot with our community outreach team, they're where the rubber meets the road. I mean, they're out there and they understand some of the issues. And so one of the things we did which is shown here is we made sure that all the materials that we developed were also developed in Spanish. And that if they needed to have if there needed to be modifications made for appropriateness, and in targeting, we would make those. But we still stayed on point with our overall message, you know, the message we were putting out about vaccine hesitancy, you know, addressing vaccine hesitancy about COVID, symptoms, things like that. And so we created all the materials. But the the thing is on that we also backed it up with webinars, we talked about that with webinars, we went into the community, we talked what would be most helpful, we engaged faith leaders, in lots of webinars with that. And it was really, it was very important that we also had to round out that experience, because it's not, it's disingenuous to just have some Spanish language communication out there and think you've done the job, you haven't, you have to have Spanish speaking, providers, you have to have instructions, signage on site in Spanish. And we did that with all our different communities. We did that when faith based leaders came to us, we talked to them, what can we do to help this situation? How can you come with us on this journey of education in the community? So that was kind of a real micro level. And then you really look at the mascot campaign was really kind of at a macro level. And this is every mascot. It was a campaign that engaged 125 health systems across the country. And this kind of started when our leadership at Cleveland Clinic and other major health systems were saying their leaders, too, were saying, What more can we do to support this effort. I mean, we this is really a public health effort. And so we came up with this coordinated campaign. And it was quite successful. We had 130 million impressions across TV, print, and digital 60,000, website visits, major outlet coverage, you know that today's show New York Times, and it was very, very successful. But the other element of this campaign that that also contributed to success was, it can be customized locally, because there again, getting back to the trust, getting back to the information that people want to know. So you know, these apps could be customized to whatever way people felt were appropriate, kind of using the left all mask up. And then we also followed with a vaccine hesitancy campaign a little bit after this that wasn't quite as big, but also quite

Tom Hileman 32:29

effective. And an interesting, I know, Baylor Scott and white one of our customers was also in this as well. Yeah. And so their, their local version was masked up, y'all. So in terms of you took it into the some of the faith based communities here and Hispanic communities in different communities, they took the Texas spin on it, and tried to make it resonate with what, who, their audiences who they perceive them to be. Yeah. And I think that's probably one of the critical things. That Well, I guess we'll get to our K key takeaways here in a second. But think one of the critical things that we've done, we think about underlying thread is meeting people where they are right, which is one of your points on it can't be disingenuous and just a message, right, it's got to be the signage, it's got to be the entire experience, right? It's got to feel personalized for that individual and their background and who they are, right? Because at the end of the day, if we're going to have trust, one of the main components of trust is personalization. Right, right. You've known someone for a while and you can kind of personalize the communications and experience for the person. The trust only grows. Right. So what's interesting about community partnership, is this taken it from the whole kind of American community, a national level, all the way down to a local level, a neighborhood in Cleveland, kind of airy thing, right. And if you think about all of our opportunities to engage across that, that's how we build trust, right? We're consistent with communications. And we talk to people where they are. And we also talk to them clearly, not up or down to them. Right, in terms of the folks that resonate with them. And clear and consistent messaging. Yeah. And that's one things that you guys are very good at is having the messaging and just that consistent proof points throughout all of these pieces. Yeah,

Sue Omori 34:08

time. I think we just wrapped it up. Oh, we'll go to the key. The key takeaway.

Tom Hileman 34:18

Actually, we have actually two or three more sessions that sections Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be we're gonna talk more in depth about some of the more the local grassroots efforts of how that Yeah, a little bit of some technology and how you how you achieve that scale. Because I know when we talked to Paul, your cmo was about how we make this scale, right. We're gonna go from nationwide to the local level, we have to scale ability. Yeah, absolutely. And I think about our key takeaways, like yeah, I mean,

Sue Omori 34:44

messenger is as important as the message. I mean, they're both important, obviously. And we talked the whole time today about this about the importance of the messenger, but it's like, choose wisely on that on the messenger. It's really, really Important, and what I can say about the messages, you know, develop the message framework and really stick to it and have it resonate and have it permeate all your paid, owned and earned tactics. It's like stay on point, one of the things we work really hard is we don't let the message creep. You know, you have plenty of opportunities to add proof points that still fall under that messaging. So that's, that's really, the messenger is important. The message is extremely important as well. Yes. Is discipline

Tom Hileman 35:31

there. Right. Yeah. That's exactly right. The discipline to stick to the message, and then to make sure that from a messenger perspective that that person promotes, supports the message. Yeah, it doesn't detract because the website is easy to see and examples throughout. Yeah, three occasions with Yeah, absolutely. I think to follow that is really making it personal for your audience and with them, what's in it for me, right? So why if we're going to get to why would we go down to the local neighborhood level? Or, or spend the time and effort to personalize the language? And the signage and all those pieces, right? We want to make a personal experience. If you look at all the research out there, the more personal the more personal we make the healthcare better, the outcomes are what actually outcomes medical outcomes are, right? Yeah, right. You look at to look at the data, even from like a Press Ganey. People want that bedside manner. And that communication is just for their physician almost as much as they want the actual capabilities and skills and the grief

Sue Omori 36:29

that that person. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and then just even on the third point, engaging at the local level, driving grassroots, it's, it is about you just getting healthcare is personal. And you need to communicate with people in a really personal relevant way. And I've been really, it's just been such an honor and a privilege to work so closely, although, I mean, I've been working in healthcare marketing or communications for over 35 years. And it's just such a privilege to work with people who are closest to the patient, and closest to the community. I mean, the community outreach team, they know what's going on in your community. And, you know, one of our one of the early points was we always say, I mean, it's very common for us to ask in any meeting, what problem are you trying to solve? And, you know, when you think about engaging at the local level, it's like, what is the issue at the local level? You know, how can we be your partner, and the worst thing we can do is talk at people and not engage with them. And it's just, it's really, it really is a privilege to work with our community leaders, and it's just so important, because might not have a bunch of chances to get it right. You know, to get it right.

Tom Hileman 37:43

The margin for error is small. Yeah. And I think that I think that talking ad is one of the key things to make sure that we're not doing because often, often from healthcare perspective, a lot of folks can be a little bit talking on high right, on the theory, and now it's right and making it tangible and personal, again, that is an actionable for them, and that they don't feel debilitated by it. Right. Think about all the information out there. What do I do with all of it? I think that messaging framework and that discipline, critical, thinking the last point I make, we'll talk about this a lot at HMP S is world not going back. So I was I was having a conversation with one of our customers a couple weeks ago talking about point 22, and budgets, and should they look like 2019 budget? And the answer is well, no, right? Because that the way, the way that we look at engaging folks, webinars, for instance, was probably a microscopic line item. It's certainly should be a lot bigger, right? And a lot of the patented tactics have involved they'll be some shifting back. And hopefully we'll have more in person events and whatnot. But what it what 100% wasn't 2019 of like a person event is not going to be the same 100%

Sue Omori 38:54

right. We're still doing virtual events, right here. I mean, they were so great for us people like the convenience of them. Yeah, yeah. So it's different.

Tom Hileman 39:02

The mix of the tactics are what we do are going to change right now, the messaging isn't going to change, right, where our messaging and how we do that. Our personalization, the way we do the outreach, those components can be kind of key temples and how we put through how we put it together. But I was, I guess, caution, folks is not doing a Save As for 2019. It's just the world isn't the same. And in my opinion, we're not going back. Right, right. So we it's been a horrible 15 months for a lot of folks and a lot of loss, and as a society, a lot of pain and things that we've had to endure. But we've also gotten some benefits of digitization and technology, telehealth is now at a level that we couldn't have anticipated a decade or two ahead maybe of where we thought it might be right. So we have all those great things that we can pull from this and then we also have mRNA. Now this is going to be a huge boon to cancer and immunotherapy. Right so loves There's a lot of hope ahead. But we win from a planning perspective for us as marketers, we really need to go. We really need to plan for the world as it will be. Yeah. As opposed to maybe what we wanted it to be right point, I think. Yeah. I think that was, like said, we have a couple more two or three more sections. We'll be doing this for I think, 90 minutes. hmbs, though, discipline ourselves to keep trying so much to talk to anyone interested, the links on there, and they have both a virtual and an in person event in Miami, I believe. So love to see you all in Miami, but also understand if you want to come in on the virtual side. I think Aaron will pause and see what kind of questions you have for us.

Aaron Conant 40:36

Yeah. So another one that comes in a reminder, others who have questions drop in the question section there, chat him or email them to me in I think it goes right back to I think a couple of things. So she had mentioned, you know, texting, you know, SMS earlier. But also that key takeaway was around the message, right? And the messenger being important as message it says, What about messaging for populations that are not online? You know, is there been any exploration in text communication or issues with privacy or security? love to hear your thoughts on that? And you know, Tom as well,

Sue Omori 41:11

too, that's your favorite one. Yeah. You know, what we talked about, actually, we talked about texting a lot. And this is where governance is really important. And we have a patient communication committee, and we talk about data governance, we talk about what's appropriate for texting, and we talk about even the tone and manner of the text, you know, because texting, absolutely. The only reason you'd ever want to use texting as a communication tool is something highly actionable. You know, we're asking you to do this. Click through to do that, you know, and it's not just confirm your appointment. But it is, you know, is texting appropriate for vaccine, you know, where there's vaccine locations around you or something like that. But I think we do talk about it a lot, because you can't violate the patient's trust, you know, I mean, and so we have a committee that that actually approved every single text that goes out. And it sounds very bureaucratic, but it's not. And it's a patient communication committee, it was formed, because we get so concerned about are you we don't want to inundate people with communication, and we want to make sure it's relevant and useful. So texting is one of those examples, where, you know, the thing we're going to look for first is, is it absolutely necessary, is it you know, we're asking people to do something specific, and then making sure that it doesn't violate any patient privacy, I mean, an attorney sits on that committee to, to make sure that we're not violating any patient privacy. So for example, we don't even put any, we put no disease or condition information in packs as an example, you know, we would never text somebody, even like they're due for a screening, we'll say like something like you're due for an important screening, please check your my chart or go here without a colon, we don't say you're due for a colonoscopy or a mammogram. So it's important. I mean, the government's angle on that it's really important. And it is we're we're very fortunate to have a very interested and engaged legal team when it comes to that we're very appreciative of that.

Tom Hileman 43:21

Now, the flip of that, though, is to is and we talked about this, I think we're air was maybe part of the question is, for some folks all we have this text. Yeah. So we have to think very strict, very thoughtfully about how we want to leverage that, right. Because as much so forth, so I think everyone the questions are, well, what do you do when only you have text? communities that that that texting is much higher than you would have? from either my chart uses? For sure. Yeah, even email. So texting can be used very effectively, also the tart for places where we only have that communication Avenue available. And I think people should look at that and look at their data and understand that, but be careful, right? There's considerations about what you can send me an email versus what you can send me in text are two different things. And I think we use them in a common sense way. We can be effective. But I also think is a really good opportunity to reach specific populations, with texts that you might not be able to get through email or other other activities.

Sue Omori 44:20

Obviously, you have your opt in and opt out, you know, those? Obviously, it's that kind of permission based communication. But you're absolutely right. I mean, we have these tests very effectively, and populations that are difficult to reach. And again, we rely on people who we rely on community, an understanding of various communities through our community outreach through community leaders to understand Are there other things we could be doing to communicate with this group?

Aaron Conant 44:54

Awesome. Next question is around the KPI. See, I think you mentioned that there's a dashboard. You know, I said, you know, open rates what's, what are the KPIs? So people start to put some of this stuff in the place. How do they know? How they gauge? And is it working? Okay, is it working? Great? Is it not working? What are those KPIs look like?

Tom Hileman 45:13

Yeah, so KPIs depend on the tactics. Right. So if we talked about email here, right? Text doesn't have a whole lot of KPIs to it mean this little conversion there. But so email, I mean, the big ones typically are deliverability, like how many people who actually got our message, the open rates, the conversion metrics, conversions opens, if different rates there with that, obviously, in the social media, you have different different activities and engagement measurements there. And then you also advertising measurement in terms of pay per click and conversions. And that we typically this this is more of a broad marketing communications discussion, as to and I thought there has to be put on patient acquisition to be different. So in with patient acquisition side of things, we have, obviously, ROI conversion metrics, along those things. So Aaron, I'd say depends. Today, we talk more about broad communications, more what I call top of the funnel type communications were really awareness and engagement, as opposed to conversion for specific activities. Those are the kinds of high level KPIs I would think from an awareness.

Sue Omori 46:19

Yeah, I think you hit the end, we often try to when we explain the metrics and to our leadership, you know, we often like to include a benchmark and industry benchmark. So they understand if this is better or worse than the industry benchmark. Right? It really depends on the message to

Tom Hileman 46:41

push on the industry. So healthcare is an industry so for instances, open rates, most industries would kill for Yeah, absolutely kill for health care has some of the highest and we also work in the b2b side of the world. These are 2x, what you two or 3x, what you see in the b2b space. So I think industry metrics can be helpful. But I often advise clients, after you've gotten the initial industry benchmarks prior to kind of year one, and you kind of know, really, you've convinced working off yourself, because your local market so much different, your brand is so different. I mean, the Cleveland Clinic brands is one brand versus Tom helmets, hospital, right? Like it would be a different. So there's the brand attributes with that, too. So I think industry benchmarking, there's tons of sources. And if anybody wants me anyway, once more information happy, reached out to me through email, and I can provide that or are interested with you. But I would I would argue as you get kind of through your the early years of your journey on this benchmarking, it's really the best mark off yourself. That's what you guys do. That's what we do. Institute Yeah, types of campaigns to each other. Right. We know what the industry is. But what's the Cleveland Clinic explanation when it comes to this type of program?

Aaron Conant 47:49

Absolutely. Where you thought might come up today that didn't, you know, you get asked routinely, or people you know, pick your brain on all the time that, you know, that didn't pop up in questions today?

Tom Hileman 48:05

Um, I mean, I think people ask me a lot about measurements. We talked about that a little bit with dashboards. So how do we measure this? How do I times when talking with Marketing Leaders? How do I prove this effectiveness to the C suite? So Paul, we talked about the lifetime of the financial modeling Yeah, of that. So Aaron, we often get asked that question. So how can I prove this? I gotta prove that any more budget? is one thing like, how do I how do I show that my budget is being used effectively? And and that I can walk into the CFOs? office with with that, so we get asked that question a lot. We get asked the question around, I get asked a question about what are other people doing, you know, the trends in this space. And that wasn't the sort of focus of today's piece. But people often want to know, kind of what what things are trending, CRM comes up a lot in the conversations that I get asked them to see what

Sue Omori 49:02

I did same. Same kind of thing, Tom, I mean, the other thing, I guess, is what we get asked a lot around, what's next? What's new, the next big thing and who's doing it? And, you know, we're in a very competitive space. We want to we want to, we want to be first we want to be here. Yeah. And we often look at Cleveland Clinic, we often look at other industries, what are some tactics that other industries are using that would be perhaps appropriate for us to try? You know, that's how we got in some of the early days of social actually, you know, so that, you know, and our, our leadership is always wondering about what else can we do what next? So I would, I would just add that

Tom Hileman 49:52

So yeah, I think the carry on to that one. One of the things that people always ask me about in the West next is artificial intelligence. I can we can spend another hour? Absolutely. But I mean, Aaron, that's the one that what does that mean? Right? It's a question that we have, right? And how are we going to leverage this powerful technology that's continuing to evolve? That's an area that we spend a lot of time talking about. But yes, everyone in your top healthcare system, you want to be able to continue to be at the top. And hopefully we got it right. So what's that? What's around that bend that we can anticipate and break? Then AI machine learning, certainly one of the ones that's going to be one of the main, the main pieces and marketing.

Sue Omori 50:32

And that also brings to mind how can we use things differently to I think virtual health is a great example of that. What are the ways in which we can use virtual health differently than we have in the past? Or are we fully optimizing every tactic that we're doing? So we have a lot of discussions around that to

Tom Hileman 50:52

think about an omni channel patient journey, right and cross channel switching? switching between the web to your app to your my chart? How do we how do we manage that journey? Yeah,

Sue Omori 51:03

that's a tough one feel seamless, right? The patient and there, that's where your that's where your messaging framework comes into play to?

Tom Hileman 51:12

You got the messaging, the technology and the data. Yeah, we make it all flow. Yeah. And make it through that personalized patient experience, of course, is one of the Holy Grail. So absolutely. We've been working on for a few years. Yeah. And probably for a lot more.

Aaron Conant 51:26

Awesome. No, I love it. And I see we're getting right here to time. So Sue, Tom, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks for being such great friends and partners to the network. You know, for sure if anybody needs some follow up information on this, want to do a deeper dive more than happy to connect you over to Tom and the Hileman Group as a whole. They're great friends, partner supporters, the network. And with that, I think we're going to kind of wrap it up. hope everybody has a fantastic Wednesday. Have a great rest of the week. Everybody, take care, stay safe and look forward to having you at a future event. Thanks again soon. Thanks, Tom. Alrighty, we'll take care