Personalizing: A Key Strategy to Simplifying the Business of Healthcare
You’ve likely read the articles and seen the studies touting the power of personalization in engaging consumers. When it comes to their healthcare benefits, the same applies—U.S. workers have an overwhelming preference for personalized communications, online tools and resources, as demonstrated by a WEX Health, Clear Insights Report earlier this year.
As we gear up for open enrollment, we want to share examples of personalization that we hope inspire you—whether you’re an employer or a benefits broker— to get personal in ways that help both you and consumers meet their goals this year.
A Competitive Advantage, Especially with Millennials
When you personalize healthcare benefits communications, you provide a highly targeted, relevant consumer experience that’s been shown to drive increased enrollment, contributions and rates of saving, as well as increased consumer value and engagement. You’re also simply meeting consumer demand, as 74 percent of polled workers say they feel frustrated when web content isn’t personalized, and 63 percent say they’d think more positively of a brand if it gave them content that was more valuable, interesting or relevant.
It’s worth noting that millennials, which became the largest generation in the labor force as of 2016, appear to be the most discerning when it comes to personalization, or more specifically, the lack thereof: Their adoption rates for online portals, mobile apps and email are lower than most people expect. If it’s not personalized or customized, millennials are most likely ignoring communications and hitting delete.
Today’s focus on personalization is also driven by the massive amounts of consumer data that most employers and benefits administrators find themselves sitting on. You’re being presented with unprecedented opportunities to sort this information in ways that helps consumers be more engaged, educated and prepared.
Tell Them What Matters Today
Rather than blast out a one-size-fits-all message to consumers, build rules-based messages to target them based on specific criteria, for example:
- Custom messages on hero banners, portal homepages and/or post-login prompts can be configured around demographics such as a consumer’s age, state of residence, if he/she has a dependent and more.
- Text can be targeted around account specifics like whether or not consumers have set a health savings account (HSA) savings goal or have HSA dollars to invest, what type of plan they’re enrolled in, how much money is in their cash account and/or their investment account, and the amount and type of transactions on their HSA debit card.
Help Consumers Maximize Their Dollars
Employers and benefits administrators today are most often introducing custom content that creates consumer awareness regarding expected out-of-pocket costs. Here are some examples of how data can be turned into actionable content:
- Because younger audiences typically have the benefit of time, employers can target messaging to them about the importance of starting healthcare savings accounts early.
- Workers age 55 and over with an HSA can be targeted with messaging reminding them that they have a higher maximum contribution.
- A banner image can remind flexible spending account (FSA) participants to spend their money before runout is over.
- Cost-saving tools can be tailored to family size, account balance or spending activity, and links or displays can be filtered around specific state regulations or transit authority messages with features and functionality provided through MEDSURETY.
- A text can be sent reminding HSA participants who have dependents that they can use their HSA dollars for things like contact solution, sunscreen, first aid kits, blood pressure monitors, glucose monitors, thermometers and more. (The MEDSURETY mobile app also now allows users to scan an item to see if it qualifies as an HSA-eligible expense.)
To measure the power of personalization, the MEDSURETY Employer Dashboard helps benefits administrators see the state of your CDH account-based business, allowing you to better manage and monitor growth, efficiency and engagement across your organization.
Personalization leads to better consumer engagement and efficiency, which leads to helping consumers maximize their health benefit accounts, and ultimately, that’s what it’s all about: simplifying the business of healthcare.
Remember to follow MEDSURETY on LinkedIn to stay up to date on our latest posts. If you have any questions, call us at 952-303-5700.
