email marketing Archives - Page 2 of 9

Posts Tagged ‘email marketing’

Healthcare Marketing Trends

Thursday, January 2nd, 2025

Here are some healthcare marketing trends you should consider adopting.

Email Deliverability

Thanks to Google and Yahoo, significant changes happened for email marketers in 2024. As we’ve previously written about, Google and Yahoo are implementing new requirements for bulk email senders that will involve a lot of coordination and effort for marketers. Beyond the initial implementation of technical requirements like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, marketers must pay close attention to their spam rates in the future. Keeping your spam reports below 0.3% will be essential to ensure that Google and Yahoo aren’t blacklisting your emails. Marketers must keep their email lists clean, craft relevant campaigns, and use technology to remove unengaged contacts promptly. Over two billion people use Google or Yahoo as their email provider, so adopting these standards is not optional.

Artificial Intelligence

Healthcare marketers are also looking at ways to use artificial intelligence to save time and automate processes with tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Midjourney. Now, marketers are seriously evaluating tools that can assist with business processes like copywriting, graphic design, data analysis, and other functions.

However, it’s essential to carefully vet any artificial intelligence tool if you plan to use it in your marketing efforts. What data sets is it trained on? Are they biased? Some tools introduce legal compliance risks, and it’s essential to understand the risks thoroughly.

Trust is essential in healthcare marketing, and relying too heavily on AI tools can create a negative patient experience. AI tools should not replace marketers. At best, these tools can help marketers complete their work. Guardrails are required when it comes to AI tools, and healthcare marketers should be cautious to ensure their brands are well-represented by the output of these tools.

Automation and APIs

Another way to save time and measure results is using APIs and automation. Many marketers are turning to automation tactics to streamline operations in the face of increasing budgetary pressure. Advanced email marketers can use email APIs to trigger email campaigns when specific criteria are met and use dynamic content to personalize the email content. These tactics make email marketing scalable and ensure your audience receives the proper communications at the right time.

APIs can also be used to organize the results of your marketing efforts. Email APIs can deliver data about your campaigns (delivery status, open and clicks, unsubscribes, etc.) back into your marketing dashboards and databases. This is a way to help you make informed decisions and improve your marketing results. Expect to see more marketers embrace automation alongside AI tools this year.

Personalization

Personalization continues to be extremely important to successful healthcare marketing efforts. This is a challenge for healthcare providers because they must comply with HIPAA regulations in their email communications. Luckily, with the right tools and patient permission, it’s possible to personalize emails to create relevant campaigns. When healthcare marketers have access to zero-party patient data and the right tools to execute, they can go beyond practice newsletters to create email campaigns that deliver results.

One bonus personalization tip- create culturally competent emails and use the patient’s preferred language. Healthcare communications should not leave anyone behind. With the right tools, it’s easier than ever to segment your audience based on their language preferences and create alternate content that resonates.

Proving Impact and Delivering ROI

Healthcare providers continue to face a challenging economic situation and may be forced to cut marketing budgets. Although some advertising channels may be forced to take a hiatus, email marketing should not be one of them. Not only do patients want to receive marketing communications via email, but email marketing also delivers one of the best returns on investment compared to other channels.

However, the way we track and measure the impact of marketing campaigns must also change. In 2024, open rates are unreliable indicators of marketing success. Apple Mail’s privacy features and the increasing prevalence of email filtering and spam tools mean that marketers will need to rely on different metrics to judge the success of their campaigns. Tracking the clicks and what actions users take in other channels after receiving the email is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns. Also, keeping email lists clean and removing unsubscribed and inactive users is more important than ever to keep your IP addresses from being throttled.

Tags: artificial intelligence, email api, email automation, email deliverability, email marketing, healthcare marketing, hipaa, personalization, reporting metrics, spam
Posted in HIPAA Marketing
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The PHI Difference in Healthcare Marketing

Sunday, December 22nd, 2024

Healthcare marketers are facing complex challenges with serious stakes. Unlike in other industries, healthcare marketers share messages that can impact people’s health and livelihood. Creating the most effective messaging needs to be a priority for healthcare marketing teams. Using first-party data is one way to make a major difference in your marketing efforts. Marketers can craft highly targeted campaigns using protected health information (PHI) to deliver better results for patients.

First-Party Data for Healthcare

In some ways, healthcare marketers are at an advantage because of the amount of first-party data they can access. First-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers. The company owns this data and can verify its authenticity. Marketers can use data like digital interactions, purchase history, and preferences to create experiences that cater to an individual’s interests. In the healthcare industry, first-party data goes way beyond digital interactions. Information about health statuses, diagnoses, and recent patient visits can all be incorporated into marketing campaigns to guide patients on their journey to better health.

Marketers in other industries know that first-party data achieves the highest return on investment of any data type. In 2020, Google partnered with Boston Consulting Group to study how brands succeed with first-party data strategies. The report found that businesses using first-party data for key marketing functions achieved up to a 2.9 times revenue uplift and a 1.5 times increase in cost savings. In addition, as data privacy restrictions grow and third-party cookies are phased out, marketers need more control over their data sources to ensure compliance.

Why Use PHI in Healthcare Marketing?

When healthcare organizations use PHI to segment their email lists and personalize campaign content, they experience better results. Using a HIPAA-compliant email marketing solution allows marketers to leverage the data and information they have about patients to increase engagement. When using PHI, there are so many ways to customize email content that can deliver impressive results.

It makes intuitive sense. What would you prefer- frequent emails about products and services you don’t want, or consistent emails that relate to your goals and interests? It’s an easy decision. No one likes to be annoyed by pointless emails. Using information about your patients’ health statuses and goals to craft personalized messages increases patient satisfaction and retention, while also improving engagement.

As discussed above, healthcare patient data is an excellent source of first-party data that is more comprehensive than the information gathered in other industries. However, healthcare marketers face another hurdle. In addition to getting patient consent to use this data for marketing purposes, organizations are also strictly governed by HIPAA compliance regulations that restrict the use of PHI.

The Challenge For Healthcare Marketing: HIPAA Compliance

So what can healthcare marketers do to surmount this obstacle? First, they must understand the regulations surrounding the transmission of protected health information (PHI). Responsible healthcare marketers must comply with HIPAA when utilizing patient data in their marketing efforts.

Most marketers rely on some sort of email marketing software, CRM, or CDP to manage their marketing campaigns. However, not all platforms are able to meet HIPAA’s stringent requirements. A simple approach to evaluating marketing software for HIPAA compliance focuses on three crucial aspects:

Sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)
Securely Store Data
Securely Transmit Data

First, any third party with access to PHI must sign a Business Associates Agreement to govern how the information will be secured and what happens in case of a breach. If they will not sign a BAA, the software should not be used to store or process PHI.

However, signing a BAA alone is not enough. Understanding the terms of service and what the provider allows is essential. If their terms of service forbid you from sending PHI, it could put your organization at risk. It’s also important to review how the data will be secured at rest and in transit. When storing patient health data in a marketing application, consider how it will be protected. Simply put, you must ensure that all PHI is encrypted and can only be accessed by people with the appropriate keys.

If protected health information is transmitted outside of the database or application via email, encryption must also be used to protect the data in transmission. At a minimum, TLS encryption (with the appropriate ciphers) is secure enough to meet HIPAA guidelines. However, many applications do not offer transmission encryption that is secure enough to comply with HIPAA. You should only send communications containing PHI if they are encrypted.

Conclusion

Using PHI data in your healthcare marketing efforts can yield improved results. However, this approach requires careful vetting and planning by your marketing and compliance teams to ensure data is secured under HIPAA regulations. To learn more about HIPAA-compliant marketing solutions, contact LuxSci today.

Tags: email marketing, email personalization, healthcare marketing, patient engagement, patient retention, personalization, phi, segmentation
Posted in HIPAA Marketing
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Omnichannel Healthcare Marketing

Saturday, November 23rd, 2024

Omnichannel healthcare marketing is a relatively new strategy that can help healthcare marketers achieve success.

Marketers need to leverage a variety of marketing tactics to reach and communicate with their patients. Omnichannel marketing involves the integration of digital channels and traditional media to provide a consistent and personalized experience across all channels to drive marketing success.

Read the rest of this post »

Tags: email marketing, healthcare marketing, hipaa compliance, omnichannel marketing, secure marketing, secure text, texting
Posted in HIPAA Marketing, LuxSci Library: HIPAA
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5 Questions to Find the Right HIPAA-Compliant Email Marketing Platform

Saturday, June 15th, 2024

If you are subject to HIPAA regulations- think twice before sending off that marketing email blast to your customers. If your emails contain ePHI, stop and make sure you are using a HIPAA-compliant email marketing platform before sending.

Not all email marketing platforms were designed with HIPAA marketing in mind. In fact, it can be difficult to figure out which vendors will allow you to send HIPAA-compliant emails on their platforms. We created this list of five questions to help you screen potential vendors for compliance.

1. Is your email marketing platform HIPAA-compliant and HITRUST certified?

It’s a simple question, but if the vendor does not mention anything about HIPAA or HITRUST certification on their website, it’s a good indicator that they are not secure enough to be compliant. As you probably know, HIPAA regulations can be onerous, and many companies do not have the time, expertise, or desire to update their technology. On the other hand, if they have taken the time and spent the money to invest in the serious security steps needed for HIPAA compliance, you should be able to find something about it in their marketing.

2. Will the vendor sign a Business Associate Agreement?

If you are sharing ePHI with a vendor (including lists of patient names and email addresses), you must have a BAA in place that outlines their responsibilities to protect your ePHI. If a vendor will not sign a BAA with you, it is an obvious sign that you cannot use their platform for HIPAA-compliant email marketing.

However, even if a vendor will sign a BAA, it does not mean that you can use their platform and comply with HIPAA. Read the fine print! Some companies have very restrictive BAAs that severely limit the functionality of the platform and prevent you from sending emails. We call these vendors “quasi” compliant. The only comply with HIPAA, if you abide by strict rules that prevent you from actually using their solution.

For an example, take Constant Contact. They will sign a BAA. However, they explicit state in their BAA that you:

“Should not use our systems for transmitting highly sensitive PHI (for example: mental health, substance abuse, or HIV information). Our application was not built for electronic medical records (EMR). If you have such information to send, please do not use Constant Contact.”

Constant Contact does not encrypt outbound emails, making it a poor choice for a HIPAA-compliant email marketing vendor. Depending on your email use cases, you could be unable to send any emails on their platform. Even worse, if you mistakenly send emails that contain ePHI you will be held liable for violating HIPAA, not Constant Contact, because you violated the terms of the BAA.

3. Does the email marketing platform protect data at rest and in transit?

Encryption is an addressable standard as part of the HIPAA Security Rule. Encryption is highly recommended to protect ePHI in all digital communications. Many email marketing platforms have adopted encryption methods that are secure enough to protect ePHI while it remains in their systems. However, that’s not enough to comply with HIPAA. You should specifically ask about their ability to encrypt outbound emails. Data in transit is extremely vulnerable to malicious actors, and therefore you need to encryption to protect emails containing ePHI. If a vendor does not provide encryption for outbound marketing emails then you should not consider using them.

4. How does the email marketing platform encrypt emails?

If a vendor says that they do encrypt outgoing messages, it’s important to consider these additional questions.

How are they encrypting those emails?
Do the encryption methods match your email use cases?

As a marketer, you want your emails to directly reach the recipient with as little friction as possible. If the recipient has to login to another platform to read the email, it’s unlikely to be read. A good HIPAA-compliant email marketing platform will use TLS encryption to send marketing messages directly to inboxes that support it. Emails sent with TLS encryption appear just like any other message directly in the recipient’s inbox.

However, there may be scenarios when you need to use more secure encryption methods. We recommend finding an email marketing vendor that is flexible and will let you select the right method of encryption for any type of message. For example, you may want to use a portal-based encryption method to send highly sensitive messages. Either way, make sure your vendor can support your needs with the right type of email encryption.

5. Does the platform allow you to send ePHI in the body of your emails?

Finally, the most important question to ask is: can I include highly sensitive patient information in an email? If you cannot, you can’t use the full power of the email marketing platform to create targeted, personalized and relevant messages. At best, you can only send generic office newsletters. If you want to create the types of marketing emails that will drive ROI and improve patient engagement, utilize your patient data for personalization and segmentation.

HIPAA Marketing

LuxSci’s Secure Marketing platform was built from the ground up with HIPAA marketing in mind. If you would like to learn more about how to create compliant email marketing campaigns utilizing ePHI, please let us know.

Tags: business associate agreement, email encryption, email marketing, encryption, HIPAA-compliant email marketing, quasi hipaa compliance
Posted in HIPAA Marketing
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Infrastructure Requirements for Marketing and Transactional Email

Friday, June 14th, 2024

To design an appropriate email infrastructure, organizations must understand the types of emails they plan to send. Outside of regular business communications between colleagues, marketing and transactional emails are used to communicate externally with clients and customers. Although they are often lumped together, transactional and marketing emails serve different purposes and require different hardware configurations to successfully send emails with good deliverability.

What are Marketing Emails?

Marketing emails primarily contain content intended for a commercial purpose, like advertisements, promotions, or other marketing messages. Marketing emails are sent to groups of contacts that are prospects or customers to influence them to make a purchase or take a commercial action.

Some examples of marketing emails include:

Customer newsletters
Promotional offers
Event invitations
Other types of sales communications

One significant difference between marketing and transactional emails is that recipients must explicitly opt-in to receive marketing emails. It is against CAN-SPAM rules to send unsolicited marketing emails to people who have not consented to receive them. The penalties for non-compliance can be quite severe. Always allow individuals to opt out of marketing emails to stay compliant.

What are Transactional Emails?

Transactional emails are messages that relate to previous interactions or commercial relationships with a company. Users trigger email sending by taking specific actions, and the emails contain only information that is critical and relevant to the recipient.

Examples of transactional emails include:

Transaction receipts
Order updates and shipping notifications
Password resets and security notifications
Appointment reminders
Review requests

Transactional emails facilitate an already agreed-upon transaction or update a customer about an ongoing transaction. Transactional messages are exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act, and recipients do not have to opt in to receive emails. For example, when someone orders a pair of sneakers online, the company does not need permission to email them when the order ships out.

How do I know if an email is a transactional or marketing message?

The email content determines whether a message is transactional or marketing. Some emails can contain both messages. We recommend asking three questions to ensure compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act:

What is the primary purpose of the message?
Whom is the message sent to?
Is the content misleading or deceptive?

First, what is the primary reason for sending the message? If the purpose is to remind a client of their upcoming appointment, that should be evident. Organizations can include a marketing message (perhaps offering them a coupon to use on additional services at their appointment). Still, the subject line and main message should emphasize the upcoming appointment.

Secondly, is there an existing relationship between the organization and the recipient? Did the recipient willingly join a mailing list? Or purchase a product from the company? The answer, in combination with the purpose of the email, will identify what type of mailing this is.

Finally, do not try and launder marketing messages as transactional emails. Sending an email with a misleading subject line like “Your Order Status” containing little to no information about a recent order is not permitted by CAN-SPAM.

Infrastructure Requirements

Most organizations need to send both types of email. The email sending requirements for sending bulk marketing emails differ from transactional emails. Marketing emails are one message sent in bulk to a large list of recipients. For example, a list of previous customers is sent an email promotion announcing a sale on sandals. Sending one email to thousands of recipients at the same time requires different memory and CPU than messages sent on a one-to-one basis. It typically does not matter if the sandal promotion reaches the recipient’s inbox at 10:00 am or 10:15 am. The message contents are not seriously time-sensitive. In the case of a marketing email, sending volume is more important than sending speed.

On the contrary, transactional emails are sent on a one-to-one basis and can be highly time-sensitive. Emails like password resets and order confirmations must arrive in the recipient’s inbox immediately after submission. This requires a different server configuration from marketing emails because speed is more important than sending volume. Designing different server configurations for marketing and transactional email is highly recommended to achieve sending goals.

At LuxSci, we design custom server configurations to meet the volume and throughput requirements for organizations of any size using our HIPAA compliant infrastructure.

HIPAA Requirements

Both marketing and transactional emails could fall under HIPAA regulations. Any communications that imply a relationship between a healthcare provider and a patient should be encrypted and follow HIPAA requirements. LuxSci provides both a Secure Email Marketing platform and Secure High Volume Email services to support the emailing requirements for HIPAA covered entities and their associates.

Contact LuxSci today to learn more about configuring an email infrastructure to support high volumes of marketing and transactional emails.

Tags: dedicated server, email marketing, email throughput, HIPAA email, marketing email, Transactional email
Posted in HIPAA Email Compliance, HIPAA Marketing
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