Yext Case Study - ENT and Allergy Associates

ENT and Allergy Associates Drives Appointment Conversions with Yext

ENT and Allergy Associates is the largest ear, nose, throat and allergy practice in the country, with over 200 physicians in 42 clinical office locations. ENT and Allergy Associates has practices throughout New York and New Jersey, and sees over 80,000 patients per month.

“We treat some of the most common conditions that people have during cold and flu season and year-round, such as disease of the head and neck airways, sinuses and allergies,” says Drew Franklin, Senior Director of Business Development. “It is important that patients find us quickly once they start to recognize their symptoms and decide to see a doctor.”

The Challenge

ENT and Allergy Associates recognized early on that discoverability in search was key to their patient acquisition strategy.

“Patients are increasingly discovering us online, and so our ability to show up in searches leads to higher conversions of patients, whether they call or book an appointment online. So we needed to hone our search footprint and reach more patients to drive them to our brick-and-mortar offices,” explains Franklin.

However, managing ENT and Allergy Associates’ digital knowledge manually across the web was proving to be a real problem.

“With over 200 physicians across 40+ clinical locations, some who rotate between two clinical sites, managing our digital footprint was very challenging,” noted Jason Campbell, Assistant Director of Marketing. “On those occasions when a doctor emailed us saying, ‘this directory has the wrong address or phone number,’ we would have to go in and put in the request to change the information manually. It could take weeks to correct. So we very much needed to find a way to streamline the process. That is what prompted us to look into Yext.”

The Solution

ENT and Allergy Associates teamed up with Yext to manage its digital knowledge seamlessly from one platform. Initially employing Yext Listings, ENT and Allergy Associates immediately saw the benefit of managing its digital knowledge centrally.

“We have so many different website URLs, addresses, phone numbers, doctors, you name it. The great thing about Yext is it is a platform that allows you to do everything in one shot,” states Campbell.

Campbell continues, “Recently we suffered through a major snowstorm. And, given the enormous size of our geography, some offices needed to be closed while others were able to remain open. Thanks to the Yext platform, my team was able to update accurate information in near real time so it was communicated properly across our entire digital footprint. That was a huge win for us, and our patients.”

The time savings of the Yext platform has had positive ripple effects throughout the company, Franklin explains, “By not having our employees spending a ton of time working on this, we’ve been able to deploy those people to do other very important things within the organization, including reputation management, data analytics, and business intelligence.”

Tagging in Knowledge Tags

“We attended Yext’s ONWARD conference, and it opened our eyes to what we could be doing on the backend to make intelligent services understand our website. We went into to our system and saw that the Schema coding on our webpages wasn’t really there,” explains Campbell.

“So we got Knowledge Tags, and within two months, we’re seeing 100,000 website visitors each month, and about 350,000 page views—nearly a 50% improvement year over year,” he continues. “They’ve made a huge difference.”

Franklin elaborates, “Optimizing our pages using the latest industry techniques like embedded meta-data allowed us to show up higher in Google, and therefore drive more patients to our website.”

Bringing On New Doctors

As a large and growing healthcare organization, ENT and Allergy Associates faces the challenge of bringing new physicians into their system.

Campbell explains, “We are constantly onboarding new doctors to our practice’s 40+ offices, and in the past this was a manual effort, unfortunately. So when a doctor joined us, we would have to go on all these online directories and put these requests in, and it was just too time consuming.”

Not so anymore.

Campbell continues, “With Yext, once we know a start date of a physician, we’re already inside the platform putting all this information in and publishing at the click of a button. It’s a very seamless integration and we love it.”

The Difference:

ENT and Allergy Associates has seen the improvement in its digital knowledge translate into significant revenue.

“Yext is helping us drive our key brand message of ‘Book Online, Anytime’ onto the digital ecosystem big time,” says Campbell. “We’re getting 15,000-20,000 online appointments per month.  Yext helped drive more patients to our website, which in turn allowed us to convert more patients into appointments, using appointment-booking technology that ENT and Allergy developed itself in-house. The additional traffic, coupled with ENTA’s own online booking platform, contributed to a year over year online appointment growth of greater than 200%.  It’s crazy. It’s amazing. It’s spectacular. And it’s just the beginning!”

Franklin adds, “At this point, more than 25% of all our appointments are scheduled online, which is unsurpassed in our vertical. For a sense of what that means, a new patient means hundreds up to what might amount to thousands of dollars in revenue over time, across multiple visits, and including reimbursements for quality of care.”

Beyond the numbers, ENT and Allergy Associates views the benefits of Digital Knowledge Management in human terms.

“We’re looking to improve the patient experience at every touch point, whether that’s online or in the examination room,” says Franklin. “A big part of the patient experience is being able to do your research and find information on your doctor, and then be seen when you want to be seen. So we’re investing in technologies that allow for better access, because for patients, better access means better care.”

Results:

1. Two months after launching with Yext, ENT and Allergy Associates saw over 116,000 website visitors, their highest monthly traffic ever and a year-over year increase of 40%.
2. Two months after launching with Yext, ENTA saw over 348,000 Page Views, a year-over year increase of 50%.
3. Three months after launching with Yext, ENTA drove 15,000+ appointments booked online, a year-over-year increase of 201%.
4. Three months after launching with Yext, ENTA saw a year-over year increase of 55% in Clicks to Website from Google.