Successful Email Marketing Campaigns Using Process and Personalization

Email is one of the most personalized forms of marketing. At least, it should be.

When you do email marketing right, your strategy revolves around your audience. Who are they? Where are they? And what’s on their minds?

Some of the best health systems in the country are revolutionizing their email marketing strategies to better answer these questions. Mount Sinai is one of them.

Otto Angulo leads the health system’s email efforts as the Senior Director of Digital Marketing. He connects marketing strategy with data and tools, such as CRM, email marketing, and automation, and examines the analytics to improve processes and support SEO.

I spoke with Otto about what Mount Sinai is doing to connect with audiences through email. He offered some compelling insights.

Ahava: Give me a glimpse inside the email marketing strategy at Mount Sinai Health System.

Otto: I wanted to build a foundation for the email team, and help set goals. We’ve been evolving our email strategy over the last six to eight months to be more analytical, and show that we’re listening to our audience. This has helped us identify the core areas for our campaigns, and drive more success and growth.

Ahava: Tell me more about those email marketing goals.

Otto: We’re always looking at Mount Sinai’s brand awareness, and how to drive the most patient volume. Our team combines these two essential pillars with our insights from analytics to identify the right topics, and develop content around key trends.

Ahava: Speaking of trends, how has the pandemic impacted your email content?

Otto: It has been a bit different during the pandemic because we must be the source of information, and expand upon existing trends. We also always need to provide trustworthy and timely content. As the news cycle is ever evolving, we must also be ready at any time to change our content plan and realign accordingly.

Ahava: I’m sure it’s not easy to pivot quickly while having quality content ready to go. How do you make sure you have plenty of timely information to share?

Otto: Our digital writers support the creation of content for email marketing. We developed a process where we have an idea/topic “tank.” Through this process, the teams can submit ideas. We also throw in items from our listening tools and trending topics. Our email team manages this tank, and identifies the trends that work with each campaign. Then, we share those topics with the writers. We meet weekly to check on progress and priorities.

Ahava: What are some of the successes you’ve seen since creating this email marketing process over the past year?

Otto: In a six-month timeframe since we implemented a new CRM/email marketing process, we’ve seen:

• The open rate and click-through rate (CTR) have increased by 29% and 32% from the previous year.
• Website traffic from email has grown 538%.
• We generated 500+ appointment leads.

Ahava: What campaigns or topics helped generate those incredible results?

Otto: The campaign that contributed to the increased appointments was geared toward all patients.

We identified several audiences that our email communications or newsletters were not reaching. To take advantage of these untapped audiences, we reviewed and fixed the data integrations between systems. We cleaned up the data, identified untapped audiences, and determined the types of emails they should receive. We also rebranded and redesigned our email templates to be more engaging and support personalization.

Ahava: That sounds like a winning process. What lessons have you learned from your email marketing campaigns? How can other healthcare marketers follow suit?

Otto: I recommend that hospital marketers:

• Listen to your audience to find topics that are top-of-mind for them.
• Establish a process to build campaigns and conduct a debrief after they’re completed.
• Don’t neglect your analytics. Use them to learn more about your audience and which campaigns are most successful so you can replicate them in the future.

Improve Your Health System’s Email Marketing Content

Is it possible to have a streamlined email marketing campaign process with personalized, timely content like Mount Sinai? Yes.

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Ahava Leibtag

The original version of this page was published at:  https://ahamediagroup.com/blog/2022/04/successful-email-marketing-campaigns-using-process-and-personalization/