Healthcare marketers’ playbook will have to evolve and transform to suit the post-COVID-19 world. Subramanian Gopalaratnam, CTO, Resulticks, a marketing automation company, explains how technologies like AI, IoT and others can help healthcare brands create more effective marketing strategies through omnichannel engagement to boost the effectiveness of campaigns, improve conversions and deliver individualised customer experiences, in an interview with Lakshmipriya Nair
How is the healthcare marketing landscape transforming? What will be the impact of the coronavirus crisis in this arena?
Healthcare marketing today is targeting patients for preventive healthcare by engaging them in a meaningful, contextual, individualised and real-time basis through any channel at any time.
As healthcare institutions invest in new technologies and channels such as IoT for the treatment, care, and engagement with patients, the exact shape of customer experience in this industry will continue to evolve.
COVID-19 has of course been testing the capacity of hospitals worldwide and straining their resources. In terms of marketing, one key outcome of this crisis will be the shift towards digital channels to communicate with hospitals, doctors and patient communities. Perhaps more than ever, there is an urgent need to ensure a robust technology foundation is in place to accommodate the sheer scale of communication required right now—all while minimising friction in experience across digital channels.
AI, Analytics and other emerging technologies are already ushering a sea change in healthcare practice and delivery. How are these technologies changing healthcare marketing? What is different about the way it is adopted in this field?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare Market in India is expected to grow at a rate of 40 per cent by 2021 according to a report from ResearchAndMarkets.com. Artificial intelligence is used in six healthcare segments: hospitals, pharma, diagnostics, medical equipment and supplies, medical insurance, and telemedicine.
Here are a few areas where we can see the usefulness of AI, Analytics and emerging technologies for healthcare marketing –
Predictive Analysis: Through predictive analysis, one can analyse spikes in-patient visits at each location and time or look at demographic trends to predict the future behaviour of certain groups and develop marketing campaigns targeted to each demographic.
AI also helps marketers understand individual customers better and allows them to deliver personalised content that appeals to specific wants and needs. It also helps move potential customers ahead on the buyer’s journey.
Chatbots: One of the more one-on-one applications of AI technology is the chatbot. Chatbots can help health care marketers by creating more on-website engagement and encouraging conversion, or by directing potential patients to answers online, thereby improving the overall patient experience.
Custom Newsfeeds: Through the use of AI, major social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are now able to customise user newsfeeds and analyse engagement metrics to ensure that users are only delivered content they want to see. From a marketing standpoint, this helps pinpoint particular types of buyers, investors, or patients who might be in need of specific medical products or services.
AI, analytics and emerging technologies can help marketers develop stronger, more fail-safe business plans using relevant data and serve their customers by giving right information what they need at the right time.
How can AI enable more meaningful connections with consumers yet not violate the rules of privacy and safeguard personal data?
As brands develop their AI-driven capabilities to deliver more relevant, seamless customer experiences, they need to make sure sufficient measures have been taken to ensure the privacy and security of customer data. The standardisation of the data sharing processes, strict benchmarking, and rigorous identity protection measures will be some of the first steps towards making AI more widely accepted in healthcare.
Can you elaborate on how AI can help enhance conversations and interactions across the healthcare value chain, be it drug makers, doctors, pharmacists or patients?
AI provides the context in terms of what information is needed to be shared to a patient and at what level rather than the traditional spray and pray communication approach. Ability to identify the best content, action and suggestion to a patient and getting the feedback to course correct is very important. This enhances the conversation with a patient at a personal level. Ability to use large scale learning models based on data availability is key for engagement which will prevent the need for unnecessary visits to specialists.
Resulticks recently received the ‘Elevating Customer Experience with AI’ award at the Microsoft AI Awards 2.0. What is involved in elevating consumer experience? What are the channels you leverage?
As a truly omnichannel platform, Resulticks enables data integration, customer engagement orchestration, and deep analytics across a diversity of channels such as social media, email, IoT devices, voice assistants, chatbots, mobile, QR codes, ATM machines, POS systems, and more.
Resulticks has embedded a variety of advanced AI and machine learning models at the core of the platform to enable the scale and complexity of real-time, omnichannel marketing. Moreover, we are continuously optimising these models and the capabilities they enable to deliver better outcomes for our clients.
Specifically, our model’s power capabilities such as robust audience identity resolution, advanced segmentation, AI-powered campaign and customer journey orchestration, next-best customer experience, benchmarking, and more. They are also at the foundation of our advanced analytics suite—predictive, prescriptive, and descriptive—that deliver in-depth, actionable insights on audiences and campaigns alike.
Please share a couple of case studies in brief about how you have helped a few hospitals or healthcare brands with their marketing strategy, patient engagement or ROI driven campaigns.
We have helped a major hospital chain in Asia unify their data across sources to deliver a 360° view of their customer base, realise much more advanced segmentation, and automate the execution of seamless, contextual communications across channels. This has resulted in a 51 per cent revenue uplift, as well as significant increases in the reach, engagement, and conversion rates of their campaigns.
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