Healthcare CRM has been getting some good press lately. In an era of increasing demands and shrinking marketing budgets, CRM is rising to the top as a valuable marketing strategy for helping hospitals achieve and measure their goals for growth.

Earlier this week, HealthLeaders featured some practical advice on marketing to the boomer population from one of our brilliant clients, Julie Sherman, senior director of brand services for Banner Health. HealthLeaders cites that “the 50+ healthcare market is expected to grow 23% over the next decade.” In light of this, Sherman recommends hospitals define their target audience and goals while recognizing obstacles, like the  “worried well,” and using CRM strategies to overcome them.

“With our CRM tool we’re able to define who is at risk. How we used to do it was by putting an ad in the paper saying come one, come all — techniques to weed out the worried well and target the audience who really needs these services.”

CRM and social media ROI
Also in the news this week, Jessica Levco with Ragan’s Healthcare Marketing & Communications News, wrote a great piece, Social Media ROI: How 3 hospitals master the metrics. Along with highlighting Nick Dawson & Bon Secours Hospital and Dana Lewis & Swedish Medical Center, Levco featured Chris Boyer’s use of CRM to help measure the ROI of Inova Health System’s online 50 for Fifty program.  Boyer says the program helped Inova find new patients who hadn’t previously used their services, add them to their CRM database and track usage down the road.

Boyer says his goal for a CRM system is to record and analyze patient behavior. Understanding patients better helps you market better, he says. “If you’re at a hospital with no CRM system, and you don’t know what patients like or don’t like, and you have no way of knowing it, you can’t measure and improve your campaigns.”

If you’re inclined to learn a bit more about customer relationship management (CRM), you can visit us here for more information.