Harnessing Postcards to Elevate Payer-Driven Health Initiatives

How Can a Postcard Program Improve Outcomes?

Engaging members and helping them play an active role in managing their health can be challenging. But using a simple outreach tool, like personalized postcards, to communicate with and educate members can improve health outcomes.

Postcard campaigns are a cost-effective and efficient method for member and patient engagement. They cost less to produce and mail than a typical engagement letter package, yet they’re the most read type of direct mail pieces—nearly 56% of postcards are read by recipients!

When personalized, postcards can target messages to each member to increase the response rate. Using data collected, payers can customize each postcard based on the member’s gender, age, ethnicity, and more.

A key advantage of postcard outreach is the limited investment required. When part of a larger engagement strategy, postcards encourage members to make a healthy lifestyle choice such as scheduling a wellness visit, and when they receive an appointment reminder postcard, they are more likely to complete the appointment.

For members who missed their appointment, a postcard with a “sorry we missed you” message can also inspire the member to reschedule the visit. Once they’ve completed a wellness visit, a thank-you postcard can reinforce appreciation for the member taking an important step toward a healthier lifestyle. It also sends a powerful message that the healthcare organization truly cares about the member’s health.

How Can Payers Establish and Fulfill a Postcard Outreach Program?

While it’s easy to implement a postcard campaign (with the right marketing partner), there are some tactics to keep in mind. It’s important to deliver targeted, branded messaging to engage members to bridge gaps in care.

As just one component of a multichannel outreach, postcards should have a clear, personalized call to action that encourages members to take part in an activity that will improve their health such as:

• Become a member
• Find a provider in your area
• Schedule your visit today
• Don’t forget your appointment
• Sorry we missed you—please reschedule
• Thank you for completing your visit
• Please take a survey about your experience

To Design and Develop a Comprehensive Postcard Outreach Program:

• Determine performance indicators and measuring tactics.
• Determine optimal size for visual impact while maximizing production and postage savings.
• Personalize the card using variable data such as name, age, gender, and ethnicity.
• Provide a clear call to action.
• Consider incentivizing completion of the requested action.
• Split test different postcard designs and/or messages to see which delivers the better response.
• Analyze results to improve future outreach.
• Be sure to follow all HIPAA guidelines for sending marketing materials.

In a test-and-learn strategy, remember that members are more likely to respond to content that applies to them and their specific situation. Using variable data and images—while giving due consideration to security and HIPAA compliance—can help speak directly to a member about how to improve their health.

Tracking the progress of a patient engagement campaign is key to its success. A marketing partner with analytics services and visualization tools can help to identify the most effective message for members, simplify results, and modify the engagement strategy to improve performance.

Why Should Payers Use Graphcom for Their Postcard Outreach?

Graphcom is an unconventional healthcare marketing firm: equal parts creative studio and production powerhouse. We specialize in healthcare communications that showcase what’s great about our clients’ organizations and services, improve member outcomes and communications across multiple channels, and generate immediate cost savings.

As a full-service marketing agency, Graphcom can conceptualize, write, design, develop, print, mail, and analyze postcard campaigns all under one roof. Beyond this, we can create additional marketing communications that integrate seamlessly with postcard mailings to boost member engagement. Because Graphcom and all of our business associates are HIPAA compliant, health plans don’t have to worry whether member information will be compromised.