HEALTHCARE OPEN ENROLLMENT POWERED BY PAID SEARCH.
Diligently ramping up media spend in direct response channels — such as paid search — is important, so the budget isn’t squandered before you can incrementally improve in-market performance. Moreover, defined time periods, like healthcare open enrollment, require meticulous data analysis and real-time optimization.
United Concordia, an insurance carrier that offers dental benefits to federal employees, had a 4-week window during 2015 open enrollment to acquire new members. United Concordia was one of 10 insurance companies looking to attract a limited pool of participants. How could they stand out in the crowd and encourage prospective customers to enroll in their plans?
We recommended a digital direct response campaign across multiple channels to attract federal employees researching their options. The bulk of the program was focused in Google AdWords and Bing/Yahoo, where geotargeting could play a significant role in optimization.
United Concordia retained current membership levels, plus 10%. During open enrollment, paid search advertising was optimized at the state level by conversion rate. This means that the creative, spend, and keyword strategy were adjusted within certain geographies based on click volume and enrollment to date, to maximize the budget.
We used real-time data to track the correlation between enrollment and conversion in any given state
By week 4, paid search conversions had a direct relationship to the total new enrollment trend — and cost per conversion decreased by 47% in Google and 25% in Bing/Yahoo.
Paid search tactics proved to be a viable solution for United Concordia given their objectives, audience behaviors and campaign time constraints. In fact, they realized a positive ROI for their search advertising efforts by the end of the quarter.