Today’s Medicare marketplace is more crowded than ever. The average consumer can choose from 43 Medicare Advantage plans, an increase of more than 126% over the past decade. The competition among providers is just as fierce with more options for when and how to get care in person, virtually or at home. Studies show that consumers aren’t exactly loyal to providers, engaging with an average of four to five provider brands for their care.

In such a competitive field, any small differentiator can tip the scales. That’s where a collaborative co-marketing strategy comes in. Under a co-marketing arrangement, payers (insurers) and providers (primary care providers, clinics, hospitals and/or health systems) join forces to promote and elevate both brands in the hearts and minds of consumers. Here’s why Medicare payers and providers need to embrace co-marketing.

Co-marketing efforts can be a win for Medicare payers, providers and consumers alike. Here’s how.

Payers and providers:

• Share financial, talent and marketing resources.
• Increase visibility to consumers through expanded reach and frequency of messaging.
• Enhance consumer credibility of and association with both brands.
• Gain share of voice, especially when competitors aren’t advertising, or reduce the scale or scope of campaigns.
• Drive acquisition potential of membership and patient panels.
• Amplify individual brand marketing efforts.

Consumers:

• Feel they’re at the center of both brands’ efforts.
• See better communication between both brands.
• Appreciate more coordinated, personalized care from brands working together.
• Develop trust and loyalty from better healthcare experiences.

At the end of the day, consumers want a seamless healthcare experience from beginning to end. They just want their health plan and provider to work easily, affordably and reliably. Co-marketing helps to create the perception of a seamless experience. The shift from patient to consumer means that beneficiaries are exerting their purchasing power like they should. They’re no longer passive patients who accept whatever they get. They’re making choices to get the coverage and care they want and deserve even if it means navigating through more options. A co-marketing plan can help inspire consumers to switch to a plan and a provider that put them first.

It’s not just consumers who appreciate the enhanced collaboration; it’s providers too. When smaller provider organizations like clinics and primary care providers see the time, effort and financial backing that a national carrier puts into a co-marketing effort, it changes their perspective of that carrier for the better. Like consumers, providers will feel seen, heard, understood and respected. They feel like they have a carrier holding their hand, empowering them and encouraging them to contribute their ideas and points of view throughout the marketing process. They know that payer has their back. A co-marketing effort won’t eliminate operational challenges, but it can foster payer/provider trust.

Co-marketing Best Practices

Payer/provider co-marketing is at its best when it is centered on the consumer, aligned acrossthe organization and engaged at the community level. Here’s how to achieve all three.

Consumer Centered

Consumers won’t be convinced to become members or patients without knowing what’s it in for them. Exceptional co-marketing campaigns answer two questions: 1. why consumers should care about these brands and 2. why they are working together.

Consumers need to understand how their health and wellness could be improved by enrolling with a specific plan and using a certain provider. They need to imagine what it will look and feel like to have these complementary offerings in action. Payers and providers can make it concrete by explaining how, despite a chronic condition like diabetes, they improve consumers’ lives with the right care and a plan that makes managing their health simple.

Payers and providers can establish their expertise and position themselves in a humanistic way through thought leadership. Each can stay in their swim lanes yet offer a unique but compatible dimension to the topic at hand. When payers and providers outline these benefits upfront, consumers react positively.

Top-to-bottom Organizational Alignment

Strategy is often driven at the corporate level but executed at the local level. Don’t leave them out of discussions. Too often, brands forget about their local champions even when the local activations are an essential part of the strategy. Cascade the strategy down the organizational funnel, sharing the right communications at the right levels to build buy-in. This way, everyone is working toward the same goal rather than being at cross purposes with each other. With a top-down, bottom-up approach, payers and providers can streamline their efforts for maximum impact.

Community Engagement

Community engagement activities that give brands a physical presence and a local face boost consumer trust. Outreach can happen through health fairs, community events and even social gatherings at a healthcare facility. Brands can leverage grassroots marketing to target different audiences at culturally relevant festivals, senior-friendly sporting events or causes like veteran health. The local champions become brand ambassadors who create personal, face-to-face experiences. These experiences enhance consumer trust in brands and help sway payer and provider decisions in the short and long run.

Common Co-marketing Pitfalls

No two payer/provider co-marketing campaigns are created equal. Each one depends on the organizations involved and the goals of the campaign. Still, there are certain traps that can cause the plan to crumble:

1. Focusing only on the Annual Election Period (AEP), which could mean getting lost in the AEP noise. Yet 10,000 people turn 65 every day, and special election periods mean almost year-round enrollment. Plus, consumers can change providers whenever they want. Why wait to market for eight weeks a year when there are 44 other weeks?

• Relying solely on the co-marketing efforts for all an organization’s marketing needs. Co-marketing should be only one aspect of a bigger marketing plan. Both payers and providers need to drive their individual marketing efforts in tandem with their co-marketing efforts. This is especially true for providers who might have smaller budgets as compared to carriers.

• Lack of communication around roles, responsibilities, expectations and goals. Payers and providers need to work under the same information, assumptions and guidelines—and stay in their respective lanes. This goes for all decision-makers and influencers. Communication should be open, transparent and fair. Payers should speak to their expertise and providers theirs. Plans can scale up or down, but what matters is everyone agreeing to the plan on paper as a joint plan. It’s not the payer’s plan or the provider’s plan but a collaborative one. Key performance indicators should be set up front to be measurable and attributable. Payers and providers also need to understand that the benefits of their efforts may happen on different timelines. For example, payers mightsee an uptick in members first and providers later once beneficiaries start using their coverage.

• Thinking that just because organizations do business together means they can co-market too. Not every business partnership can lead to a successful co-marketing effort. Payers and providers need to ensure their values, reputations and messaging align with each other first. There must be brand synergy, not simply a business arrangement. It can’t be transactional. It must be relational.

• Not considering the marketing mix or level of investment. There are more marketing channels today than ever before. To get the right results, payers and providers need to pull the right levers and invest in the right channels. Those will vary based on the audience and individual markets as well as the organizations involved. For example, if a payer or provider doesn’t have the human capital to activate a grassroots community engagement strategy, they will need to pivot to more feasible tactics. Other times it is a matter of not investing enough in the strategy as a whole or in the right channels. Particularly on the payer side, co-marketing efforts tend to see a lower investment.

Legal and Compliance Considerations

Marketing in the healthcare space entails a lot of compliance work, especially regarding Medicare. And rightfully so. Misleading Medicare ads featuring celebrities like Joe Namath have caused confusion and chaos. According to Deft Research’s 2023 Medicare OEP and Disenrollment Prevention Study Executive Research Brief, some 20% of beneficiaries were “unwittingly switched” to a plan they didn’t expect.

Yes, there are compliance concerns with co-marketing against steering and anti-kickbacks. Yes, the rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) change from year to year. Yes, payers and providers will have tension between them, often with payers being more conservative than providers when it comes to interpreting CMS guidelines.

But despite all this, Medicare payers and providers can and should be able to navigate the red tape together. When payer and provider teams align on agreed-to rules of the road up front, they can make their brands jointly stand out from the competition. Vetting exercises with each brands’ marketing teams plus legal and compliance can help gauge both the strategy and tactics. Teams will know where they push and where they need to step back.

The Power of Partnership

Together, payers and providers can do more than they can individually. This is especially true in today’s healthcare landscape that often appears contentious thanks to rising costs along with prior-authorization and claims denials. Co-marketing efforts tell a different story, one of collaboration and cooperation with consumers at the heart.

#healthcare #collaboration #marketing

Traditional marketers might feel like digital is devouring everything. Maybe you’re a direct-mail marketer with your elbows out, “Digital has no business in the mailbox.”

But at Heinrich, we realize it’s not either traditional or digital—it’s a both/and. A hybrid approach can help you take the best of both realms to achieve your objectives more efficiently and effectively, even when it comes to your control package. Here’s how.

The QR Code Comeback

QR codes, once dead in many a marketer’s eyes, have not only been revived, but they’ve also taken over previously analog spaces and places. QR codes are how many restaurants share their menus, PowerPoint presenters promote their websites and social media profiles and even how drag queens earn Venmo tips.

According to eMarketer, the number of U.S. smartphone users scanning QR codes will increase to 99.5 million in 2025. It isn’t just younger smartphone users who have taken to scanning, older consumers have too; 44% of U.S. consumers aged 45–64 and 31% aged 65 and older report using marketing QR codes.

Three Reasons Why You Should Test QR Codes on Your Direct-Mail Control Package

Reason 1: Access to data

Data, as the technologists say, is the new oil. The companies who understand how to collect and leverage their data will be better positioned to capture more market share today and especially tomorrow.

While direct mail can be a great way to stand out in someone’s mind and mailbox, measurement and attribution can be difficult, especially if your call to action requires more friction or legwork on behalf of your audience like filling out a form and mailing it back. Adding a QR code for a call to action can help you better track audience actions and make it faster and easier for them to complete that call to action.

Reason 2: Increased Personalization

You can take your QR code a step further by creating a customized code and personalized URL for every recipient. Here’s an example using our President, George Eddy.

1. George receives Heinrich’s direct-mail piece.
2. He scans the custom QR code, which takes him to Heinrich.com/GeorgeEddy.
3. He’s greeted with a personalized message, “Hey there, George!”
4. The form fill is pre-populated with his contact information and asks him to correct and/or complete any incorrect or missing information.

Of course, you’ll need to thoroughly vet your mailing list ahead of time to find any duplicate names. You wouldn’t want to mix up two John Smiths.

Moving from a handwritten form fill to a digital form fill also alleviates work and reduces costs for your business. No longer will your staff waste precious time deciphering illegible handwriting. You can transition your data-entry employees to more meaningful work.

Reason 3: Retargeting opportunities

Using a direct-mail-to-web strategy gives you more chances to increase your direct mail campaign’s effectiveness. You can continue to retarget your direct-mail audience online via online ads and/or emails. Your media budget will dictate the number of touches.

1. You match the physical addresses on your direct-mail list (your owned or purchased mailing list) to people-based digital identifiers such as LiveRamp or RampIDs.
2. Devices tied to those digital IDs receive paid digital media such as display or video ads.
3. These ads can then drive your audience to a standard landing page with an online form.

When you combine traditional and digital marketing, you’re cooking your direct-mail campaign with gas. You’ll gain the first-party data you need to make smarter business decisions, and you’ll make it easier for your audience to engage with you and you’ll be able to increase the efficacy of your marketing. In sum, integrated marketing plans that combine online and offline tactics do better than siloed efforts.

Heinrich is born for business—and your direct-mail campaign. That’s how we were able to beat our control package for a credit card offer 12 times with one test boosting Gross Revenue Retention by 24% through an estimated 1,400 incremental accounts. Let’s talk to see how we can beat your direct-mail control package again and again.

Naysayers have been saying it for years: direct mail is dead. The truth shows that direct-mail advertising is more robust than ever thanks to creative and technological advancements. That’s why an agency’s print department is a microcosm for wider agency trends as I’ll explain below. 

Trend #1: Start with Strategy

Strategy should drive all campaigns and tactics. In direct mail, strategy helps us know who to target when and how with the best formats and creative applications. Here are four examples: 

1. Credit cards: Put an image of the credit card (personalized with the recipient’s name) on the package to help them imagine what it will be like to have the card in their hands. 

2. Business recipients respond better to a letter package than a postcard or self-mailer. 

3. Consumers during the holidays love invitation-style envelopes with stamps. 

4. Mail that feels more emotional and tactile drives the urge to open it: 

1. Handwritten fonts that look more personal 

2. Soft-touch envelopes with a velvety feel 

3. Gloss UV coatings that shine and catch the light 

4. Embossed papers add sophistication and texture 

5. Perforations make it easy—and irresistible—to open 

Trend #2: Data-Driven Plans and Results  

It’s no secret that data dictates marketing dollars. What may not be as intuitive is that data drives direct mail too.  

Today, direct mail campaigns are more microtargeted which means they’re more effective. We can tailor campaigns to highly local geographies or to extremely limited audiences based on past consumer behavior. For example, we can pinpoint the 50 people in a 5-mile radius who bought a boat in the past month and target them with products and services for their new boat. This kind of hyper-personalized, hyperlocal targeting means you’re spending your direct mail dollars more wisely so you can get better results. 

Direct mail holds the top position among channels for average return on investment (ROI) at 43% according to the most recent Response Rate Report from the Association of National Advertisers. Almost three-quarters of marketers agree that direct mail offers the best ROI. Proof-points like these explain why direct mail should have a place in every major campaign. 

Trend #3: What’s Old is New Again 

Overflowing mailboxes used to be a daily occurrence nationwide in the not-too-distant past. Now our email inboxes and social feeds overflow. To stand out, businesses increasingly turn to direct mail regardless of their audience demographics. Here’s why: 

• Direct mail is the most trusted marketing channel by baby boomers. 

• 71% of Gen Xers feel direct mail is more personal than online communications. 

• Millennials overwhelmingly love the sense of discovery new mail brings. 

• Mail appeals to Gen Z’s creative side with personalized, tactile experiences. 

As one of the oldest marketing channels, print too often gets overlooked in favor of digital channels. But much of innovation involves seeing the past with fresh eyes. The brands and agencies who know how to re-imagine direct mail and use it effectively as an anchor channel see higher results. 

Trend #4: Technological Innovation and Integration

Technology accelerates productivity and creativity. What used to take weeks in direct mail, now takes days. Digital proofs, more efficient production and new capabilities mean we have more opportunities than ever before to stand out in the mailbox with less time and money. 

Developing fully integrated campaigns that use both print and digital drive better results. In a survey commissioned by the U.S. Post Office, 60% of marketing respondents said combining digital and direct mail increases ROI. Don’t just take the marketers’ word for it: 56% of consumers tried a new business in the last six months because they got mail about it. 

With Informed Delivery and interactive calls to action like QR codes, the lines between the physical and digital worlds continue to blur—which works. Here are the stats that prove Informed Delivery pays off: 

• 39% of marketers see higher website traffic   

• 36% saw higher ROI  

• 93% of customers would recommend it 

• 77% of notifications are opened daily 

Trend #5: A Can-do Attitude 

As business needs and consumer habits evolve, so have Heinrich’s print department and our skills. When we were founded, we focused primarily on direct mail for financial services, completing 18-million-piece runs with 30+ different versions. Now we also work in verticals like healthcare and multi-family real estate, which require different deliverables. For healthcare, we create fulfillment packages like sales enablement kits for insurance agents to host events-in-a-box. We develop high-end collateral pieces to woo and awe potential renters in multi-family real estate. 

We’re yes people who are solutions oriented and always looking for faster, more cost-effective ways to produce the ideas our creative department dreams up. We experiment, we test, we learn—and we know that what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. As such, we stay up on cutting-edge trends and technologies. 

Whether we’re making pop-up coupons for Macy’s inspired by their iconic parade, delivering human resource-department kits for a Kroger’s check cashing campaign or sending salt lamps to Medicare insurance agents to enhance provider affinity while improving personal well-being, we always champion innovation and impact. Because we’re born for business, which means we’re driven by results.