Healthcare continues to claim a higher and higher percentage of revenue — from individuals as well as from companies.

One of the best ways for a business to keep its employees healthy — and also manage costs — is to invest in a robust health and wellness program that educates and supports healthy behavior. Our client, a healthcare insurance provider, wanted to create a wellness program for employers who offered their health plans; however, the program first needed to prove effective in a trial of the insurer’s own employees. We partnered with the insurance provider to create a data-driven engagement program that was customized for the individual, but still respected privacy considerations.

Our analytics team combined 16 siloed data repositories into one centralized data source. Then they segmented members by criteria such as age, marital status, and children. From there, they added behavioral data to add more dimension to each member profile.

Each campaign included general, broad spectrum wellness topics, and health-related information specific to an individual recipient. For example, someone who had a particular heart health issue would get pertinent information on blood pressure, or parents of a newborn would get emails about child healthcare issues. Our analytics made the solution smarter as it progressed by tracking response behaviors, continuously improving the relevance of targeted messages to members.

The strategy, analytics, and flexible technology platform contributed to email open rates of 80%-90%. The success of the pilot gave our client the confidence it needed to roll the program out to one of its own clients, a large telecommunications company with a workforce of more than 40,000. That company saw a 40% participation rate in the new wellness program. Our client continues to use this model to create similar programs for other companies it serves.