In a crowded healthcare landscape, conventional one-size-fits-all marketing communications often fail to capture patient attention or deliver meaningful results. Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), proudly part of Jefferson Health, needed a more innovative way to connect with prospective patients—one that reflected their values, emotions, and decision-making styles. At the same time, in an always-evolving digital environment, healthcare marketers are increasingly challenged to ensure their strategies remain HIPAA compliant while still making an impact. By partnering with Upfront by Health Catalyst to implement psychographic segmentation, LVHN reshaped its outreach with tailored messaging across three service lines, leading to improved engagement and more effective campaigns.
To remain financially viable, health systems must attract and retain new patients. In today’s competitive environment, patients have more choices, and every marketing dollar counts. Traditional healthcare marketing often relies on demographic and geographic targeting. Results are usually mixed, especially in digital environments where people scroll past ads in seconds.
The message deeply matters when speaking to prospective patients. The cohesive in-house team at LVHN supporting engagement efforts, composed of colleagues specialized in creative content, writing, web development, digital engagement, analytics, and consumer insights, all know their community well and have become experts in the design and execution of curated messages utilizing psychographics as a result of the partnership with Upfront.
LVHN recognized the need to engage prospective patients in a more relevant, personalized, and effective way. The organization utilized general messaging and outbound messages to attract new patients, but it needed a more effective way to initiate a meaningful conversation with prospective patients. Previous campaigns made a positive impact, but impressions, click-through rates, and leads were lower than desired.
In a fragmented digital landscape where patients scroll quickly and tune out impersonal ads, LVHN needed a more innovative, targeted approach that accounted for how people think and feel about healthcare and would drive measurable growth at the lowest possible cost.
LVHN partnered with Upfront by Health Catalyst to implement psychographic segmentation—a strategy that goes beyond demographics to understand the motivations, values, and behaviors driving patients’ health decisions—to create a more engaging, personalized marketing experience.
The organization selected three use cases and focused marketing efforts on increasing breast cancer screening, acid reflux treatment, and heart check encounters. LVHN launched outbound marketing campaigns designed around Upfront’s five psychographic segments for each of the three service lines.
LVHN tailored and optimized its digital marketing content for each psychographic segment, creating content aligned with each mindset. This enabled the organization to speak to patients demographically, geographically, and based on their motivations, values, and behaviors. LVHN was able to serve the right messages to the right patients at the right time, as it now has a process to identify each patient’s segment. This was proven to be more effective than the one-size-fits-all generic messages.
Campaign effectiveness was assessed by evaluating the number of patients reached by the campaign, click-through rates, lead capture rates, and the number of patients who subsequently completed breast cancer screening, acid reflux treatment, or heart check encounters.
LVHN’s psychographic segment-optimized campaign messages substantially increased patient engagement, outperforming previous brand-led campaigns for the same service lines. Preliminary results include an expected $508K revenue increase as a result of:
“Upfront’s psychographic segmentation enabled us to maximize the few seconds where we have a person’s attention, allowing us to speak to prospective patients in a way that inspires them to take action on improving their health right now. The results are clear with increasing click-through rates, lead generation, and ultimately with attributable patient visits and revenue.”- Vanessa Villaverde-Volk, MBA, Vice President, Consumer Insights and Analytics, Lehigh Valley Health Network
LVHN plans to expand the use of Upfront and psychographic segmentation to support more service line marketing efforts. The organization also plans to optimize patient journeys based on the psychographic segment that prompted the patient's initial engagement.
