Successful Medicare Advantage Lead Generation

MEDICAREADVANTAGE
Written By Ted Grigg

Marketing strategies are critical for any business. One important strategy is managing the prospect database, which involves more than just keeping the list clean by updating addresses, removing duplicates, and excluding deceased individuals and current members.

To manage the prospect database effectively, it's crucial to segment the list based on past monthly performance. This entails creating a response propensity profile to determine your mailings' depth, timing, and frequency. Remember, mailing closer to the enrollment deadline often yields better responses. It's also essential to mail the best-responding groups more frequently than the lower-responding ones. Regular testing can boost these decisions, a key aspect of refining your marketing strategies.

Based on my experience, allocating 75% of the direct mail budget within five months before the enrollment deadline is optimal for delivering the maximum CPA and sales volume requirements. This strategy involves gradually increasing the rollout database quantity as the enrollment deadline approaches, starting with low-penetration mailings. Other channels, such as DRTV and non-direct mail channels, should be utilized 9-10 months before enrollment to create demand and position your product against the competition.

In addition to direct mail, most plans run DRTV and print advertising to support their direct mail campaigns. These activities will positively impact your direct mail response rates while generating additional new business within these added channels.

Your direct mail should be personalized for existing members and potential new members. Existing members should receive a special package directed at them, while new prospects should receive a personalized package that speaks to them as potential new members.

In summary, to develop effective testing strategies, focus on database segmentation, drop frequency, creating executions, time of year, and channel support such as DRTV, digital overlays, radio, and newspaper inserts.

Ted Grigg
What Ted does best is increase response by beating controls, applying multiple channels to target markets, profiling customer databases and generally improving sales results using deep direct marketing principles. Regard Ted as your personal “think-tank” for your direct marketing planning and strategy development. After analyzing several hundred million dollars of direct response testing in all channels, he brings with him the knowledge accumulated from seeing what tends to work and what does not. Having worked on both the agency and client side of direct marketing, Ted understands the unique challenges faced by agencies and their clients. Agencies need to sell themselves and deliver sales results. And clients not only require results, but need ideas they can implement while focusing on tracking response using a relational database. If Ted brings nothing else to the table, by profiling customer databases and creating response propensity models, he quickly becomes the clients’ expert on their own customers. His formal training includes a BA from Abilene Christian University and two years of graduate work at Texas Tech University. For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, Ted developed a revolutionary direct mail format that beat most standing direct mail controls for this company. He also generated more profitable business for this firm by expanding compiled list circulation of less than 10% to more than 30% of total direct mail circulation within a year. (Insurance business generated by direct mail demonstrated higher persistency than customers coming from other media such as print and DRTV.) Ted’s plan and implementation of Medicare lead generation campaigns for over 60 regional and national HMO/PPO organizations combined multiple channels that surpassed some sales projections by as much as 60%. Additional industry experience over the last 30 years includes B2B or B2C for finance, securities, home security, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, government, technology, nonprofit, retail, transportation, communications, and multiple categories in the services industry. As the founder of Wyse Direct (a division for Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, OH), he successfully launched and branded a new technology product for Seiko-Mead by supporting a nationwide sales team with a predictable flow of qualified sales leads. While a VP of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, Ted acted as the direct marketing strategist who refocused the agency’s culture to attract new commercial and fundraising accounts. At the time, Grizzard was essentially a direct mail fund raising production operation. His leadership and team building effectiveness prepared Grizzard for the eventual Omnicom acquisition and Grizzard’s successful integration into Omnicom’s large group of advertising agencies. An independent DM consultant, Ted continues to write numerous articles and conduct webinars on direct marketing techniques. He also wrote The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan — A Step-by-Step Guide publishing it through Executive Enterprises in New York City. During his youth, Ted was raised in Lille, France with his missionary family attending French schools becoming fluent in reading and writing French. Away from the job, Ted is a computer geek, blogger and science fiction buff!
http://www.dmcgresults.com
Previous

Insure Successful B2B Direct Mail Lead Generation
Next

Why Brand People Struggle with Offers