The ability to manage change has always been important for success. But now, considering the rapid pace at which the world evolves, it has become more than a mere benefit. Managing change is now essential for survival. A host of technological and social factors are altering many facets of the customer experience, and a brand’s capacity to pivot in tandem will build effective customer engagement.
Humana is one brand that is not afraid of change. In fact, Humana takes pride in its ability and willingness to embrace new directions. During a general session at the 2015 IBM Amplify conference last week in San Diego, Neil Pierce, Humana Enterprise Communications Manager, discussed how Human’s innovative use of email is helping to make these changes happen.
Pierce’s role at Humana is to communicate with customers daily to help transform the brand’s image through a variety of communication channels.
“Humana has traditionally been known as a company of transformation,” said Pierce. “We have transformed ourselves from a nursing home company to a hospital company to, today, an insurance company. Our transformation now is coming toward becoming a well-being company.”
In Humana’s case, this means altering the way it provides value to customers, especially concerning the changing social attitudes towards wellness.
“We recognize that we not only need to provide services to our members to help them manage their adverse health conditions,” said Pierce. “But we also need to provide services to those members that are healthy, to help them maintain that health. That is a win-win for both sides.”
Human’s goal is to help its members improve their health by 20% by 2020, and email is driving this process. To some, email may seem like outdated tool, but Human’s approach is not. It is evolving the process of sending out effective emails right alongside its new approach to customer engagement.
“Eight years ago, our email department consisted of one marketing associate, using an antiquated tool, and sending out emails to the tune of 10 million emails a year,” said Pierce. “Today, we have multiple teams across the enterprise using state-of-the-art tools, a robust process, and a new system that Humana engineered with IBM to send out emails at annual volumes to the tune of six figures.”
Some quick math should reveal that Human is dedicating more resources to communicate less. But considering the quality of those emails, less is actually so much more. Humana’s goal is not to inundate members with a fire hose of messages. Humana wants to communicate in a personal, timely, and relevant manor.
Email is key in this respect, and Humana is attempting to move it toward the next stage of evolution.
Pierce sees email as the only digital channel that can contain every digital asset in one envelope. Email has also been, and continues to be, the most ubiquitous channel in use on the Internet. Almost everybody has an email, and most people have four or five.
Of course, Pierce is quick to note, this is not meant to discredit the power of mobile. In fact, mobile has actually been a huge help to email. According to Pierce, mobile has been responsible for the largest increase in email since its creation. More email is now opened on smartphones than on desktops, which has seen a 180% increase in the last three years alone.
The connection Pierce draws is the need for brands to harness the strength of mobile to increase the relevancy and customer engagement power of email. This means incorporating omni-channel mobile optimization methodology.
“If you are not leveraging all of your digital assets inside every email you send, you are not fulfilling the potential of email,” Pierce said sternly.
This is where Humana is excelling. Since 2012, the brand has mounted several aggressive email campaigns that have encouraged the successful adoption of various apps. Human’s latest email campaign has focused on the HumanaVitality App, which is a loyalty program that rewards members for making healthy choices.
HumanaVitality awards Vitality Points for completing activities such as wearing a fitness device, getting flu shots, fulfilling a health assessment, and more. The idea is that making small lifestyle choices can drastically add up to long lasting health benefits, and this directly fits into Humana’s new customer engagement focus on wellbeing.
These apps and programs have been immensely successful and have even earned a People's Choice Stevie Award for business excellence. Humana credits much of its success to the strength of its email campaigns, which offer the personalized, timely, relevant, and meaningful content that is so crucial now.
Humana also acknowledges its new partnerships with IBM and Silverpop for integrating an innovative communications platform. This is helping Humana increase customer engagement in the present and meet the new challenges of the future.
“We are an insurance company, so people only use our services when they are sick and this is one of the main reasons we are transforming ourselves into a wellbeing company,” said Pierce. “The challenge in our industry has always been engaging the healthy member. If you are not sick, you don’t want to come to our website. So by moving to a wellbeing company, we will be able to engage those healthy members and get them to use our products and services.”
About the Author: Mark Johnson
Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.