Permission Marketing – This is What I [patient] Want

Permission Marketing is certainly not my concept. Seth Godin invented the term and wrote the book on this several years ago. But, I think it is a concept way behind it’s time in healthcare.

“Permission Marketing cuts through the clutter and allows a marketer to speak to prospects as friends, not strangers”

The concept (in my words) is that you ask the consumer (aka patient) what they want.

• What information do you want from us?
  • Opportunities to save money
  • Alternative therapies
  • News about your drug
  • Benefit information
  • Compliance reminders (Rx, lab visit, tests)
• How do you want that information delivered to you?
  • Phone
  • Voicemail
  • Cell phone
  • SMS / Text message
  • E-mail
  • Fax
  • Letter
• Does the channel you want the message delivered through vary by the message?
  • Deliver savings information within 24 hours to me via my cell phone
  • Send benefit information via PDF using my home e-mail address
• When do you want that information delivered to you?
  • Pro-actively
  • Reactively
  • Bundled (i.e., send me one “package” of information monthly)

Wouldn’t that be nice? Most of us don’t even know what the options are. We just get bombarded with information from our employer, managed care company, pharmacy, PBM, disease management company, wellness programs, HSA / HRA account manager, etc. Different messages. Different information.

In reality, one of the biggest problems is that our healthcare companies just can’t manage these type of personal rules today. Managing do not call lists are difficult enough. This should change over the next 5 years, but it will be a combination of patient generated preferences along with data mining to develop algorithms that predict what channel and message is most effective at driving behavior for certain patient segments.