Through HCIC and our consulting practice at Greystone.Net, we hear about a wide variety of triumphs and challenges healthcare marketers face. Being a part of healthcare marketing means facing new hurdles and finding creative ways to navigate them, developing new strategies, collecting data to demonstrate effectiveness of our efforts and ultimately illustrating our successes and learning from our failures. 

One of the greatest current challenges in healthcare marketing is addressing increased competition and the demand for more personalized relationships with greater focus on the wants and needs of key target audiences. With Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, organizations have an opportunity to leverage complex data sets, which, in turn, help them identify very targeted marketing opportunities. CRMs also allow organizations to create and distribute focused, personalized communications and collect data to demonstrate effectiveness.

However, the complexities of CRM within a healthcare system can be enormous. Marketers responsible for CRM are often managing multiple complicated data sets with varying degrees of accuracy and connectivity. Often, they are also working with other internal departments to reach agreement on what tools to use, what strategies to leverage, rules of engagement, governance, prioritization, timing and deployment. The capabilities, skill sets, and effectiveness of CRM also vary greatly across different organizations. Most hospital and healthcare system marketing departments are feeling pressure and navigating a complicated environment in their pursuit of CRM excellence.

Recognizing the need to better understand how organizations are getting their arms around CRM, Greystone has collaborated with MERGE and LeadSquared and invited providers from UNC Healthcare and Baptist Miami to create a white paper that provides an overview of the issues hospitals and healthcare systems face when addressing Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The white paper looks at these issues from the perspective of Marketing leadership, examines strategies for implementing and utilizing this crucial technology, and proposes possible solutions that can help organizations move forward successfully.

In this white paper, you will learn about CRM and why it is important to hospital and healthcare system marketers. We discuss the various applications for CRM, potential strategies, the challenges organizations often face in implementing and managing CRM, and discuss the many benefits the tool can provide. Most importantly, we highlight two case studies from organizations who have been wrestling with CRM for many years and learn how they have navigated the hurdles, struggles and ultimately shown success.

The purpose of this whitepaper is to help organizations understand that CRM is complex and valuable and often requires a great deal of time, energy, strategy and determination and all of this can lead to effective tactical success.

Click here to download the white paper.  

If you have additional questions or would like more information, you can reach Michael Schneider, EVP and Principal at Greystone.Net at mschneider@greystone.net.