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To provide parents with essential health information and keep them engaged after discharge, the UCLA Health marketing team created an 8-week-long email trigger campaign designed for new parents. The comprehensive email strategy includes 8 meticulously crafted messages, written by Aha Media Group. Leveraging audience data, UCLA Health made the emails dynamic and automated to address the diverse needs of new parents from the moment of birth.
The UCLA Health team sends the emails at specific intervals after the birth of a baby at a UCLA Health hospital. Parents receive the first email within 3 days of discharge. Instead of feeling abandoned and overwhelmed after leaving the hospital, new parents can access helpful information in their inboxes when they need it most.
The impressive results are well above industry averages and showcase patient engagement in action. With more than 1,900 emails sent since the campaign launched in April 2024, the unsubscribe rate remains at 0%, and engagement is high.
The arrival of a new baby is a joyful time that also brings many challenges and questions for parents. Studies show that timely, relevant information can help ease the transition into parenthood.
Can health systems keep patients engaged and better support new parents? Can they provide the right information at the right time to help parents during this stage?
The UCLA Health marketing team wanted to find out. They conducted a comprehensive market analysis that showed new parents crave personalized, up-to-date advice on postpartum care, newborn development, and breastfeeding success.
With this knowledge, the team integrated patient data into UCLA Health’s marketing automation platform, Eloqua, so they could segment and target the right audiences. Then they developed and launched a new email marketing campaign with help from Aha Media.
Aha Media wanted to help UCLA Health engage patients and provide new parents with crucial support and resources at the right time. To create the content, they leveraged data-driven insights and a robust content strategy. This included:
Content inventory
Aha Media evaluated all parenting- and pediatrics-related content published by UCLA Health in its Newsroom, print magazines, YouTube channel, and medical service pages.
Email content creation
With quality content to reference and a strong understanding of the target audience, Aha Media’s senior writer Haley Hite crafted 8 emails that spoke directly to new parents’ experiences. The email content was developed in collaboration with UCLA Health’s OB-GYN team, ensuring medical accuracy and relevance.
Content repurposing
UCLA Health already had hundreds of parenting and pediatric pieces published on its web properties. While the email content included brand new, empathetic copywriting, it referenced and linked to existing materials. This ensured targeted messaging with minimal resource investment.
UCLA Health launched the patient engagement campaign on April 15, 2024. With more than 1,900 emails sent, the results across all emails are promising so far:
These results show increases in:
Email recipients are engaging with the email content at above-average rates. For example, a successful email open rate is between 17%-28%; these emails have an average unique open rate of 53%. A successful click-to-open rate is anywhere from 6%-17%; the average click-to-open rate of this campaign is nearly 20%.
With a 0% unsubscribe rate, it’s clear that the targeted trigger campaign is relevant and timely for new parents at the time of discharge and during the weeks to follow. They stay subscribed so they can keep getting more.
By sharing a variety of UCLA Health resources with new parents (such as urgent care locations and family medicine providers), the emails make it easy for parents to return for other services when needed. This keeps the new parents (and their child) within UCLA Health’s system.
This patient engagement campaign is one example of how a health system can support its patients not just during a hospital stay, but every day after. Patient engagement leads to better health outcomes, stronger relationships, and improved business performance.
Aha Media strategically repurposed existing UCLA Health resources (including Newsroom articles, print magazine articles, and YouTube videos). They then presented this information in an empathetic and relatable email directed at new parents. This ensured targeted messaging with minimal resource investment.
UCLA Health used patient data to segment audiences and send targeted emails, making the content more relevant. For example, women who give birth vaginally receive an email with vaginal birth recovery info. Those who give birth via cesarean receive an email about C-section recovery.
Success came from collaboration between the marketing team, Aha Media, OB-GYN specialists, patient education experts, and operational teams. This integrated approach ensured both medical accuracy and content that resonated with new parents.
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