Data-Driven Efforts Help Systems Adapt During the Pandemic

Kevan Mabbutt, senior vice president and chief consumer officer, Intermountain Healthcare

Marketing budgets were already starting to tighten for some health systems at the beginning of last year. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, some of those budget cuts became even more severe.

Other systems saw budgets remain the same, but marketing departments had to be ready to quickly shift their strategy, messaging, tactics, and media to meet their community’s ever-changing needs.

Marketing departments throughout the health care industry now face new pressures as they continue to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for a post-pandemic marketplace. As they turn to 2021, health systems will need to address how they focus on consumers, how they deal with budget constraints, and how they can organize their departments to create agile teams that can quickly meet any challenge.

Kevan Mabbutt, senior vice president and chief consumer officer at Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, says the system continued to develop and launch new digital tools that had been in the planning stages before the coronavirus arrived.

Mabbutt credits his department’s use of detailed consumer data to help it quickly respond to changing consumer needs throughout the pandemic.

He explains that beyond traditional patient surveys, Intermountain used deep-dive immersive research, consumer pulse surveys, journey mapping, and ethnography to inform and support its marketing programs during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

“That will continue to be our m.o. (modus operandi),” Mabbutt predicted. “We’ve really accelerated our digital efforts.”

Read the full story now: Better Data and Agility Help Marketers Justify Budgets and Measure Results

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