Healthcare marketers have long relied on Google search as their safe channel. But in today's post-pandemic landscape where many clinics are at capacity, that dependency has become a strategic liability. In this episode, Jeremy Rogers, Vice President of Digital Marketing and Experience at Indiana University Health, explains why the real challenge isn't just acquiring new patients, it's winning their lifetime value and share of care. Jeremy breaks down how IU Health is moving beyond last-click attribution to build a full-funnel marketing engine that connects campaign data to actual health outcomes. That shift requires first-party data infrastructure, multi-touch attribution, privacy-compliant EHR integration, and getting buy-in from IT and finance teams by proving real ROI on metrics that matter: NPS, share of wallet, and patient retention.
Healthcare marketers have long relied on Google search as their safe channel. But in today's post-pandemic landscape where many clinics are at capacity, that dependency has become a strategic liability. In this episode, Jeremy Rogers, Vice President of Digital Marketing and Experience at Indiana University Health, explains why the real challenge isn't just acquiring new patients, it's winning their lifetime value and share of care. Jeremy breaks down how IU Health is moving beyond last-click attribution to build a full-funnel marketing engine that connects campaign data to actual health outcomes. That shift requires first-party data infrastructure, multi-touch attribution, privacy-compliant EHR integration, and getting buy-in from IT and finance teams by proving real ROI on metrics that matter: NPS, share of wallet, and patient retention.
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“ Many CFOs around the country say without margin, there is no mission. And there's some truth to that. You've gotta keep the lights on. But I think it's keeping the top of funnel wide open. We want to provide care for all Hoosiers, everyone in our state who needs care, we're open for them. But you want to be strategic. Not all growth is equally weighted. There are some services that are maybe more profitable, have more correlation to long-term health. Our mission here is to help Indiana become one of the healthiest states. We can't do that alone just by offering primary care or other low acuity services. We have to offer a suite of different services across the care continuum, across a patient's lifetime. You've gotta balance all those things.” – Jeremy Rogers
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:06) - Why bother moving beyond Google search? The post-pandemic supply-demand shift
*(08:59) - The patient journey: From digital search to care delivery and beyond
*(14:47) - Moving beyond last-click attribution: Defining true conversions and health outcomes
*(20:37) - Key metrics that matter to executives: NPS, share of wallet, and lifetime value
*(33:46) - Three actionable steps to start connecting the dots today
*(38:39) - The future of AI in healthcare: Patient-facing automation and the trust challenge
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Links:
Check Out the Actionable Guide Based on this Episode
Connect with Jeremy on LinkedIn
Learn more about Caspian Studios
[00:00:00] Jeremy Rogers: Many CFOs around the country say without margin, there is no mission. And there's some truth to that. You've gotta keep the lights on. But I think you know, it, it's, it's keeping the top of funnel wide open. You know, we, we want to provide care for all Hoosiers. Everyone in our state who needs care, we're open for them.
[00:00:25] Jeremy Rogers: But you want to be strategic. Not all growth is equally weighted. There are some services that are maybe more profitable, have more correlation to long-term health. I mean, our, our mission here is to help Indiana become one of the healthiest states. We can't do that alone just by offering primary care or other low acuity services.
[00:00:44] Jeremy Rogers: We have to offer a suite of different services across the care continuum, across a patient's lifetime. You've gotta balance all those things.
[00:00:52] Ray Mina: So I've been really excited to have this conversation today because I think most of us know that if we wanna break over reliance on paid search, it's more than just experimenting with media mixes and different channels.
[00:01:05] Ray Mina: You really have to like build a strategy of first party data. You gotta figure out how are you gonna move beyond last click? Because if you stand up a bunch of channels and you don't have that part figured out, it may fail because of lack of proof points. And you need to big think beyond just like a single job to be done of acquisition.
[00:01:21] Ray Mina: And how do we win the most valuable patients? How do we think about lifetime value beyond that initial appointment? And I'm joined today by who I think is one of the, maybe, maybe the Kim Kardashian of healthcare, one of the biggest thought leaders and influencers in healthcare.
[00:01:39] Ray Mina: Maybe not that famous, but Jeremy Rogers, he's Vice President of Digital Marketing and Experience over at Indiana Health. I've known Jeremy for a while. I truly mean this. I like really respect if Jeremy has a thought or has something to say about a topic, we should listen. And he was kind enough to give me an hour today to dig into this and, and have that conversation together.
[00:01:58] Ray Mina: Thanks, Jeremy. Welcome.
[00:02:00] Jeremy Rogers: You got it Ray. You flatter me too much. Way too much.
[00:02:05] Ray Mina: You deserve it, man. Alright, let's just get, let's just get into it. Like why bother at all? No one's gonna fault marketers in healthcare from investing heavily in. Intent capture that drives appointments. Like why? Why are, why should we even bother to like, just give up? Just put all your money in Google. Why care?
[00:02:24] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, so Ray, I think there's nothing wrong with kinda last touch, demand capture still very important. But the reality is, in this post pandemic world, the supply demand curve is much different than it used to be. I mean, many clinics around the country are already full.
[00:02:38] Jeremy Rogers: They're already at capacity. So in that environment, acquiring a net new patient may not be the highest priority. If you can't service that patient downstream, think specialty care, think procedures, chronic care management, things like that. If you can't service those patients, is that really the best use of your marketing dollars?
[00:02:57] Jeremy Rogers: Is what I would say there. You know, we've, we've tried to frame that and look across the entire patient journey, so maybe, maybe it's about driving more lifetime value with that customer. Maybe it's about, about the loyalty, the retention. We talk about share of care, share of wallet. In many cases nowadays, those types of metrics are as important or maybe even more important than acquiring one single net new patient.
[00:03:24] Ray Mina: If I'm, if I'm a CMO in healthcare and I have great metrics on the bottom of funnel strategies and I can see that they're working and they do, like, you know, Google, Google search ads is probably the single greatest advertising platform built in the history of mankind. It works. It's not, it's not a, it's not a faulty product.
[00:03:43] Ray Mina: How, how does the over-reliance on Google, you mentioned like share of wallet as one example, but how do they show up in the numbers? Like how would I know as a CMO that it's time to like start thinking about things beyond Google search?
[00:03:56] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, no, I think you'd look at churn. So are you bringing in a patient for a primary care clinic or for an urgent care visit?
[00:04:02] Jeremy Rogers: Are they sticking with your system? Are they seeking out that deeper care with your broader delivery network? If the answer is no, if you have high churn, if you have, if your your LTV is relatively low compared to local competition, then maybe you're doing a good enough job top of funnel, but you're seeing a lot of abandonment, mid funnel or bottom funnel. That's what I would look at. Dig into the metrics around that.
[00:04:26] Ray Mina: Is my, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a healthcare marketer. I never have been. I've spent four years in this market. Is my, is my worldview wrong in that even though I'm providing health services like Indiana, you're, you're providing health services to all different types of patients.
[00:04:47] Ray Mina: But is my worldview wrong that like, even with that you have to keep the lights on and you have to figure out how to win the most valuable patients as well, so that your hospital system is, is successful. Is that, is that like a, is that the wrong worldview for someone outside of healthcare?
[00:05:00] Jeremy Rogers: No. No, no, it's not the wrong worldview. I think we wouldn't, we wouldn't use the term valuable around patients. I think you've gotta be careful how you frame it with physicians and other care providers. But I think the, the reality is there's a virtuous combination of the margin and the mission. You know, many CFOs around the country say without margin, there is no mission, and there's some truth to that. You've gotta keep the lights on.
[00:05:22] Jeremy Rogers: But I think you know, it, it's, it's keeping the top of funnel wide open. You know, we, we want to provide care for all Hoosiers, everyone in our state who needs care, we're open for them. But you want to be strategic. Not all growth is equally weighted. There are some services that are maybe more profitable, have more correlation to long-term health.
[00:05:42] Jeremy Rogers: I mean, our, our mission here is to help Indiana become one of the healthiest states. We can't do that alone just by offering primary care or other low acuity services. We have to offer a suite of different services across the care continuum, across a patient's lifetime. You've gotta balance all those things.
[00:05:59] Jeremy Rogers: If you look at the finances of our industry, there are certain types of encounters that are, are more profitable. The average primary care appointment in our country is a loss leader. You don't make money off of that. Systems make money off of procedures, operations, other types of chronic care services. That is where the profitability equation comes into play. That's not all of it, but you've gotta factor that in in terms of your overall pipeline.
[00:06:27] Ray Mina: Yeah, I've heard that. What you just said, I've heard that before, which is that first appointment isn't necessarily the thing that, is the thing that matters most to the business.
[00:06:35] Ray Mina: It's, it's, are we actually winning? And, and you've talked to me in the past about share of wallet. Are we actually able to help service you across the other things that you'll need from us? That's what you mean by LTV, I'm guessing.
[00:06:46] Jeremy Rogers: Bingo. Exactly. Right.
[00:06:49] Ray Mina: After Google, right? Like if, if we are, if we're, if we're all in alignment that, you know, Google is a critical part, just, just bottom of funnel actions are a critical part of our strategy.
[00:06:59] Ray Mina: I would never build a strategy that didn't shore up the bottom of the funnel and make sure I was really good there to capture any kind of intent that's coming my way or any kind of demand. If, as we think about like building beyond that foundation. What should the full funnel strategy look like in healthcare? Or what does it look like for you? How are you thinking about this?
[00:07:19] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, I would frame it Ray, it's, it's really not one funnel. If you look at a patient's healthcare lifecycle, it's a series of funnels. And so you're, you're winning that relationship every time. Not, you know, most patients are not in market for healthcare services very often throughout a year.
[00:07:35] Jeremy Rogers: It may be a handful of times, depending upon their health, but every time they're seeking care, you're putting them through a new conversion funnel. You've got the benefit of having that relationship with them. We've talked before, like there are no other industries that have more data about their customers than a health system.
[00:07:52] Jeremy Rogers: It's how we, how we use that data to help nudge a patient, to engage a patient, to engage them. There may be times when they're due or they're overdue for a healthcare service, they may not even realize it. As a marketer, we can use those signals to really, you know, drive that loyalty, drive that engagement.
[00:08:11] Jeremy Rogers: To me, that's the, the full journey, a patient's entire life cycle of healthcare. There are those micro conversions along the way that we should focus a lot more on now than that we did before.
[00:08:24] Ray Mina: That really resonated with me what you just said. Is that like a patient, a consumer may not actually be in market very often throughout a year.
[00:08:32] Ray Mina: I can relate to that. Like I'm not in market, I'm not actively looking for healthcare. But then there are moments where I am, and I'm not actually like Google searching, like I'm actually not searching that. I'm calling friends, I'm networking, I'm thinking about brands. I recognize that that really resonates.
[00:08:47] Ray Mina: And, and you know, that just describes that like a lot of healthcare isn't intent capture. It's it's demand generation. Right.
[00:08:56] Jeremy Rogers: Bingo, bingo.
[00:08:59] Ray Mina: If you could like, maybe even just 'cause as I think you think about the world probably in like different service lines and different services that you know, Indiana Health can provide for consumers.
[00:09:10] Ray Mina: If you could, if you feel comfortable. Would you walk us through the journey of a consumer through one of those service lines? Like how, how does that look in practice outside of just someone querying for something in Google?
[00:09:21] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah. Yeah. Happy to Ray and I'll, I'll paint a broad brush because no two journeys are the same, depending on is it low acuity care?
[00:09:28] Jeremy Rogers: Is it high acuity? I imagine a patient who's just received a life altering diagnosis, their journey is very different than someone who's seeking like urgent care or very low acuity care from a primary care provider. Typically though, there are those intent signals. So a patient may, they may have a symptom, they may know they have a need.
[00:09:47] Jeremy Rogers: It, it typically nowadays begins digitally. They're searching, they're using their, their AI agent of choice, a Google search, what have you to, to seek out options. What type of care should I be seeking from that, they're then going into that kinda conversion funnel, like, where, where can I receive care?
[00:10:05] Jeremy Rogers: Where should I receive care? Is it covered by my insurance provider? Can I get in? You know, you, you know, nowadays it's, it's more difficult than ever to actually get in to receive care. So there's that calculus coming into play too. So they're going through that part of the, the funnel. Then once they've chosen, they're booking the appointment.
[00:10:23] Jeremy Rogers: Nowadays, more often than not, there's a self-service piece. It may be via an app or via web portal, what have you. They're typically scheduling on their own. Then you get into the care delivery part of the funnel, things like registration and arrival, and you're, you may be physically in a clinic or a hospital.
[00:10:40] Jeremy Rogers: You may be doing a virtual care encounter. Regardless, you're entering that, that care delivery part of the journey. You're engaging a provider physically or virtually. They're, they're rendering care and they're asking questions about you capturing information. From that point, there's a diagnosis, there's a therapeutic, they're, they're giving you a prescription.
[00:10:59] Jeremy Rogers: They're giving you a therapy, a treatment, what have you. Then there's basically everything after care. So there's the, the relationship piece, there's the health and wellness piece. There's the, the favorite part, the billing piece, which we all love, and in, in healthcare patients are traversing that too. And it's really very cyclical.
[00:11:16] Jeremy Rogers: Like these, these journeys are not linear. Like there, there are many different on and off ramps. You know, you may go back in, you may need. A second opinion, you may have to go back for further treatment. It just keeps iterating from there. And that's, that's kind of the archetypical customer journey in provider healthcare.
[00:11:34] Ray Mina: What about, what about, let me give you a story. This is a true story. My dad, my dad passed away from cancer a while ago and, and when my dad was diagnosed with cancer, you know, the conversations that we were having were around what are the, he lived in the Mid-Atlantic area, what are the best, what are the best healthcare brands, and how can my dad get into trials?
[00:11:53] Ray Mina: Or how can you go meet with experts to get second and third opinions about this? And that was definitely, my dad had intent. We all had intent as a family, but we didn't, we didn't show up initially, digitally. There were no LLMs. But even if there were today, I don't think I would needed to have searched there.
[00:12:10] Ray Mina: How, how does that, how does that factor into your strategy, like above, above intent channels? How do you like, how do you think about marketing to make sure that when that moment happens, like my family had, and sometimes it's less severe, it could be, I tore my knee skiing in Vail over the weekend and I need to go get orthopedic care in Indiana. How do you get to that?
[00:12:33] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, you're spot on, Ray. So I think that's, that's something my team focuses heavily on. It's kind of a, it's kind of a dual intent approach there. So patients are searching for the nature of their illness, what would the treatment be? Then they're quickly pivoting to, okay, what are the best care options?
[00:12:48] Jeremy Rogers: Depending upon the severity they may be looking for, the most convenient, the closest, the most accessible, or they may be looking for the best. Who is the best surgeon? Who is the best cancer provider? In my area, in my state, in my country, you know, there are many patients who are willing to travel around the country to receive the, the best care, and that's, that's appropriate in many cases.
[00:13:12] Jeremy Rogers: So in in those scenarios, it's really incumbent upon us to make sure the information we publish externally is the most accurate and reflective of our, our capabilities. So it could be things like provider credentialing, it could be things like capacity, quality data, hours of operation. It's really, really one of our core responsibilities is any of that brand information, whether it be provider information, location information, service information.
[00:13:43] Jeremy Rogers: We have to make sure that is as accurate and contemporary as possible. That's very difficult for large health systems that are employing thousands of doctors. You have hundreds of clinics and hospitals, things like that. That is a full-time job in and of itself. And not to mention now with LLMs, making sure they're reading are, are you, are you providing the right structured data?
[00:14:04] Jeremy Rogers: Is your schema appropriate? Are you pushing out data in a timely fashion? It's a lot of work. It's a huge effort.
[00:14:11] Ray Mina: This is the experience part of your title, right? It's, it's also like once you get somebody, it is to your properties, to your front door. What is that experience gonna be like? Because that's a big part of the battle, right? Especially given the nature of consumers today and our expectations.
[00:14:28] Jeremy Rogers: You're right, Ray, but that's what I love the most about my job. It's that balance of brand and experience. And I would, I would argue in healthcare, our brand is really nothing more than the totality of the experiences we deliver to a patient or a customer. That's our brand. It's not a logo or advertising. It's what we deliver.
[00:14:47] Ray Mina: The thing that comes up in a lot of the conversations that I have, and I'm curious, you know, how you've solved this, is that even when people will nod their head at this conversation. And they'll look at it and say, yeah, but like these two or three tactics, that's where it's easiest for me to measure.
[00:15:04] Ray Mina: Like even, even if I invest in these other things, the actual conversion is likely to happen in spot A or spot B. How do you move beyond that? How do you show to leadership that these other channels are effective and that they're having the desired outcome, you know, to your business goals?
[00:15:22] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, I think you've gotta really align on what are true conversions. Just booking an appointment is not necessarily the true conversion. Is it actually a care gap? Like, are you, are you incentivized to actually provide value-based care? Is it, is it the health of the patient in the end? Can you demonstrate through your marketing activities, are you driving healthcare outcomes?
[00:15:42] Jeremy Rogers: And, and nowadays, in many cases, you can do that. Like we can truly track a patient from A to Z and see, hey. How did we acquire them? How did they come in and are we actually improving their health over time? Are they getting the screenings, they're, they're required to get, are they following through in adherence?
[00:15:59] Jeremy Rogers: All of those things tie together at the end of the day, that's the true measure of our success as marketers. It's not, it's not just getting new people in the door to a clinic. It's are we actually affecting the behavioral change?
[00:16:13] Ray Mina: Yeah. This is the world I've always grown up in, which is show up to a board meeting and I, I need to be able to link my campaigns and strategy to the actual outcome, which in B2B SaaS is, is revenue and retention like you the same, similar to your goals? What I've heard, like I was at a conference maybe a year or so ago and a huge health system spent about $3 million to connect these dots. Like what is that lift like?
[00:16:39] Ray Mina: Like what do you need? Do you need a data science team? Like how do you do that at Indiana Health?
[00:16:45] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, it's not easy, that's for sure. So you do, you do have to spend a lot of time and energy with the plumbing, like connecting the underpinning data sources. You mentioned earlier, first party data. You have to have a very robust first party data strategy.
[00:16:58] Jeremy Rogers: You cannot rely upon third or fourth party data. Not possible. You have to find the right partners that can do the heavy lifting to integrate with your EHR. You have to have that. Backend data connectivity to be able to flow that through. That's important. And I think you also have to be, be of a mindset that this is really a marathon, not a sprint.
[00:17:19] Jeremy Rogers: You can't, you can't do this like in two or three months, like prior to my time in healthcare, I was used to these quick sprints. Okay, do the integration, watch the data you're done in he in healthcare. It's an annuity. You're basically signing up for the care and feeding of this integration over time. So I think, I think what I remind my team is we're, we're doing very important work.
[00:17:39] Jeremy Rogers: This is people's lives and health that's at stake here. So it's worth, it's worth the investment. It's not just financial investment, it's the energy and time that goes into it as well. So it's not hard, it's not easy, it's for sure.
[00:17:52] Ray Mina: I think it's so key to what you said because I, I do say, you know, I did say at the outset of lifting your head outside of things like paid search and looking for other things.
[00:18:01] Ray Mina: But I say that also with the reality of like most people I talk to still cannot connect or campaign level data to the outcomes that we're talking about. And that by itself, in this world where Google's a bit of a slot machine, for example. That's a big gap. Like are your campaigns actually delivering some leading indicator or are they actually delivering the thing that matters most?
[00:18:24] Ray Mina: The, the thing that they run into Jeremy is like getting other internal, like the marketing team in general doesn't have the power to get it, to invest in, you know, I've got Epic, how do I make sure I can connect these dots? They're, they're busy. Like it's not because they don't wanna help, it's because they're resource constrained as well.
[00:18:42] Ray Mina: How have you been successful? What advice would you give to people to get that buy-in internally from things, groups that aren't marketing?
[00:18:50] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, so I think you're spot on, Ray. I think a lot of it is you have to go back to articulate the real value of marketing. If, if marketing is really designed to drive growth, it's really how are, how are you driving the right growth?
[00:19:01] Jeremy Rogers: It's not just opening the door and having anybody come in. You have to be able to tell a story. Through both a narrative and the data to prove, hey, we are driving strategic growth. We are, we are acquiring and retaining the right patients at the right time, delivering them to the right care teams. If you can connect those dots and and show, you have to show the ROI.
[00:19:22] Jeremy Rogers: It can't be fake. It has to be real true ROI. If you can do that. You're gonna get incremental investment. Now, it may, it may not be all the, all the investment you need day one, but you have to be willing to iterate and grow and, and keep going back to the well where appropriate. But you can do it.
[00:19:40] Ray Mina: Are there certain champions that, you know, when you think about the other executive stakeholders, is it like a finance champion? Is it CEO level? Like who, who do you, who, what would, if you don't have buy-in, like who should you start by winning over?
[00:19:56] Jeremy Rogers: Well, I think it takes a village. You have to find people who have common goals like who are people who are incentivized by growth. Is it, is it a particular service line? Is it a medical group?
[00:20:05] Jeremy Rogers: Is it a hospital? It may vary based upon na nature of your health system, but you have to find people who have common motivation and then help them understand that, that your problem is also their problem. And if you can partner with them, you mentioned it earlier. If, if you can get a consortium of business leaders to go to it and say, we have to do this.
[00:20:27] Jeremy Rogers: We need this. Yours is not the only voice. Marketing is an important voice, but it's not the only voice in that, in that concert.
[00:20:37] Ray Mina: When I think about, like in a board meeting, you know, you, you, when you're meeting with other like executives or stakeholders, you have to be like really to the point on what data matters.
[00:20:46] Ray Mina: What, what is the data that really matters when, when you're in front of the CEO or the executives at the organization like? What are those key proof points?
[00:20:55] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, I mean for me, we've been lucky for several years. Our NPS has been on our corporate scorecard, so that's one of our top four metrics for the entire enterprise is our NPS.
[00:21:05] Jeremy Rogers: We can then drill into it. So I can show service line level NPS, I can show clinic level NPS. I could even show like for a given provider what is the NPS for their patients. And so using that type of data, we've been able to build a narrative around, hey. If we have higher NPS, we are driving more LTV, we're driving more retention, and that's, that's a proxy or a leading indicator for financial growth.
[00:21:32] Jeremy Rogers: We've been able to build that story over multiple years. That's key. We talked about share of wallet or share of care, being able to leverage first party data and augment that with claims data where appropriate to show are we growing our share of wallet? If we acquire a new patient, are we able to drive that loyalty over the lifetime? Those are the types of metrics that really matter to business leaders. They do.
[00:21:58] Ray Mina: So you mentioned, and I love that you think this way because as a B2B SaaS marketer, like I have to think in two dimensions. I have to think about new business for you. It's new patients. And I must think about not just retention, but I need to think about like, can I offer more services to my customers and expand them?
[00:22:17] Ray Mina: Do you think of that in that way? Not just retaining your patients, but like how do I, how do I expand their wallet?
[00:22:24] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, we do indeed. Like I mentioned earlier, not every patient's in market for new services all the time, but we know those moments that matter in their healthcare journey. So whether thi think about it's a, a young family, they're expecting their first baby, those are, that's the first time they're consuming those services from a health system.
[00:22:40] Jeremy Rogers: We want to be top of mind when they're considering where to have that baby. That's one example. Think about an older patient who's received a life-changing diagnosis. We want to be top of mind. Have that brand affinity, have that relationship, and, and there are, there are dozens or even hundreds of those types of journeys across the healthcare continuum that we've gotta show up for each and every day.
[00:23:03] Ray Mina: Because you focus on, since LTV is such like a critical part, how does that show up in your thinking around channels and investment? Like what, what, what changes when your mind is thinking beyond just the acquisition?
[00:23:17] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, I mean, channel mix is clearly different in healthcare than other industries. No doubt about it.
[00:23:22] Jeremy Rogers: But I think from, from our perspective, it really is if we, we've done a lot of work over the years, segmenting our patients, so we have general, we can make general observations around based upon. Behaviors, psychographic information. We, we have lookalikes, we have propensity models, things like that. You can apply those types of thinking in a compliant way.
[00:23:44] Jeremy Rogers: When you're doing campaign planning, we're doing broader brand planning. All those things come into play. We, we tend to do a combination of, we look, we look at our access, are we for, for certain services we offer. If we don't have adequate capacity, there's no point driving more demand. If we can't service that demand, we take that into consideration.
[00:24:04] Jeremy Rogers: I mentioned NPS earlier. If the NPS for a given service is not good enough, why would we want to drive a new customer in to have a bad experience? That's not good for anyone. So we look at that too. And then we also factor in the financial health. So, there are certain services that are more strategic that may not be quite as profitable, but if they have a long tail value, if there's downstream value, we'll make investments there.
[00:24:29] Jeremy Rogers: And so it's, it's frankly like it's 3D checkers in that situation, Ray, looking at all those dimensions to figure out what's the right mix.
[00:24:36] Ray Mina: And what kind of team do you have that, do you have a data science team? Like how, what, what do you leverage as resources to help you get to the truth there?
[00:24:43] Jeremy Rogers: We are blessed here in a big health system. We have lots of data and lots of data scientists, so we leverage first party data. We have a couple of really strong agency relationships where they're leveraging their data science capabilities as well. It's, it's an, I've been here 10 years now. It's an area that's changed quite a bit. Like our, our data lake approach, our data warehouse is, is way, way more robust than it was five years ago, 10 years ago.
[00:25:07] Jeremy Rogers: And we're making continued investments there. We have to, it's kind of an arms race.
[00:25:11] Ray Mina: When you, when you talk about the, this is an area that I've like heard people are starting to think more about, like, I was recently talking to another CMO and they have had some changes in their system and, and the services that they have brand preference for are services that they're gonna support, but they need to go identify their brand in new areas of service where like they're the third or fourth brand in the area and they recognize this need for more targeted approach to go find them.
[00:25:40] Ray Mina: What do you, is that, do you achieve that by pairing your own first party data with third party data sets in a, in a HIPAA compliant way to like, help with that targeting? Is that, how is that, how that works for you?
[00:25:51] Jeremy Rogers: We do indeed and we also layer in, Ray, a lot of market research. We're blessed to have an in-house primary market research team.
[00:25:58] Jeremy Rogers: We do a lot of, a lot of testing, a lot of trial and error because, you know, we, we serve lots of audiences, urban, suburban, rural, patient populations. What works well for one segment will not work well for another. Indiana, believe it or not, is a fairly diverse state. Both geographically and, and just from a a population perspective, we have to make sure that we're showing up in the right way for those audiences.
[00:26:23] Ray Mina: Yeah. I love that you just, I you were, as you were saying, like rural and urban. I was thinking of multiple conversations I've had where like for people in urban, crazy to say this in 2026, but in, in suburban area or in rural areas specifically. Like the internet isn't as prevalent as one might think or isn't as widely used as one might think.
[00:26:43] Ray Mina: So different ways of communicating with consumers and patients don't work there. What, what are some, like, some of the things I've heard is like shockingly direct mail is an incredible lever for some of these communities where in our brains sitting here right now, we're thinking like everything's up, shows up digitally.
[00:27:01] Ray Mina: Like what are some of the findings that you've had that have surprised you of how you can reach your patients?
[00:27:06] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, that's one example, Ray. I think we've, we've looked at community outreach, so in some of these more rural areas, are you, there are community partnerships where there they're kind of, whether it's community centers or other kinda centers of gravity for the culture in that area has been very effective to us.
[00:27:21] Jeremy Rogers: We look at interfaith relationships. We have lots of good, good partnerships with faith-based organizations here in Indiana. You know, I think, we've gotta be careful though, just because we, we can't generalize there, there are rural areas that have good technical capacity. They, they actually, in some cases, for example, they may skew more towards virtual care because they would rather take a video visit than travel an hour or more to have a, an appointment with a physician.
[00:27:49] Jeremy Rogers: So in some cases, actually it actually skews the opposite direction. So I think you gotta be careful, not have a one size fits all approach there.
[00:27:56] Ray Mina: Yeah, that's so, that's right. That's so that like gets into the experience side, which is, I may have different channels to communicate, but what's the best way?
[00:28:04] Ray Mina: Like, 'cause people are so busy or people don't have access in the way we take for granted. And how can you actually service them properly if you don't understand like how to match them to the service they need?
[00:28:15] Jeremy Rogers: An example that I'll give you is like, in rural areas, like urgent care clinics, you may be 90 minutes or two hours away from an urgent care clinic.
[00:28:23] Jeremy Rogers: There, there's no point in me promoting a clinic to you when you can't get there conveniently. So how do we optimize that based upon day parting, or geographic proximity? It's all part of the equation.
[00:28:36] Ray Mina: So the, the, there was one part of this, like one part for me that's surprising is the lack of people who can connect to the outcome in healthcare like you just described.
[00:28:45] Ray Mina: The other part that's surprising to me where you just went, which just seems so intuitive, is, man, if I wanna deliver like great, great care to people, which I know everybody does, then I need to make sure that it's really easy for them to identify the best way to get that care, the best time. You know, like people don't have a lot of time to take the day off to get care.
[00:29:06] Ray Mina: Why? Why is it so rare to see that kind of experience in healthcare? I go to your website or there's some access point, and I can very, very easily figure out right now how to get care in the way and the time that's right for me.
[00:29:22] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah. I would say in general, Ray, a lot of it is up until a few years ago, a lot of systems didn't really put the patient at the center of decisions like that.
[00:29:29] Jeremy Rogers: It was more about, hey, I, I wouldn't use the word paternal, but it was more of an inside out kind of go to market approach. Through, through the pandemic, through other kind of consumer related expectations rising, you're finding more and more systems have to operate more like a consumer company there. We, we, as patients, have more choice now in our healthcare delivery than we ever have before, whether it's financial choice or preferential choice.
[00:29:57] Jeremy Rogers: And so if you, if you kind of embrace the reality that. You are having to win these customers, these patients over every time they're in market for care. It really for it flips on its head the way you go to market in areas like that. It has to.
[00:30:13] Ray Mina: That makes so much sense. You, you mentioned there's a lot of orchestration in what we're talking about of like connecting dots and making sure you can actually layer in different data sets and making sure you can actually create a great experience.
[00:30:26] Ray Mina: I think, has it been a year? I can't remember how long ago you said this, but I think you told me a while ago, like this shift, like first party data and making sure that you actually like harness your first party data is gonna be such a critical thing in healthcare. Why, why do you, beside what we just talked about, like what are, what are some of the other reasons that that's gonna be critical?
[00:30:48] Jeremy Rogers: Well, I think especially you mentioned like the EHRs earlier, like you, you can get only so far by just leveraging the pure out of box eh, HR data that only gets you so far. But when you think about a patient's life is really kind of, it's kind of a left brain, right brain. There's the consumer data set, so the data, the data you're throwing off, the data you're engaging with before you become a patient.
[00:31:11] Jeremy Rogers: Then there's everything afterwards. If, if the EHR is the source of truth for all of the care data in the middle. You have to have a way to connect those dots. You have to know, okay, when is Ray engaged as a patient or when is he kind of in market searching for other types of care? That's really where the first party data strategy, it makes its, hey, basically because.
[00:31:35] Jeremy Rogers: You've got to be able to have those intent signals going back and forth between. You've gotta understand like when, when have I come out of a care delivery experience and I may be looking for other support when may, may I be open to nudging for further engagement. If you do that solely based upon EHR data, you basically have one hand tied behind your back is the reality.
[00:31:58] Jeremy Rogers: And, and, and there are, especially for certain parts of the care equation. There are other smaller, more nimble players who will be nipping at the edges if you don't have a strategy to do that.
[00:32:10] Ray Mina: Hmm. Yeah. I didn't, I, I forget about the part of healthcare, which is like, there's been an extreme amount of investment in alternative healthcare, whether they're startups, whether it's the big brands that were not in healthcare before, like the Amazons of the world. That's, that's another factor that's kind of forcing some of this kind of consumerization of healthcare. It is.
[00:32:28] Jeremy Rogers: Right, and they're, they're, they're attacking at the edges.
[00:32:31] Jeremy Rogers: The, the they, what they think they can generate, not arbitrage profit, but drive value, drive profit. That's where they're attacking. They're not, they're not building new hospitals. They're building around the edges for those kind of sticky moments. That's what they're doing.
[00:32:47] Ray Mina: Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Hospitals is not, hospitals are not like building cars. Hospitals are not an easy thing to do for tech, for tech companies. I, I said at the beginning, I really mean it. I've, I view you so much as a thought leader. You've been on this journey and you've really thought through like, what is the best way to like service our patients?
[00:33:06] Ray Mina: A lot of people, and I'm gonna make a wide sweeping generalization, it's very nuanced. I know that, but a lot of folks are. Not able to optimize end-to-end and understand like all the way down to let alone patient like booking and appointment. They don't know LTV very well. They're tied in Google. It's like really heavily weighted in Google.
[00:33:26] Ray Mina: And then the, the experience where I think a lot of the conversion rate optimization, how do I make sure that when you get to the thing you want. You can successfully like deliver that to somebody. It's really lacking in, in many ways. So if people are on this call and either they're angry at me for calling that out and they're like, wait, I'm trying to do as much as I can, or they're nodding their head at that, what are, what are three actions that people should take after this podcast?
[00:33:50] Ray Mina: Like, what are some simple actions they should take to start to connect those dots a little bit more?
[00:33:56] Jeremy Rogers: Yeah, so great question, Ray. I think first thing, you've gotta start somewhere. Like you can't, you can't build it in one day. You've gotta take these small bites at a time. So if you can't, if you can't measure the entire funnel, okay, what can you measure?
[00:34:09] Jeremy Rogers: Can, can you, can you measure micro-conversions, partial conversions. Start there and then iterate on that. You've gotta have a long-term view. Like if you don't have a first party data strategy, I think you're behind, you're behind the eight ball right now is the reality. So you've gotta get going there, figure out what are those attributes, what are the data assets you really need to create that full consumer 360 portfolio like to, to truly know a customer, what are the attributes you need to have?
[00:34:41] Jeremy Rogers: And what are the sources of truth for that? It may end up being you've got disparate systems. It could be EHR, it could be billing systems, could be CRM. You've gotta have a strategy to connect them. That's really, really foundational. And then just build on that. And then I think third point would be. What are your what, what are your growth priorities?
[00:35:02] Jeremy Rogers: Right, right now, if, if you're, if you're not careful or intentional, you can be growing in the wrong ways. Are you growing? Are you bringing in the wrong customer? Are you bringing in patients that you cannot service downstream, like I mentioned earlier? With the budgets that we have nowadays, we cannot afford to throw away money or not use it to the best of its ability.
[00:35:26] Jeremy Rogers: So you've gotta be very strategic in where are those dollars going and are they being driven towards those customers who are of the highest value? That's, that's never been more important in our industry.
[00:35:40] Ray Mina: Yeah. It feel, it feels like I, about a year ago, I, I started forming the view after talking to a lot of marketing leaders that there's like this doing more with less moment, and now it feels like that's actually moved beyond healthcare. That just seems to be a growing trend, even in VC backed B2B SaaS. Like how go and, and, and, and, and on the same amount of money. Is that, is that still, is that still an accurate worldview for this moment?
[00:36:07] Jeremy Rogers: Oh yeah. And only speeding up absolutely.
[00:36:12] Ray Mina: What do you, what do you, how is it impacting, how does it impacting your decision making and your investment? Like are there things that you used to do that you're just not doing anymore?
[00:36:21] Jeremy Rogers: Yes, absolutely. So we're, we're having to rationalize everything. I mentioned ROI earlier, like the, the payback periods that we're looking for now for any new investment are radically faster than they ever were before.
[00:36:34] Jeremy Rogers: That's just the reality. So I wouldn't even, like, without a compelling business case, things won't even make it off the, off the table. They wouldn't even be up for conversation at this point. So that's, that's never been more true. You know, we are, we're having to. Kind of figure. I, I mentioned the supply demand curve earlier.
[00:36:51] Jeremy Rogers: There are situations now whether, think about like healthcare, you hear a lot about the talent challenges we have. You may have to shift some of your consumer acquisition dollars over towards supporting talent acquisition or recruitment so that you're being asked to, to serve different audiences. Now that, that's a new reality many of us are facing too. So it's, it's not easy. That's for sure.
[00:37:14] Ray Mina: Yeah, I've seen, I've seen more and more, not to get tactical, but I will, the LinkedIn, I've seen more and more marketing teams on, and at first I'm like, why are you doing LinkedIn's not a consumer market. Oh. 'cause you're trying to recruit employees for, for your healthcare brand.
[00:37:28] Ray Mina: You need to like market to those people, those nurses and doctors and whoever.
[00:37:33] Jeremy Rogers: If we can't be effective supporting talent acquisition, that affects our supply. Like we have to grow our supply to be able to grow our demand.
[00:37:41] Ray Mina: Yeah. Yeah, that's great. That's just, yeah. In B2B SaaS, that's one problem we generally don't have is like, if we build software, we don't have to be constrained by supply.
[00:37:50] Ray Mina: You're, you're in a different world. You, you mentioned that the change in the way you look at payback has changed. I haven't seen that on my side very much. Like in B2B, SaaS and VC backed, we, we do have like a bit more generous payback as long as like retention. LTV is healthy. So that's a, that's something I haven't heard before. Like how much has it changed for you? Like how extreme is it?
[00:38:14] Jeremy Rogers: It's been a seed change and a lot of it, frankly, is about opportunity costs. Because if you look in health systems, our margins are so tight right now. CFOs are saying, how can I allocate dollars to the, get the most return? And so if it's not a, if it's, it's a marketing initiative, maybe compared to a clinical initiative or an operational initiative, that payback period is a key way of kind of aligning across the different competing priorities.
[00:38:37] Ray Mina: All right. Last part of the conversation we wanna have is like a little bit of galaxy thinking. 'cause I know, I know we both like to do this occasionally, just to, at least for a breath of fresh air. Beyond the practical day to day, where are we gonna be at the end of the decade with AI in healthcare?
[00:38:52] Ray Mina: What's, like, what's for you specifically as the, as the, as the digital marketing experience leader, how radical is the change gonna be for all of us?
[00:39:01] Jeremy Rogers: I think by the end of the decade, very radical. I mean, I think right now a lot of people are, are focused on some of the back office, like where the, the most immediate payback right now in healthcare is kind of the non non-patient facing.
[00:39:13] Jeremy Rogers: So whether it's administration or back office. A lot of opportunity there. If you look over the span of a decade though, I think patient facing automation will be massive. We talk about patients engaging with their own data, using their own agent in terms of gathering their data, helping them navigate, like you mentioned, your dad's care experience.
[00:39:34] Jeremy Rogers: Imagine if you had your own LLM. It's ingesting all of your data and making recommendations to you in real time. That's what's happening. You've seen some of the announcements this week where there are large LLM partners that are creating healthcare specific consumer products. We are in the first ending of this, Ray, so I think that that's where we're gonna be.
[00:39:52] Jeremy Rogers: I think it will take multiple years for it to mature because right now there's still a huge trust issue. People don't trust, I mean to, you have to really open up trust to be able to share your most intimate data. Once we get to that point, it will unlock a lot of automation. It will unlock a lot of just really transformative care delivery because end of day it's all about keeping people healthier.
[00:40:17] Jeremy Rogers: And that's what excites me is these, the technology can actually be a force multiplier with the data to, to provide far better outcomes for patients.
[00:40:26] Ray Mina: Back to our, you know, supply and demand. Do you think it has some potential to help you alleviate some of the supply side constraints that you face as as a marketing leader?
[00:40:37] Jeremy Rogers: A hundred percent. The reality Ray is today we will never reach the staffing levels we had before the pandemic. We as a country, are just not training enough physicians, nurses, or technicians. Technology, AI automation are absolutely a way to create the efficiency in the machine to to allow those providers and care team members to do more, to be, to be able to, we talk about practicing top of license, let them spend more of their time engaging with patients, not doing backend administration. No doubt.
[00:41:12] Ray Mina: Jeremy, this has been an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you investing time with us and looking forward to seeing you at in an upcoming event.
[00:41:19] Jeremy Rogers: You got it, Ray. It was great to be here. Thank you.
[00:41:23] Producer: Today's episode is brought to you by Freshpaint. If you're a healthcare marketer, under pressure, to do more with less fresh paint helps you stretch fixed budgets, prove what's working, and protect the strategies that drive growth. Freshpaint brings performance and privacy together in one platform so you can see real outcomes across channels and double down where ROI is highest. With Freshpaint, privacy becomes your performance advantage. Turn better data into smarter decisions, find more high value patients, and keep your growth plans on track. Learn more at Freshpaint.io.