Does Your Marketing Database Need a Health & Wellness Plan?

When will the health & wellness craze come to Marketing Database Management?

It seems to me the Health care management industry has done a better job than most to capture the operational and financial value of proactive "preventative maintenance" over the past few years. As B2B database driven marketers I believe we should take a collective look at what the health plan providers are doing as we are sure to learn a thing or two.

As the cost of health care continues to skyrocket YoY the health plan providers that sell to businesses have taken a novel approach to their marketplace. Rather than pouring low return and seemingly futile efforts into reducing the cost of servicing people with illness and chronic disease they have developed new products and services aimed at reducing the number of people affected by illness and chronic disease. The model is intended to create a win-win-win situation.

Health & Wellness Service Benefits

• The healhplan provider wins by selling a new "health & wellness" program to the company and reducing direct care costs for treating illness and chronic disease.
  
• The Business wins by realizing reduced YoY healthcare premium increases as an incentive for purchasing the Health & Wellness plan. The business also wins by having a more productive workforce as, in theory, the employees will take less sick time.
• The employee wins by receiving health club membership discounts, wellness counseling services, dietary counseling services, and living a healthier and longer life.
  

As a B2B marketer that works with a wide range of B2B company's marketing databases I have been afforded a unique, near real-time, comparative view into a broad spectrum of B2B marketing databases. The conclusion I have drawn is that a majority of B2B marketing database efforts and investment are spent on servicing "illness" and "chronic disease" within the database and not on health and wellness.

A sampling of typical marketing database investments to service "illness" & "chronic disease":

• Using an external provider to "cleanse" the database on a quarterly or annual basis. The underlying disease causing a constant stream of bad and inaccurate records is ignored while the symptoms of the illness are treated periodically.
  
• Investing in new databases to support specific marketing initiatives & business units. Over time multiple databases exist with redundant and/or conflicting record details and the reliability and accuracy of all databases are called into question.
• Investing in ongoing database integration efforts (outside of mergers, acquisition, partnership efforts)
• Investing reactively in new lists and append services as the primary source of "targets" for new marketing campaigns
  

A small sample of marketing database Health & Wellness investments to prevent "illness" & "chronic disease":

• Marketing database alignment to the businesses go to market strategy as a core strategic focus
  
• Inquiry management processes, and pre-qualification filters to ensure only new and quality records enter the marketing database
• Activity tagging of records to measure the frequency, content, and responses illicited from the multi-modal marketing campaigns that touch a given record in the database
• Subscription management programs to support best practice driven e-mail marketing campaigns

If more of us can migrate our focus and investment to marketing database health and wellness initiatives I would argue we as B2B marketers can create the same win-win-win outcome!

• The B2B marketer wins by realizing improved delivery, opt-in, and response rates across all campaigns that leverage the marketing database.
• The B2B Company that employs the marketer wins by realizing a lower cost per sale, increased intimacy with prospects and customers, and increase revenues.
• The end customer/prospect wins by receiving the information they need, when they need it, in the format they desire.