Why Segmentation is Key to Building Your Customer Journey
You wouldn’t market to the CEO of a Fortune 100 company in the same way you’d market to an SMB marketing director. Why market to your customer and prospect audiences in the same way?
When you prioritize segmentation, you enable your company to target the right audience with the right message at the right time, while delivering a superior experience. This month on Revenue Rebels, Rhoan Morgan sits down with Rebecca Kaufman, Director, Strategic Marketing at Phreesia to discuss the importance of segmentation in marketing.
About Our Guest
Rebecca Kaufman, Director, Strategic Marketing
Rebecca Kaufman oversees Phreesia’s marketing plans and top of the funnel strategy. She is responsible for aligning Phreesia’s positioning and messaging with the appropriate segment, offering, and stage of the buyer’s journey.
Prior to Phreesia, Rebecca managed the New York Medicare advantage market and ACO relationships at Aetna. She also worked in management consulting at Navigant Consulting, helping to improve healthcare provider operations. Rebecca earned an MBA from Columbia Business School and holds a BA in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis.
No time to listen? Check out the transcript below:
Rhoan Morgan: I am really excited because we’ve got Becca Kaufman here today, and she’s going to be talking with us about segmentation and its role in really delivering and building out an exceptional customer journey. So as a quick intro, Becca oversees Phreesia’s marketing plan and she handles all of their top of funnel strategy. She’s responsible for aligning Phreesia’s positioning and messaging with the appropriate segment offering and stage to the buyer’s journey. Becca, I’m really excited to have you on board today.
Becca Kauffman: Hi Rhoan. Thank you so much for having me.
Rhoan Morgan: Hi there. You know, I’m super excited about this afternoon’s show. We did have one other team member from Phreesia join us last year. Late last year, so not too many months ago – Kristen Roberts. And I’m looking forward to being able to share with the listeners another perspective into Phreesia’s marketing efforts. And this one, I think, is just super appropriate, considering the trend and the push that we’re seeing around businesses in personalization and the sort of one-to-one conversations that they’re really working to develop. So thank you so much for joining us. As a way of intro, what I was hoping that you could do is just share with the listeners a little bit more about Phreesia. Remind them from some months ago what you do, and what your role is there.
Becca Kauffman: Thank you again. Phreesia is the leader in patient intake management. We have a variety of solutions to help our provider clients increase efficiency, enhance clinical care, improve the patient experience, and improve the financial health of the organization. So some of the different categories of applications we have are registration application, revenue cycle, some clinical applications, patient activation, and appointment applications. So, we really need to think about sort of how those different offerings are appealing to different buyers. And in my role, I’m the Director of Strategic Marketing at Phreesia, and you said it pretty well. I’m responsible for the top of the funnel strategy. So I really oversee our marketing plan, and I work with different people, different individuals, across Phreesia, and across the organization to really ensure that we have the right marketing campaigns for the right people.
Rhoan Morgan: It’s funny because I actually have experience with your software, and the first time I used it, I was like, “What is this? I have to log in and do something?” But since I’ve been logging in and doing, sort of as I’m taking my daughter to her pediatrician appointments, it’s super easy to use. And I can really appreciate what you are doing. But it sounds like it’s much more complicated on the back end. Right?
Rhoan Morgan: I’ve been really eager to talk with you today about segmentation, because just getting back from the Adobe Summit, we heard a lot about personalization and a lot about how critical it is to be able to use the data in our systems to drive relevant and authentic communication with leads and prospects, all the way from marketing into the hands of sales. And I know that’s a really big focus for you. We talked a little bit about this beforehand as we sort of decided the topic that we were going to cover, so tell me a little bit about how does Phreesia use segmentation to support the customer journey and customer engagement?
Becca Kauffman: Yeah. Absolutely, Rhoan. And it’s funny you said that about the pediatrician you go to, because my son’s pediatrician’s office does not have a patient intake solution. And every time, I’m like, “Can you take my card on file?” And they can’t, so I wish that they had that.
Rhoan Morgan: Oh, it’s working!
Becca Kauffman: I’m impressed. I’ll say segmentation is really my bread and butter, and my team’s bread and butter. We use segmentation basically when we’re developing any sort of marketing campaigns and content. And as a company, we use segmentation any time we’re really building a go-to-market plan for a new product or application, or even for an existing product or application when we’re thinking about who we want to sell it to. So I mentioned a little bit before, we have applications across registration, revenue cycle, some clinical application, patient activation applications, and then we also have appointment applications. So we need to think about how each of those different offerings appeals to different buyers, and really who that end buyer is.
Rhoan Morgan: And so what are some of the criteria that you’re using to segment your audience? I think this can be sliced and diced in so many different ways. What is key for you?
Becca Kauffman: So one way we segment our offerings is by size. So if you think about a health system versus a small provider group, for instance, we find that the buyers in these markets are really looking to solve for different problems and have different sales cycles. So one example with the health system, we find that our health system prospects are really looking for that consistent patient experience across the entire enterprise, and we know that we need to appeal to lots of different stakeholders across that system. So we’ll need to have a message for the operational folks and the IT leaders at the organization. For our small provider groups – say it’s like a five-provider family practice, they may be just very focused on a specific use case. So they may be specifically looking to collect patient payments in a more efficient way. We find that size really matters.
Becca Kauffman: Another way we segment is by specialty. We find that our different specialties have very different pain points. And at Phreesia, and I forget if I mentioned this before, but we have offerings for over 26 specialties, so sort of different workloads that they would go through. For instance, OB-GYN practices, they’re looking for an easier way to identify postpartum depression patients. And our primary care or our big multi-specialty organizations are looking to really identify patients that are eligible for Medicare and annual wellness visits, and make sure that the right patients are coming in for their visit. We just find that depending on that specialty, they’ll have different needs and different things that they’re looking to solve. I think one more thing that is really critical that I called out a little bit before, it’s just the different roles at the organization, so we create different messaging for different roles.
Becca Kauffman: So CFOs, or revenue cycle directors, we know that they’re looking to increase collections. Our practice managers or administrative staff that we’re selling to, they may be looking to speed up the check-in process. Those are a couple of examples. Our front desk staff, for instance, we know that they’re juggling so many tasks. And you know this too. You go to these doctors. They’re answering the phones, checking insurance, collecting co-pays, so we want to focus on their pain points and make sure that they have more time to connect with the patients.
[bctt tweet=”The criteria you use to #segment your audiences may vary based on your business, but some useful criteria may include company size, role, or specialty.”]
Rhoan Morgan: It sounds like there are tons of opportunities to sort of streamline the process. And it’s kind of funny. As you were talking about this, I think about … we talk about customer experience from the marketer perspective, right? All the time. That’s the main sort of topic that you hear at most conferences and in most materials and articles. And in the same vein, I suppose, your customers are trying to create that fantastic customer experience as well. Right? You’re looking at where they’re creating friction for their own patients, which are essentially customers. Do you talk about that within your messaging?
Becca Kauffman: I mean, a big value prop for us is the fact that we really create that individualized patient experience. So for a practice, if it’s a new patient coming in the door, or if it’s an existing patient.I’ll use the OB patient, for example. They’re coming in like once a month. We help our practices really create that unique experience for each of their patients.
Rhoan Morgan: And so I suppose they might be expecting a similar sort of experience from you. Like the proof is in the pudding, in a way. They want to see that you’re able to do the same thing. So that’s one of the things that I’d like for us to be able to dig into. We’re going to have to go into a small break here in a couple of minutes, but we will talk more about how you’re executing through segmentation, and the tools that you’re using and that sort of thing. But before we head there, do you know within the tools that you’re using or the systems, how many types of personas you are targeting right now, that your segmentation is supporting?
Becca Kauffman: So that’s a really tough question because we target so many different personas, and it really depends on what the product is. So we look at personas across four different categories. We have personas within operational functions, we have personas across financial functions, we have personas across clinical, and then we look at IT. And sort of within those buckets, and marketing sort of falls into the operational bucket, within those buckets we look at different levels.
Rhoan Morgan: Wow. It sounds like an entire second episode we could run, actually talking with somebody on the team around the messaging matrix that you have to put together.
Becca Kauffman: Exactly.
Rhoan Morgan: That’s very exciting, and yet another conversation. It’s already been halfway through our episode. It’s time for us to take a really quick break to hear a bit about DemandLab. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with Becca. We’re going to learn more about her segmentation strategies, how she’s executing through this, and get some best practices. Over to you, Paul.
Rhoan Morgan: Thank you, Paul. All right. So let’s jump right back in. As I sort of alluded to before the break, I’d love to hear from you, Becca, a little bit more about how you execute your segmentation strategy. What are some of the tools that you’re leveraging? How do you manage your data? What does success look like? What does it take to be successful in what you’re doing?
Becca Kauffman: Awesome. So a little bit about how we execute. I would say email is a big lever for us, and we use email automation software. And we use the tools within that software to be able to send to different personas and different segments. So the real key here is that we have an internal database that we maintain with all of our prospect information. We maintain detailed data on all of our potential buyers. For instance–their role, their practice, their organizational type, are they in a provider group or a hospital or urgent care, what specialty is their organization, exactly how big is that organization, how many providers, how many doctors, what’s the ownership or affiliation. So we keep very, very detailed data on all of our prospects, and we ensure whenever we’re adding data into our database, that it’s clean and has a lot of required information. And then we use that data to arm our content team with data on really who our audience is, and what may be interesting to them.
[bctt tweet=”Executing a #segmentation strategy requires a clean, maintained database which enables companies to arm content teams with the right information to develop content that’s interesting to their audiences.”]
Becca Kauffman: We have a sales development organization here at Phreesia that my team, the strategic marketing team, really partners with. And we make sure to arm them with that content, talk track, and persona-based questions that they can use in their outreach. So it’s really making sure that we have the data, and then making sure that we’re actually using that data and providing it to internal parties.
Rhoan Morgan: You know, one of the things that I talked about for a long time – and I’ve been doing marketing for a really long time – but when I first implemented a marketing automation platform, which was nine or ten years ago, I started to really understand the value of data. And I started to speak to myself and to say out loud, “Data is one of your biggest investments as a company.” And it does seem nowadays even more than ever, it is this critical investment that has to be truly valued from the highest level of the company into whoever’s uploading that list. And obviously, they have to have loaded it correctly, right? And the folks at the highest level have to know that they need to invest in their data. Tell me a little bit about your data governance process, or how you’re sort of managing the hygiene of the data?
Becca Kauffman: Really that top of the funnel data in that database falls under my team, but obviously lots of different people are managing it. So we make sure when we add new data, and I mentioned this a little bit before, but we don’t let anyone just add any data in. We ensure that we have certain fields, and make sure that all those fields are satisfied. So we won’t add someone if we haven’t validated their role and their title, and we don’t have that appropriate contact information, like the phone number and email address. So that’s one way that we do it. We’re constantly using tools to ensure that those emails are actually going through to the right people. We want to make sure that we’re not sending emails to people that don’t exist anymore, for instance, or aren’t engaging with our content. So we’re constantly looking at email metrics around that.
[bctt tweet=”Managing #datahygiene practices is key to effective #segmentation. Ensure all data is complete and validated before adding to your database, like phone, email, title, role and make sure you’re sending content to the right people.”]
Becca Kauffman: And just a lot of reporting on our end. And I mentioned a little bit about our sales development organization, but our SDRs, they really own and get to know the accounts that they’re working with. So we rely on them a lot to help us confirm and ensure and add to that database.
Rhoan Morgan: Got it. Yes. So there’s still a lot of human input, in a way. I know that we have sources for data, but then there’s so much validation, it sounds like, that you go through, and I think a lot of companies are going through or should be going through when you consider the ultimate cost per record or cost per account. I wonder, you certainly don’t have to give me a number, but are you measuring what that all-in cost is maybe per account, per target account, or per record, that you are adding into the systems so that you can then deliver this ultimate customer journey and be really personalized? It sounds like you are collecting so much information, and I’m sure there’s even more to it in terms of their behavior on your website, and what products they’re engaging with, you know? Is that a cost that you are calculating and considering?
Becca Kauffman: You know, that’s a really good point. We don’t typically look at our cost per account, but we are trying to get better at constantly looking at that cost per lead and where that information is coming from.
Rhoan Morgan: Let’s switch gears. We’ve got probably about five minutes left to chat. Now that you’ve got a really clean system, you’ve got a really great plan in place, in terms of the marketing work that’s being done in your department, what channels have you found to be most effective for segmented targeting initiatives?
Becca Kauffman: I would say the biggest one that we use is email automation. We do a lot of webinars. We work really closely with our market partners. We attend a ton of trade shows, and trade shows are really a great way for us to get in front of the right person. And then other events. And we partner with our sales development organization. Our sales development organization reaches out to prospects really depending on their engagement in other marketing channels. For instance, if we see that a prospect attends a trade show or our webinar, that sales development representative is then following up with talking points that are very specific to that persona and what we’ve identified as their pain point, and what they’re really going to get out of the product like case studies of what people like them have gotten out of the product to make it really tailored.
Becca Kauffman: And we partner with our product marketing team. They’re responsible for that go-to-market strategy. I know you mentioned you talked to Kristen several months back. So her team, they’re really making sure that we’re tailoring that go-to-market strategy for each of our products to these different roles.
Rhoan Morgan: What a huge job. And very exciting. A labor of love, I would say.
Becca Kauffman: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rhoan Morgan: Geeky marketing love, in a way.
Becca Kauffman: I know. I know. And the other thing I’ll mention is we think about our client segment. You know, when we think about our new segment. We also have someone really focused on thinking about those channels, and how we’re going to engage with that current customer. So for our current customer, we have a monthly newsletter that we put out. We have what we call user salon for our clients, and a very specific email strategy for them as well.
Rhoan Morgan: Yeah. Well, and that’s critical actually, to be able to use it from the point of initial awareness through into loyalty. To be able to use that for loyalty programs and really deepen the customer relationship is really critical. Now, we’re just wrapping up. We’ve got a couple more minutes, and I’d love it if you could, before we say goodbye, share with us the one single thing that you would recommend our listeners do today if they want to improve their segmentation.
Becca Kauffman: You know, this goes back to a question that you asked me a few minutes ago, but I really think it all starts with good data, and ensuring that the leadership of your organization understands that. And really just investing in creating that good database of data, so you really know who the roles are and who the buyers are. And you can actually create materials based on their pain points. But it really comes down to having the data.
Rhoan Morgan: Good. Well, Becca, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. It was a great conversation. I’m looking forward to following up with Phreesia and the team there. I know we’ve got a few more people that I’m really looking forward to talking to, and we’ll certainly talk through that messaging matrix and how you make the magic happen once it’s time to send out those emails. What’s the best way for people to reach out to you?
Becca Kauffman: That’s a great question. I would definitely say LinkedIn. I’m available on LinkedIn.
Rhoan Morgan: And your LinkedIn profile though, I don’t think it’s Becca. Am I right?
Becca Kauffman: You are right, actually. It’s Rebecca.
Rhoan Morgan: Yes. Rebecca Kaufman. Cool.
Becca Kauffman: Yeah. And anyone is welcome to email Phreesia as well.
Rhoan Morgan: Yes. Of course, of course. And they should. Thank you so much, and a big thank you to our listeners for tuning in to Revenue Rebels. I’m your host, Rhoan Morgan, and you can find me on LinkedIn by looking up DemandLab or searching for Rhoan. That’s R-H-O-A-N Morgan on LinkedIn, and let me send this back over to you, Paul.