The invisible competitive advantage:
More efficient marketing through data analytics
The healthcare industry is under high pressure: cost optimization on the one hand and excellent services on the other – after all, it’s about people and their health. At the same time, competition is fierce and first-class medical services alone are no longer enough. In order to be successful in the long term, companies in the healthcare sector need to address their target groups with pinpoint accuracy – while making efficient use of their budgets.
Our client has achieved exactly that: by making optimal use of data, the healthcare e-commerce company has revolutionized its budget and ROI reporting, creating the basis for making smarter decisions that have a lasting impact on sales.
This case study reveals how this was made possible thanks to data-driven marketing.
Two former competitors from the healthcare sector were integrated under one roof. Both brands were continued in parallel, with a similar portfolio and target group.
The new management had to establish comparability between the two brands under time pressure. This was the only way to optimize costs after the merger and put the marketing of the entire company on a stable footing.
This involved many hurdles: Completely different technologies and data sources led to a lack of transparency with regard to operational and financial key figures. Processes had to be rethought and redefined. Data strategy was therefore a high priority before data engineering could begin.
02 Objectives
PROJECT 1
Development of a data stack with CRM and financial data
PROJECT 2
Integration of marketing costs and success data
The second sub-project started at the same time by using the data stack built up in project 1 directly for marketing optimization. Particularly practical: by integrating the marketing data into the overall context of the company, attribution could be assigned much better.
The focus was then set on the following steps:
High time pressure for a complex project
After the merger, performance transparency had to be established as quickly as possible during ongoing operations. Completely different technology stacks and key figures for both brands increased the complexity. The unique subscription-based business model with billing via the health insurance companies could not be mapped using standard technology solutions.
Solution: For the ad hoc launch, we provided a dedicated team of data engineering experts with experience in e-commerce and healthcare. This enabled us to quickly develop industry-specific solutions that could be implemented during ongoing operations. We started the project with a clearly defined data strategy as the cornerstone for systematic data collection and analysis. To map the specific business model, we relied on a flexible best-of-breed data stack and individual programming.
Strict data protection in the healthcare sector
Data protection is of the utmost importance in the healthcare industry. The handling of sensitive data is subject to strict legal requirements such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and is an essential factor for customer trust. These regulations restrict access to certain data and also require the implementation of specific security measures.
Solution: We relied on proven and secure cloud solutions from AWS and Snowflake as they offer best-in-class security features to protect sensitive data – encryption, access controls and auditing. We drew on our data protection expertise and worked closely with the client’s data protection experts. The result: a system that is both data protection compliant and efficient.
Lack of data expertise in the company
At the time of the modern MarTech introduction, the company’s employees did not have in-depth knowledge of the newly implemented data strategies and tools. The lack of experience would have made it difficult to successfully implement and sustainably use the new BI solutions.
Solution: Parallel to the technical implementation, we actively supported the development of knowledge within the team. The data skills of the employees were significantly strengthened through targeted training, in particular with training for dbt and data modeling. We also carried out “coaching on the job”, in which employees received support from our consultants during their daily work. This enabled the team to immediately apply the acquired knowledge in practice and integrate it into the ongoing work process.
“Thanks to our many years of experience in the healthcare sector and in e-commerce, we were able to make a valuable contribution and support the company in quickly finding suitable solutions for its goals. As a consulting company, it is particularly important to us that we are agile and flexible. I am therefore particularly pleased that we were able to put together a competent team to successfully implement the project within a very short space of time.”
Jörg Hopmann, CEO
Hopmann Marketing Analytics