People inherently struggle with adherence. In clinical scenarios, “nonadherence rates for chronic illness regimens and for lifestyle changes are ∼ 50%“. A similar trend is present in the success of diets, workout schedules and medication tracking. This informative video from Sendhil Mullainathan uses the lens of behavioral economics to study this struggle. “What are the irrational choices we make that perpetuate poverty [and health]“?
From a healthcare marketing perspective, many interesting tactics have been used to increase engagement : Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Text campaigns, YouTube channels, etc. In addition, brands have created new landing pages and micro-sites (often around community) to increase touch points and help improve adherence. In LifeScan’s case, it has a few popular sites all to help people manage their diabetes:
- LifeScan | Corporate home page
- OneTouchDiabetes | More power to diabetes patients
- OneTouchGold | Diabetes support and management programs
- OneTouchZoom | Online diabetes management tools
Each site offers something different that appeals to a specific audience profile. But the intent of the sites are the same: increase engagement to improve adherence. A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concludes that “reinforcement of supervision activities led to improvement in patient outcomes“. A similar conclusion was mentioned by Sendhil Mullainathan in the video above: When trying to influence action (especially sustained action or long-term behavior change), long term engagement is vital to your success.
So, while one-off campaigns might have short-term excitement and success, the only way to truly be successful in interactive marketing and in social media, is to establish a long-term engagement strategy. By doing this and maintaining multiple touch-points and two-way communication with your customers, you can gain better insight, drive improved messaging, and provide value to your customer base. Value that will keep customers coming back, and bringing their friends.
While engagement is easiest using digital technologies, nothing speaks more powerfully than engagement in person.
Related posts:
One Response to “Improve Adherence Through Engagement”
Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
LinkedIn
RSS
After some additional research, we found this compelling paper titled, “Using the Internet to Promote Health Behavior Change“. It concludes that it is beneficial to “incorporate multiple behavior change techniques and modes of delivery” when influencing behavior change.