As Medicare Advantage (MA) plans gear up for this year’s annual enrollment period, they face increased competition, regulatory changes, a contentious election year, potential cuts to their supplemental benefits, and more savvy consumers who are willing to shop around for a better plan.
If you haven’t yet explored AI, now is the time to consider adding the technology to your AEP game plan. Health plans that successfully incorporate personalization into their content via the available AI tools and educate potential and existing members about their benefits will win this AEP.
Kathleen Ellmore, cofounder and managing partner, Engagys, will review relevant AI tools, aspects of member acquisition that the technology can help improve, AI-generated approaches, and how to overcome obstacles to successfully deploy the technology during RISE’s upcoming AEP Medicare Readiness Summit. Her session, Applications of AI to Drive Member Acquisition and Enrollment, will take place at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, June 26, the first day of the two-day event.
Ellmore intends to profile plans that have had success with AI tools, different vendors that can help attendees use AI, and which tools and generated content drive outcomes across the engagement landscape.
Although AI tools have been around for a while and hold promise, Ellmore says that there are many pitfalls to consider. One downside is the fact that the entire industry has struggled with consumer engagement for decades. So as AI “crowdsources” content, it is taking information from what Ellmore describes as “the well of mediocre engagement.”
Ellmore cites an example of an organization that used an AI subject line generator several years ago to get health care consumers to open a communication about colorectal cancer screenings. The tool crowdsourced information and produced the subject line “Miley Cyrus loves cancer. Ten reasons you should too.
“It did what it was supposed to do because celebrity works and listicles work,” Ellmore says. “And she happened to be a big celebrity at the time. So, it was technically correct, which was to give you a headline that would break through people’s awareness and be more likely to get people to open, but it didn’t understand the nuances of health, which is why it’s so fascinating. But unless you use the tool correctly, it’s going to give you content that isn’t usable or worse yet, harmful.”
“What’s worse is we’re vanilla-izing it so that we all sound the same,” she says.
The keys to producing successful content include personalization and behavioral science, according to Ellmore. Health plans need a framework with an understanding of what is critical to personalize in communications and embed those attributes in variable fields within the tool. “Frankly, as an industry, we’re still not there,” she says. “There’s still so much room in the industry to optimize and I think AI tools are terrific if they are applied correctly.”
AEP Medicare Readiness Summit will be held June 26-27 at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables in Florida. Ellmore’s session will take place at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, June 26. She encourages attendees to bring their content challenges and questions about behavioral science, personalization, and segmentation to the session and she’ll help them figure out how to use the AI tools to best solve them. Click here to see the entire agenda, list of speakers, and how to register.