Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, eHealth operates a leading online marketplace that offers consumers a broad choice of insurance products. This includes thousands of Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, Medicare Part D plans, individual and family health insurance plans (IFP), small and medium-sized business (SMB) insurance, and ancillary health insurance products from more than 180 health insurance carriers.
20%
organic growth
789
high-intent users
165%
site traffic growth
60%
CTR increase
Unexpected changes called for a quick solution
In 2019, eHealth was ready to take its digital presence to the next level and came to DEPT® with goals to defend their IFP market share, rapidly test and innovate, and grow their SMB business by 20%. Under the Affordable Care Act there is a strong seasonal market, with a typical surge between November 1st and December 15th. However, 2020 was anything but typical. With an impending election, the market was already uncertain and soon after the partnership began, the global health crisis presented a slew of unexpected challenges. DEPT® quickly pivoted their approach to find strategies that would help eHealth overcome the pandemic.
When customers had questions, eHealth had answers
Due to the pandemic, individuals who were previously given employee-sponsored health insurance were buying their own coverage for the first time with little to no knowledge on what their unique situations required. We saw this as an opportunity to better understand consumer needs and prioritized identifying areas for eHealth to act as a trusted source of truth.
To educate eHealth’s potential customers, our paid team launched top-of-funnel awareness ads – optimizing content related to telemedicine, mental health, SMB education, and COVID-19, to improve understanding for first-time customers. The DEPT® client team collaborated and leaned on their collective expertise to develop effective strategies and solve challenges. This included:
- Adjusting articles & developing new content with eHealth’s writers. 3Q then used paid media to develop an awareness strategy, promoting some of that content to help increase awareness.
- Infusing SEO insights into paid campaigns and paid landing pages.
- Utilizing eHealth’s customer service call center by interviewing the sales team to identify key phrases and words that led customers to “breakthrough moments.”
- Persona development to uncover a new audience segment: early retirees.
- Applying strategies specifically to that age group (such as creating personalized landing pages).
On the paid search side, general health insurance queries are expensive, especially in open enrollment. The team worked to develop personalized landing pages specific to each consumer’s state of residency and expanded keyword coverage from general health insurance terms to cover state searches. State and health insurance paid searches were then routed to the state-specific pages that had been revamped by the SEO and CRO teams with a new creative style and refreshed content.
A quick solution with immediate results
The DEPT® team exceeded eHealth’s goals while navigating an unknown market.
State-specific pages and keyword expansion unlocked 20% organic growth and grew conversions year-over-year
Content optimizations and expansions – and building an internal linking module that sent users to state pages from the main IFP page – grew organic visibility by +5% and CTR by +60%.
Additionally, site traffic grew by 165% from Q4 2019 to Q4 2020 and 789 higher intent users were added to remarketing pool.
Questions?
VP of Growth
Lou Amodeo
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