Demand Generation Case Study - United Healthcare

Campaign

In a highly competitive AEP with ever tightening budgets, UnitedHealthcare’s Southern Florida Medicare Advantage brands knew they had to approach AEP 2025 in new and inventive ways. To make matters more challenging, UHC was unable to enter the AEP selling season until well after the opening date.  ab+a led the charge in ensuring innovation and impact were at the forefront to both development and implementation of a digital-forward campaign.

Challenge

As independent local plans of UnitedHealthcare, Preferred Care Partners and Preferred Care Network had both considerable local and national competition with the likes of Humana and Aetna for 2025 AEP. To challenge matters further, the plans faced a 40% reduction in marketing budget for the selling season as well as a significant delay to entry given CMS was 45 days from rebid moving quite slow in approvals, so advertising hit the market well after the October 15 AEP start. Armed with strong offerings, ab+a went to work.

Solution

ab+a started with understanding from the frontline, spending time with UHC’s Direct to Consumer sales team to learn the challenges and desires of older adults in Southern Florida. The message platform was clear: choice, personalization and a locally based plan mattered, a lot. ab+a crafted a SEO and SEM plan that highlighted choice and personalization of the plans in the form of reaffirming Trust Signals on the plan’s websites and custom landing pages. All to guide consumers down the sales funnel through consideration driving  the confidence to act by calling the sales team.

Impact

The year-over-year results for digital were extraordinary including call volume up 77%, leads with a 143% gain and submitted applications increased by 220%. All on a down budget. Other non-digital media was down significantly, so digital carried the season. While overall lower impressions and clicks due to a reduced budget, the messaging resonated and savvy  media buying strategies producing  doubled and even tripled conversion rates for individual campaigns.