From Insights to Action: Six Rules for Embedding Behavioral Science in Healthcare Marketing
Hale Forster shares six lessons for embedding behavioral science in healthcare marketing.
By: Hale Forster, PhD
Marketers have an increasingly tough job breaking through today’s constant information overload. For healthcare marketers, the stakes have never been higher. When we get it right, people get healthier. When we don’t, people tune out. Yet we still fall into the same communication design traps, making the same mistakes over and over again.
Over the past year as Director of Behavioral Science at Limetree, I’ve deployed behavioral science to craft healthcare communications that break through the noise to engage and activate patients. In recent years, behavioral science has become a bit of a buzzword in healthcare marketing: a go-to tool for cutting through the noise. It offers concepts like loss aversion, present bias, and a growing list of behavioral nudges to help engage users.
But beyond the heuristics and headlines, the secret power of behavioral science is in its process. It provides a structured way to approach campaign design, build better solutions, and continuously optimize what we create, providing an escape hatch from design habits that are no longer serving us well.
To mark the end of my first year at Limetree, here are the six behavioral science rules of thumb I’ve returned to most often this year around how to rethink communication design.
Harness the power of behavioral specificity.
As healthcare marketers, we are in the business of behavior change. We succeed when we help members take action—whether that’s scheduling a screening or exploring a plan that’s a better fit. If your message isn’t driving a behavior, ask yourself: is it really worth your member’s limited attention? If not, you’re just adding to the information overload.
We frequently forget to focus on what behavior we’re changing: we rely on vague asks that rarely drive results, inviting our users to “Learn More.” Do you want a member to schedule a cancer screening? Tell them they’re due, give them the phone number to call, and what to ask for to get it covered. Be specific about the behavior you’re aiming for—and ask yourself why they haven’t done it yet.
Activate, don’t educate.
We all fall into the same trap: when someone isn’t doing something, we try to tell them why it’s important. Most of the time, though, the barrier isn’t a lack of motivation: it’s attention or follow-through. The large gap between what people intend to do and what they actually do is well-documented.
Even if motivation is a gap, persuasion is a tough ask for an email or text. If someone doesn’t think a vaccination is important, an email from their health plan probably won’t change their mind.
Case in point: researchers sent two versions of an email to school board members asking them to complete a survey.[1] One made a strong, persuasive case. The other cut the word count by 60%. The shorter email increased response rates by 80%. The takeaway? Focus on communications that nudge action through strategies like timely reminders, simplification, and making the next step easy.
Be user-centric.
Designing communications that help your members effectively take action means deeply understanding them, their needs, and their barriers. Is the behavior relevant to this member? Why haven’t they done it yet?
We often lead with what we need: improve KPIs, boost preventative care rates, meet marketing goals. But members don’t care about our KPIs. They care about improving their health, their mobility, their energy.
How do we shift our perspective? It’s hard. The best way to truly know your audience is to listen to them. Leverage qualitative and quantitative research strategically to drive your communications strategy. Don’t only do research, literally listen to them. Personal soapbox: anyone writing member communications should listen to at least one focus group a year.
Send the right message at the right time.
We often obsess over perfecting our content, but timing is just as important.
A beautifully crafted message won’t move the needle if it arrives at the wrong moment. Schedule your outreach not by month or season, but by your members’ actions and milestones. Use moments that matter to catch members when they’re most open to change.[2] If you have a cutting-edge CRM and AI-driven personalization, great. If you don’t, prioritize behavior-based personalization using the data you do have.
Always be learning.
Behavioral science isn’t just theory—it’s process. It’s about testing, learning, and refining. Don’t just A/B test subject lines. Test hypotheses about what barriers your members are facing. Are they unaware? Unmotivated? Forgetful?
If you’re not sure why members are skipping preventive care, test whether a doctor’s letter outperforms an action-oriented reminder. Build testing into your process so you can move from "what worked" to "why it worked."
Re-evaluate your status quo.
Our brains are wired to be biased towards the status quo. When faced with change, we instinctively see the risks before the rewards. But it’s not just our members who get stuck. we do too. It's easy for marketers to be locked in by data and organizational constraints, to focus on the reasons not to change our approach.
The question isn’t whether constraints exist. It’s how creative we can get to work within them: how we can test, iterate, and improve even when technology or organizational habits make change feel hard. How can we be our own change management agent?
Final thoughts
I’m going to venture a guess: these lessons aren’t new to you. We know them. But knowing and doing are two very different things: behavioral science reminds us that insight doesn’t always lead to action. As Yogi Berra said, "in theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."
[1] Rogers & Lasky-Fink, 2023 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706548/writing-for-busy-readers-by-todd-rogers-and-jessica-lasky-fink/
[2] Dai, Milkman, Riis, 2014 https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Dai_Fresh_Start_2014_Mgmt_Sci.pdf