Aetna: Rx for Engagement

"A retained member is not necessarily a happy member," says Melissa Jones, marketing manager for Aetna's New England regions, in addressing a Custom Content Council audience on why customer engagement is more important than merely measuring customer retention. To better engage Aetna's Medicare audience -- all over the age of 65 with an average age of 75, Aetna entered the world of content marketing.

Jones' objective was to turn around a trend of Aetna Medcare members voluntarily terminating their memberships by creating editorial content that was relevant to this demographic.  "We decided to create a pilot program to test the impact of an integrated communication program on member retention," she says. The goal was modest, a 1% improvement in retention to show the pilot's success -- and save the company millions.

The group came up with Healthful magazine, which has three standard sections: Health, Enjoyment and Reference. The editorial content is positive and slanted toward maintaining the emotional, mental and physical well-being of this adult audience. Jones was surprised at how important physical fitness was to this audience. "You can't believe how popular the Wii is at senior centers," she said.

In looking back, one of the harder chores was getting buy-in from the C-suite level. The group persevered and ultimately, the company realized a 6 percent increase in retention. The success easily offsets the investment undertaken.

The group is looking to offset costs by experimenting with advertising. A cover wrap was sold to HEB Health & Wellness. The wrapper was targeted to 25,000 homes in Texas - and more than 31,000 coupons were redeemed, an outstanding success. "Soft-sell" ads dot the magazine -- a feature on hearing encourages people to call a number to find out more about hearing aids, an article on adopting pets, includes a sidebar on how PetsBest offers health insurance for pets.

I asked Melissa what the percentage of ad revenue was against the cost of creating content. She was quick to tell me that the effort was merely a pilot, and that there was no intention of turning the entire magazine into an ad-supported title -- rather, it had to remain a value add.

She better not let the C-Suite know of the success of the ads then.

What Marketers Want

Before he was the Pariah of Hollywood, Mel Gipson starred as a chauvinistic ad executive who, after a lightening strike, could suddenly "hear"the secret thoughts of women. Of course he used this for his own personal gain.

Advertisers too have been trying to tap into the secret thoughts of users, either by watching behaviors online or by analyzing user comments. In turn they are taking this intelligence to create content that engages their audiences. This evolution of marketing messages from paid advertising to information development has been a bane for some media companies - and a boon for those who have created Custom Content departments.

At its annual conference in Charleston, SC, today, the Custom Content Council (CCC), revealed an updated benchmarket survey it had first conducted in 2006. CCC, whose mission is to match the needs of marketers with the information needs of audiences, commissioned Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communication to survey 100 CMOs and find out their inner most thoughts on Custom Content -- also called Content Marketing.

These CMOs across a spectrum of industries continued to see the upside of using content to build good relationships, and in fact, saw the cost of producing it as "not too expensive." These marketers are using 15 different content channels to reach their audiences -- notably, websites and newsletters -- both e- and print, and now, video, mobile and webinars.

Roper flipped the questions around and asked audiences their perceptions of content -- and while they admitted that they knew this content was meant to be persuasive -- encouraging people to buy, they didn't care as long as it was informative.

The research, said Andy Seibert, President & Publisher of SmartMoney (a Dow Jones Company) and CCC board member, "showed we don't have to convince marketers of the benefits of custom content."

Turns out that what readers want, is what marketers want -- which is good news for customer content creators.