Chicago, IL— We’ve all been there: killing time on our smartphones while we sit in a physician’s waiting room. We’re often browsing aimlessly or frantically researching information about what ails us. Outcome Health believes that this is an opportunity to connect with patients at the moment of care in a highly targeted and timely manner.
They have developed Triggyr, a new media platform that delivers free Wi-Fi to patients in the waiting room. In exchange, patients must view an advertisement and hit ‘agree and connect’ before accessing the internet.
The average smartphone user picks up their phone for 76 unique sessions every day, spending almost 2.5 hours on the device. Smartphone users are comfortable engaging with health topics on their devices; 62% of them used one last year to look up health information.
Americans overall make over 1 billion trips to physician offices and outpatient clinics each year. Triggyr is betting that one of those 76 daily usage sessions will happen while sitting in a physician’s waiting room. For marketers, getting to patients at this moment before they see their physicians is critical:
- When seen at the point of care, over 75% of patients say they recall brand messages they are exposed to
- While waiting room materials alone spur 30% of patients to start discussions with providers, targeted educational content pushes that number to 60%
- Kantar Media concluded that point-of-care messages have led to 11 million brand switches
The Triggyr platform displays a branded landing page with a single video or static asset, an ‘agree and connect button’ and a link leading to deeper brand content. Healthcare providers receive the hardware and connection free of charge. The platform is soon to be in 25,000 offices.
While showing ads in exchange for free Wi-Fi is not a brand new idea (we’ve all been in airports, hotels and Starbucks), Triggyr is building its infrastructure in a way that solves major challenges for healthcare markets.
OfficeFencing
The platform is designed to have specific geo-fencing ‘walls’ that differentiate between office to office, rather than blanket an entire complex with one single network. This allows more precise targeting based on practice type.
Retargeting
Triggyr has built the platform to support pixel tracking and click trackers while working with media partners to unify first-party cookies, device IDs and third-party audience data. This offers the opportunity to add the in-office Triggyr touchpoint as an integrated step in the patient journey.
Why This Matters
Owning the Emerging Customer Operating System (OS)
Triggyr’s approach is telling of an important competition happening in the world of healthcare: the race to own the emerging digital customer operating system. As new digital solutions come of age, those who own access to the underlying infrastructure and channels will control important information about patients. They’ll be able to use this information to serve relevant offers and promotions to customers as companies shift from being brand-centric to healthcare service-oriented.
It’s a race to establish a unique right of way— a basic exclusivity where one company has permission to do something others can not do. This right of way is often established through reciprocity— the practice of exchanging with others for mutual benefit. By giving free Wi-Fi systems to providers’ offices, Triggyr is establishing a unique right of way and communication channel it can own. It is a give-to-get model where partnerships are made to setup the digital customer OS.
Big providers like Aetna are partnering with Apple to give away smartwatches in order to build an ecosystem of data and future platform for delivering digital therapies. Partnerships are key for reciprocity— big companies can leverage their current right of way and partner with others who have strong digital capabilities to set the infrastructure for a future customer OS.
In a marketing environment of hyper targeting and new digital touch points, getting a digital leg up over competition is key. What rights of way is your brand willing to give up in order to solidify their role in the new digital customer OS? Who will you partner with? What do you expect to get? And more importantly— what are you willing to give?
