Ready for AEP 2026: Digital Marketing Moves Payers Can't Afford to Miss

AEP 2026 is here, and payer marketers are under pressure to capture more market share while staying compliant in an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. But consumers’ behaviors are changing rapidly, and payer marketers can’t just run the same old playbook.

We recently hosted industry leaders Craig Blake, Healthcare Practice Leader at Amsive, and Aaron Mauck, Chief Research Officer at Oboe Insights, for a webinar discussion on the trends, technologies, and tactics that will define success in AEP 2026. 

From engaging the rising group of digital-savvy seniors, to building patient trust, and adapting to AI-led research, Craig and Aaron broke down the marketing moves you can use to strengthen your playbook for AEP 2026 and position yourself for success in AEP 2027. 

So whether you're refining your Medicare Advantage playbook or scaling up digital acquisition efforts, you can check out the on-demand recording by clicking here. Or, if you’d prefer the quick version, scroll down for our TL;DW recap.

The Rise of the Digital Senior

Tim Cook turned 65 this year. It’s safe to say he knows his way around an iPhone, and probably understands AI better than the rest of us. And though the Apple CEO may be an outlier, there’s no doubt that the rising generation of seniors now qualifying for Medicare Advantage is more digitally-literate than those of years past. 

This shift is impacting AEP enrollment in several ways. Although payer marketers have traditionally focused on offline channels, such as telemarketing, Deft Research’s 2025 study found that this year, for the first time ever, 23% of consumers went online immediately after receiving a direct mail piece, self-serving instead of picking up the phone. “This is a seismic shift,” Craig Blake explains. “We need to see what that online activity is like, and understand how we’re serving customers that are choosing an online-first journey.” 

And as they engage online, rising digital seniors are more discerning shoppers with clearer expectations about plan value. Aaron Mauck explains that digital seniors have “reached a tipping point when it comes to what they’re looking for from particular offerings. There’s been a general decline in trust, and with that, a lot more scrutiny on the part of those seniors.”

To meet consumer expectations, payer marketers must look beyond traditional tactics and develop a holistic consumer journey across digital and physical channels, ensuring that they’re offering digital experiences that are easily accessible. As Craig puts it, “your landing pages are your new telemarketing script.”

TL;DR: The rising generation of seniors are increasingly digital savvy, often performing self-service research to identify the right plan for their needs. To meet these patients’ expectations, payer marketers must look beyond traditional tactics and design a holistic consumer journey, building trust through easily accessible digital experiences. 

Building Your Post-Cookie Playbook

The data privacy landscape has become more complex, and developing digital experiences that meet consumer expectations is more difficult than ever. Regulations such as CCPA and HIPAA restrict payer marketers from leveraging third-party cookies as freely as they used to, making it difficult for teams to understand consumer trends, target the right audience, and measure campaign performance. 

As teams adapt to the post-cookie world, the biggest mistake that Craig sees marketers make is doing nothing. “Marketing doesn’t want to take this challenge on and build bridges with legal, compliance, and finance. Some organizations are very conservative and decide not to do anything. And it bites them.”

But the good news, Craig says, is that there are healthcare privacy platforms that enable marketers to run data-driven marketing programs without compromising PHI. "Privacy platforms aren't a maybe anymore, they're a must have. Because if you don't have one, and your competition does, it's gonna hurt you in the long run."

Freshpaint, for example, is a healthcare privacy platform that replaces risky trackers from digital tools like Google Ads and Meta, giving payers control over what data gets sent to those platforms so they can run effective marketing campaigns while protecting patient privacy. That means payer marketers can deliver AEP enrollment campaigns to relevant audiences through channels like paid search, paid social, and display, and understand how those campaigns are driving enrollments, all without compromising PHI. 

In a post-cookie world, payers can shift from renting consumer relationships through platforms like Facebook and Google to building owned relationships based on first-party data, ultimately driving greater trust and retention.

TL;DR: The data privacy landscape is becoming more complex, and the worst thing you can do is do nothing. Healthcare privacy platforms are becoming an essential part of healthcare data infrastructure, as they enable you to run targeted campaigns and measure performance without compromising PHI.

Making Your Privacy Framework a Brand Strategy

Overhauling your patient data approach is not easy. Marketing often struggles to align key stakeholders across compliance, legal, finance, and executive leadership to develop a unified privacy strategy. 

Compliance is often seen as the “hall monitors of the organization, or the department on ‘no’,” as Aaron puts it. But the solution to successful collaboration with compliance is to reframe the narrative around enablement. By positioning privacy as a brand and growth strategy internally, marketing can move beyond compliance roadblocks and unify key stakeholders to a privacy-centric long-term growth strategy. “If you can paint the picture of growth,” Aaron says, “you're invariably going to get other groups on board who might otherwise be skeptical.”

And once you’ve aligned internally, you can begin to develop an intentional privacy communication strategy externally, which is essential for building consumer trust. “Given the policy environment and given the dynamics that we're seeing around privacy, if you can frame to consumers that you're a privacy-first organization, that is a brand position,” Aaron says, “and one that enables growth in its own right."

TL;DR: Privacy solutions require aligning key stakeholders from across compliance, legal, finance, and executive leadership. Get everyone on the same page by aligning privacy investments to long-term growth, and consistently demonstrate to consumers that you’re a privacy-first organization. 

The Importance of First-Year Retention

To thrive in the post-cookie world, payer marketers must shift from an acquisition-only mindset to a focus on customer lifecycle value, using first-party data to develop long-term, profitable customer relationships. 

For years, payer marketers have been goaled primarily on new customer acquisition. But with many plans raising premiums and changing their products, customers are switching plans more frequently than ever. “Last year switching was at a record high,” Craig describes, “and this year I predict it's gonna be at another record high.”

High member churn is painful for the business, as acquiring a new member can cost more than the revenue they generate in their first year. The key to building long-term customer relationships, Craig explains, is to track on first-year retention as a key marketing goal. “First-year retention is more important than ever. If you can map a senior to the right product and retain them, you need to. You’ve really got to reverse your thinking—it’s not I want to get net new, it’s how am I going to make sure the people I already have stay.” 

To improve first-year retention, payer marketers need to look beyond top-of-funnel metrics, like lead volume, and focus on building stronger relationships with existing customers. Understanding enrollment quality score, disenrollment rates, first-year claims match, and Star rating impact will help payer marketers assess member quality and identify opportunities to improve loyalty. 

The most important time to build member trust is in what Craig calls “the season of discontent”—the Q1 period after a customer has chosen a plan and may be having second thoughts. To start the customer relationship off right, it’s important to design a new member experience journey that educates and enables. That can include explainer videos, how-to’s, and FAQs that help new members understand how they can use their new plan.

TL;DR: Payer marketers must shift from an acquisition-only mindset to a focus increasing first-year retention and increasing customer lifecycle value. Understanding customer loyalty through engagement reporting and AI analysis is a great way to assess member quality. Support new customers during the Q1 “season of discontent” to build long-term trust. 

Prepare for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and AI’s Impact on Search

AI is transforming the way people access information, and AEP research is no exception. Like SEO, AEO can’t be solved overnight. It’s a long-term investment whose returns compound over time. So while you may not be able to overhaul your site for AEO for AEP 2026, it’s the perfect time to start optimizing for AEP 2027. 

The first step, Craig advises, is to get an AEO audit done for your site. For AEP specifically, you want to make sure your Medicare content is relevant and structured to allow AI systems to quote you. That means having the correct schema, using concise answers, including sources, and having plain language expectations. AI can’t recommend what it can’t parse or interpret. So make sure that your information is clean, sourced, and in a single location on your website.

If you’re already focused on SEO, many of these AEO guidelines may seem familiar. That’s because AEO is driven by the same key components as SEO. As Craig explains, “AEO does not compete with SEO. They’re complementing each other, and they need to work together to make sure you’re visible in searches. If you’re not looking at this, you’re missing the boat.”

Once you have your best practices in place, a great next step for AEP is to build a “Help Me Choose” explainer hub, including clean eligibility logic, benefit tradeoffs, and transparent network signals. This makes it easy for LLMs to process your information and serve it in answers in a clear and concise way. “Answer engines are built to be local,” Craig explains. “So if you’re a local dominant plan, and you can build out content on your website that meets customers’ needs, LLMs will find that data first. You just have to make sure things are structured correctly so the dots get connected.” 

TL;DR: AI-driven search has the potential to completely reshape top-of-funnel marketing within 1-2 years. Start investing in AEO now to optimize results for AEP 2027. Begin by getting your AEO audit done and establishing your AEO fundamentals, and then focus on building out explainer hub content personalized to your local audiences. 

The Bottom Line

As payer marketers navigate AEP 2026 and begin to look forward to AEP 2027, it’s critical to adapt the AEP playbook to the changing world. 

The increasingly complex privacy landscape is forcing payer marketers to move away from third-party cookies and develop a first-party data strategy, with a healthcare privacy platform at the core. 

Meanwhile, digitally-literate seniors are embracing technological advances such as AI search to assist their AEP research, forcing payer marketers to optimize their offerings to support these behaviors, else risk becoming antiquated. 

Craig and Aaron’s advice was clear: If you’re not evolving your AEP playbook to meet changing consumer needs, your competition probably is. The worst thing you can do is do nothing. 

Want more conversations like this one? Register for one of many upcoming events that bring together top healthcare marketing leaders to share real-world strategies, lessons, and inspiration.