Say Yes to Privacy-First Marketing: How Compliance and Marketing Can Win Together

To many healthcare marketers, their compliance counterparts feel like American Idol judges on audition day. The default response? A blunt, "That's gonna be a no from me, dawg."

Compliance risks in healthcare marketing are higher than ever. HIPAA restrictions have expanded, regulators are more aggressive, and most of the marketing platforms that other industries depend on weren’t built for HIPAA. Faced with that reality, compliance teams often default to blocking programs that might introduce risk—especially audience targeting.

But while blocking by default may feel like the safest choice, it can actually introduce financial risks and negative patient outcomes that hinder the organization in the long run. To develop a privacy-first framework that supports growth, compliance teams must serve as a strategic partner to marketing. Fortunately, HIPAA-aligned marketing platforms now exist, enabling Compliance and Marketing teams to work together to reach common goals. 

Compliance has been right to say no to data-driven marketing

Most of the tools that power marketing in other industries have made it nearly impossible to deliver targeted marketing campaigns in healthcare without compromising HIPAA compliance. Compliance teams are right to have been skeptical of them. 

Modern marketers rely on data the way fish rely on water. It allows them to understand how people are engaging, deliver relevant campaigns, and measure how their efforts are working. As DJ Willard, Senior Director of Strategic Marketing at Priority Health, said, marketing without reliable data is “flying blind.” 

Access to data is especially important for audience targeting. Audience targeting is the practice of using data to identify, segment, and deliver personalized messages to specific groups of people based on their behaviors, demographics, or characteristics. It helps marketers reach the most relevant audiences for each campaign, rather than broadcasting a one-size-fits-all message to everyone. That means every campaign is more effective, with teams seeing up to 2x ROI compared to those without audience targeting.

Most marketing teams collect data through pixels. Pixels are small pieces of website code that monitor visitor behavior and collect data. Many pixels are built by major advertising and analytics platforms, collecting data so that marketers can access it and use it in their platforms. For example, a marketing team might have the Google Analytics pixel implemented so that they can log into their Google Analytics account and understand how people are navigating their website.  

But, pixels from most marketing platforms pose a major compliance risk, as they often sweep up all available data about your website visitors, including protected health information (PHI). This is exactly what leads to HIPAA violations, FTC enforcement, and class action lawsuits. Because compliance teams often have limited visibility into which pixels are implemented and what they’re tracking, they can't assess risk or ensure proper safeguards are in place. 

And if watching out for fines and lawsuits wasn’t enough, compliance teams now must also navigate increasing insurance costs. As legal scrutiny has increased, cyber insurance firms have become more sensitive to tracking technologies. Having more pixels installed, particularly from major ad tech platforms, can lead to higher insurance premiums or even denied coverage. For large organizations, this could mean tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of dollars in additional insurance costs per year. 

As a result, compliance teams have often defaulted to taking a "block first" approach to tracking pixels and audience targeting rather than risk unknown compliance exposure.

The hidden cost of blocking targeted marketing

But while blocking targeted marketing practices may seem like the easiest way to protect the organization from catastrophic fines, the reality is that prohibiting all data-driven marketing can create significant costs. 

Without access to data, healthcare marketers experience a big drop in campaign efficiency. That means they have to use a lot more budget to acquire the same amount of conversions. Heartland Dental, for example, experienced an 8x increase in Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) after removing pixels, and Allergy Partners saw their Cost Per Lead (CPL) jump to $300. 

Impacts like this aren’t just a hit for marketing, they’re a hit for the entire organization. If marketing is used to paying $100 to acquire a patient, and that suddenly increases 8x to $800, while the average patient generates $600 of revenue, they’ll end up paying more to acquire patients than the patients are actually worth to the organization. If marketing isn’t able to acquire new patients at a sustainable level, the whole organization can fall apart. 

Healthcare organizations that can’t use data to control campaign targeting also struggle to get the right messages to the right people. That means that loyal patients could receive new customer email offers, and oncology patients could see ads about the opening of a new orthopedics clinic. Experiences like this not only damage patient relationships, they also waste marketing budget. We’ve seen that organizations that don’t control campaign targeting experience: 

• 50% lower ROI
• Up to 67% higher Cost Per Acquisition
• Up to 33% lower conversion rates

compared to those that do. 

Although compliance teams are right to protect their organizations from HIPAA violations, simply blocking all data-driven marketing produces significant costs for the organization in terms of wasted budget, higher ad fees, and soured customer relationships.

To build a privacy-first framework that supports growth, Compliance needs to be a strategic partner for Marketing, helping them implement tools and systems that make it possible to optimize marketing programs without compromising HIPAA. Fortunately, tools now exist to help teams get there. 

Data-driven marketing, without compromising HIPAA compliance

Most marketing platforms make it impossible for marketing to run data-driven campaigns without keeping compliance up at night. They don’t provide control over how PHI is shared with third-party systems, and don’t sign BAAs specifying how patient data will be used. 

But Freshpaint is providing an alternative—a healthcare privacy platform that allows organizations to collect marketing data through a BAA-protected pixel and control exactly what gets shared with third-party tools via a precision allowlist system. That means Compliance and Marketing can partner together to develop a privacy-first data strategy that delivers better performance while also protecting risk. 

And now, Freshpaint is launching Audiences, a new segmentation solution that gives healthcare marketers a way to build and activate privacy-first audiences across their favored platforms. This means marketing can: 

• Use preferred marketing platforms like Meta, Google Ads, and StackAdapt without sharing PHI
• Prevent patients from receiving marketing messages that aren’t relevant to their interests
• 2x the amount of value created for the organization with the same amount of budget

Want to see how it works? Check out our on-demand webinar. We'll walk through a live demo and show you how to get started.