Lauren Anderson, Baptist Health’s Sr. Digital Content Strategist & Copywriter, is a do-it-all marketer. She writes content, manages performance marketing, and is Baptist Health’s expert in Google Analytics. 

Google Analytics is a crucial tool for marketing at Baptist Health. It serves as the marketing source of truth – helping Baptist understand campaign, content, and broad marketing performance. Needless to say, Baptist Health has put a lot of hours into getting Google Analytics to function the way they need it to. 

That was all put into jeopardy when HHS released its guidance surrounding the use of online tracking technologies. 

Lauren had just come back from maternity leave and her boss texted her saying she needed to shut down Google Analytics. Now. 

Rather than panic. Lauren took a step back and created a “chessboard” to visualize all of her moves. After carefully studying all of her moves, she made the decision to implement Freshpaint.

“What's validated Freshpaint as the vendor for us is that we're in control of out data. We can see everything, and we know exactly where it's going.”

The Challenge: A Problem Much Bigger Than Google Analytics

When Lauren started evaluating her options for replacing Google Analytics, she quickly realized the problem was much bigger than Google Analytics. If she replaced Google Analytics with another analytics platform, Baptist Health would still be at risk with other web trackers like Meta’s pixel. 

“It was much bigger than Google Analytics because even if we had switched analytics platforms, how are we going to run our Google Ads and how are we going to run Facebook Ads?” 

Not only that, replacing Google Analytics meant rebuilding, re-instrumenting, and relearning a new analytics platform. A process that takes months for even the most advanced organizations. 

Lauren quickly realized that replacing Google Analytics with a HIPAA-compliant analytics tool didn’t solve her problem at all. It created more problems. So the solution for Lauren and Baptist Health was to find a tool that would allow them to keep their existing analytics and advertising tools, while enabling new use cases through a process that prioritized privacy.

Now, Lauren had a clear goal she was looking to achieve: implement privacy-first marketing at Baptist Health.

Objectives: Putting privacy at the center of everything

Privacy-first marketing meant achieving three things for Baptist Health:

  1. They needed to ensure Google Analytics was HIPAA compliant.
  2. They needed to get all third-party trackers under control – not just Google Analytics.
  3. They realized a true privacy-first approach would allow them to build end-to-end tracking

After carefully examining all the moves on her chessboard, Lauren chose Freshpaint as the tool to enable all of that for Baptist Health.

“My recommendation to our leadership was, let's go ahead and flip the switch with Freshpaint”

Results: Seamless Compliance

Partnering with Freshpaint allowed Baptist Health to implement a privacy-first marketing approach. With that, they’re not only getting Google Analytics in compliance, but they’re also getting their ad platforms in compliance. 

What’s even better is that there was no gap in data switching from unregulated Google Analytics to Google Analytics powered by Freshpaint. 

“There was no gap in our data at all because Freshpaint was able to come in and flip their code on. It was just a seamless process. Nothing was lost. I have a full year of data and it's HIPAA compliant. It’s awesome.”

With Freshpaint’s help, Baptist Health has also been able to keep track of all third-party trackers on their website with Freshpaint’s Web Tracker Manager. Now if someone installs an unauthorized tracking code, Lauren and her team are alerted of it, and can take action to prevent it from collecting Protected Health Information.

By prioritizing privacy with Freshpaint, Baptist Health is futureproofing their marketing so no matter what changes with healthcare regulations, Lauren and her team are in control of their patient data.

“Freshpaint has helped us future-proof so that no matter what campaign we stand up or what changes happen in technology, they're already on it.”

Hear the full story from Baptist Health’s Lauren Anderson: