Marketing/UX Content Strategist
In 2023, this health services client needed to drive higher activation rates within its covered population to support their company’s shift to digital. This had proven difficult as the marketing team struggled to express what value this action had for the audience. With little to incentivize the audience, Patrick employed tactics illustrated in the book “Nudge” with the goal of increasing activation rates 10%.
Driving Activation Rates
In order to increase activation rates, Patrick applied different psychological nudge techinques to determine which approaches would best move the needle given different sets of circumstances. Nudge techniques, like the endowment effect, or the Ziegnarnik principle, are methods of placing ourselves in our audience’s shoes long enough to help remove the path to action.
Below are samples of emails taken from a campaign comparing the benefits of using the “loss aversion” and “convenience” principles versus a combination of “urgency” and “authority”. In this task, we were targeting members who had recently seen a doctor and were expecting an explanation of their benefits.
Loss Aversion and Convenience
“Loss aversion” speaks to the intense emotional acuity we feel over the risk of losing something we believe is ours versus hope for potential gain. “Convenience” is the practice of negating perceived blockers from taking the desired action. The argument behind this was approach was these principles would highlight the potential to miss out on important information while rectifying the issue simply.
“Loss Aversion” and “Convenience”. This follow-up email mirrored the psychological nudge techniques of it’s predecessor to determine the best way to drive activation rates. 
“Urgency” and “Authority”. This follow up email matches the original’s direct messaging, putting function over style, and being explicit in it’s intentions.
Urgency and Authority
“Urgency” introduces an element of time to create a sense of pressure that propels action. “Authority” overrides individual misgivings in favor of deference to a confident of instructive voice. It was believed this combination, from a health insurance company, to compel action in case failure to act brought consequences.
“Loss aversion” combined with “convenience”. In order to move the needle on activations on this email campaign, we tried to highlight the convenience of receiving all communications, in this case the audience’s “explanation of benefits”, into a digital space. Considering the audience was reading the message in a digital space, pointing out clear value in taking additional steps was difficult. 
“Urgency” and “authority” were combined here to overlook reason, such as “why would I activate a digital account when I already get everything I need over email?” in favor of directly stating the desired outcome.
Loss Aversion Versus Social Proof
In this example, access to MDLIVE’s telehealth services was positioned after the act of completing account activation. It would leverage social proof versus loss aversion approaches.
“Social proof” lends legitimacy to an action by indicating other people have already done it or are currently doing. This trigger a sense of “FOMO”, or fear of missing out.
“Loss aversion” in this campaign focused on the loss of comfort and health.
Did Patrick reach the 10% target?
