athenahealth, with $39 million in 2004 revenue, is the largest company in the fragmented field of online medical billing, handling more than $1.4 billion in claims annually. Its main product is a Web-based service that helps doctors run their practices more efficiently and more profitably.

Challenge

athenahealth had been very active in its online marketing activities and wanted to:

• measure marketing results (leads, opportunities, and revenue), link these results to specific marketing programs, and calculate ROI.

• increase the organizational visibility of marketing performance.

• determine where to apply marketing dollars based on testing and measuring new marketing methods and vehicles.

• identify and measure the effectiveness of specific components within their marketing efforts, such as messaging and customer segmentation, then modify these components to optimize results.

• uniquely identify and track prospects throughout the marketing process, thereby closing the marketing loop.

Solution

In response to athenahealth’s needs, enContext:

• designed, developed, and implemented a marketing measurement infrastructure, including metrics and language to engage in a dialog of performance.

• standardized data collection, reporting, and metrics.

• linked captured website data and measurement to athenahealth’s CRM system.

• extended and customized the CRM system with new data and custom reports to handle measurement requirements.

• developed interfaces to self-manage and launch online campaigns, capture response through web forms and telesales reps, and report on results.

• created, attached, and captured unique identification to prospects to track online activity and campaign response.

• integrated measurement tools and built report templates.

Results

• athenahealth has the ability to test and measure multiple marketing vehicles and programs, including direct mail, email, and online advertising.

• Based upon the initial results of this testing, they were able to identify which marketing programs were the most successful and adjusted their spend accordingly.

• This measurement-driven spend decisions resulted in an over 100% increase in volume of qualified web leads, allowing athenahealth to maintain a 50% annual growth rate.