Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace

DEPARTMENT OF CONSUMER AND BUISINESS SERVICES
The state of Oregon has set a goal of 99% insurance coverage. The health insurance marketplace helps people buy insurance and, for people with certain incomes, offers incentives. Through a competitive process, we became the marketplace’s new agency of record in the fall of 2018, and in under two months concepted and developed an entirely new creative and media strategy – all in time for the start of open enrollment on November 1.

Reaching a diverse audience

Previous campaigns put more emphasis on the freelance millennial market. We wanted to invite disenfranchised populations into the dialogue – Spanish speakers, gig economy workers, blue-collar and seasonal workers. We used our in-house creative and video resources to develop six commercial concepts into more than 40 different executional pieces, allowing us to tailor appeals to different audience segments in a variety of settings.

Quality over quantity

The campaign was statewide, but focused special attention on under-enrolled geographic areas. We wanted to reach higher-quality prospects who wouldn’t just visit the website, but who would actually sign up for insurance. We decided to focus on conversions –prospects willing to take a measurable step towards signing up for insurance – instead of just site traffic as our goal.

Targeted communications pays off

At first, things weren’t looking good. Web traffic to the marketplace site was down compared to previous years, and so were sign-ups for health insurance. However, by the time open enrollment ended, sign-ups were down 5%, about the same as the rest of the nation. But that wasn’t the whole story. People only actually receive health insurance when they make their first payment in January, and it turned out that more people in Oregon bought health insurance through the marketplace than ever before. By targeting people with more genuine interest, we were able to accomplish our most important goal: Increasing the number of insured people in Oregon.

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