One of the biggest challenges unique to telehealth funnels over traditional eCommerce is the much higher abandonment rate. It might not come as a surprise it’s higher given how much more a telehealth funnel requires from the customer, but the rates still come as a surprise to many new to the telehealth space.

The typical eCommerce funnel might have three to four steps for the customer to complete before checkout. If they’re a returning customer, two or even one since Amazon’s patent expired in 2017. For general eCommerce, according to Baymard Institute, the top 60 grossing online stores average five to six. This should be the benchmark for what a customer is prepared for and considers normal.

It’s not just less steps, the customers are used to and are comfortable with these steps: add a product to the cart, go to checkout, enter shipping and payment information, confirm. Stores have been optimizing this process for many years, and even have figured out the best places to put upsells without losing too many conversions.

Telehealth is different. Medical history, eligibility questions, consent forms, identity verification, provider-specific intake forms, insurance information, and anything else needed to be compliant. It’s not uncommon for telehealth funnels to have 15-20 steps. Retargeting should be built into your intake system from day one. It’s a lot easier to integrate event triggers, your retargeting flow, and secure session recovery if it’s considered from the beginning.

Below, I’m going to make some recommendations on platforms to use. Keep in mind that while some of these platforms offer both email and SMS, I may only recommend one function due to complications with SMS I’ll get into detail about after the recommendations.

Omnisend (Email)

If you’re running a growing telehealth operation and you’re looking for a good automation platform with an API you can make use of and simpler pricing, Omnisend is a good choice. The automation builder makes easy work of building flows for abandoned intake reminders, follow-ups, and patient engagement.

It has competitive pricing compared to other things that offer some of the more typically ‘enterprise-level’ features Omnisend has. It does suffer from a smaller ecosystem of pre-made integrations than competitors like Klaviyo, but the API allows you to have your own integrations built easily.

Sent.dm (Email)

Where Omnisend is more of a complete tool for anyone to use out of the box with visual flow builders, Sent.dm is focused on being an API-ready to integrate with your systems, unifying things under one platform instead of using multiple providers.

Because it’s focused on the actual messaging infrastructure, it doesn’t offer as much in the way of built-in marketing automation and campaign management tools compared to other platforms. You’re not going to drag-and-drop build your campaigns with this. It also has weaker pre-made integration support, but if you’re going with an API-first product you are probably prepared for custom integrations anyway. If you have a large amount of contacts, it’s often higher cost than other platforms, but has a simple pricing structure that’s easy to understand and beneficial for smaller operations. There is an enterprise plan if you scale to the size where per-contact payment is a problem.

Klaviyo (Email + SMS)

One of the best features Klaviyo has is the powerful segmentation tools. Customers can easily be divided based on behavioral data to generate personalized communication based on how customers interacted with your intake process. It’s a highly mature marketing campaign automation platform that has great A/B testing tools, customer journey options, detailed analytics, and a large set of pre-made integrations.

The pricing can be steep in certain situations, but they have a nice tool on their website to see the cost of each product with sliders to adjust the number of actions like emails specific to the service. I also recommend them for SMS, which saves you from needing two platforms.

Attentive (SMS)

Attentive does offer email marketing tools, but for this list where they really shine is SMS. They offer sophisticated SMS workflows that can follow up with your patients based on their intake process. They also have high delivery rates as they’re a more trusted brand by more carriers. They offer detailed analytics, complex automation workflows, and good segmentation as well.

The main drawback of Attentive is that you’re paying for high delivery rates and quality tools. It’s a premium platform that may not be the best choice for small businesses just getting started. In fact, their pricing page is just a contact form. “Let’s talk about it” is almost never a competitive price. I’ve also seen some telehealth customers have problems with account restrictions, so it’s a good idea to make sure you comply with their up-to-date policies and consult with them before committing. This is another drawback of a high delivery rate provider- they want to protect their reputation.

Don’t Use Twilio for Telehealth

Many people are tempted to just use Twilio as it’s easy and they’re already familiar with it. Twilio does not state this anywhere, but I’ve seen pretty universally that accounts are being shut down when used for telehealth purposes. They’re very strict on compliance, and while they may advertise HIPAA compliance, they’re not a good option for telehealth prescription drug providers specifically.

A word on SMS and SHAFT

SHAFT is a set of content guidelines created by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, a trade organization most large US carriers are a part of. Messaging not meeting these guidelines is blocked. Some people new to the industry are surprised by this as they’ve never had an SMS blocked personally, but this applies specifically to business or applications sending SMS to an individual person.

The SHAFT acronym (Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco) doesn’t imply problems with telehealth, and many shaft guides and shortlists miss some of the finer details, but prescription drugs are a part of SHAFT, even if sent by licensed providers and platforms. There’s a complete ban on promos for prescription drugs, and even if you’re not doing promos, simple harmless operations like alerts for the existing customer can trigger problems as some carriers will filter based on keywords like medication names. This is also why I recommended platforms for email but not SMS, even if they had the option, as these platforms like to proactively prevent this problem to keep their reputation with carriers healthy.

Update: A Note About Klaviyo

Over the past several weeks, I’ve observed multiple telehealth advertisers reporting that they’re facing sudden account restrictions or suspensions without warning or recourse. While many telehealth businesses continue to operate using the platform successfully, I’ve become more cautious to recommend them and lean toward the other options listed in this post.