The Grip is a newsletter that compiles essential news and insights for bold healthcare marketers, brought to you by Grippi Media.
While marketers constantly grapple with search engine and social media algorithms for reach, one classic strategy remains reliable as ever: email marketing.
In issue 18 of The Grip, we dive into why email marketing continues to stand the test of time as the most powerful tool in your digital utility belt—and how it can help shorten longer sales pipelines.
Other stories from this issue include:
👉 LinkedIn Axing Its Top Voice Badges for Collaborative Articles
👉 Ad Copy Tactics Backed By Study Of Over 1 Million Google Ads
👉 CVS to Lay Off 2,900 Workers Amidst Talk of Breaking Up the Company
👉 Google Rolls Out AI-Organized Search Results Pages
👉 Making SEO Decisions With Confidence: A Guide To Data-Driven Strategies
👉 The Biggest Opportunities for Healthcare AI and the Hurdles That Stand in the Way: Bessemer Venture Partners Report
👉 NVIDIA's Venture Capital Arm Is Silently Investing Millions Into Healthcare
👉 Inbound Marketing Trends in Digital Health
All this and much more in issue 18 of The Grip!
I Can’t Believe That’s a Keyword
Using Semrush, we hunt down bizarre (and totally real) search queries and try to answer them.
This Week’s Keyword: Why Do I Want To Work Here?
Avg. Monthly Search Volume: 6,600
Answer: If you’re asking yourself this question now, there’s a good chance you’ll be answering it in an interview soon.
Top Stories We’re Tracking
Essential marketing and healthcare headlines of the week.
Don't Sleep on Email Marketing — Here's Why It's Still Your Business's Most Powerful Tool
Despite the buzz around social media, email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools for businesses to build personal connections and generate leads.
Unlike social media, email provides direct, algorithm-free access to customers, making it essential for personalized, scalable communication. Seasonal campaigns, especially during high-demand periods like Black Friday, benefit significantly from targeted emails.
With data showing impressive open rates and click-through performance, email is more effective at driving conversions than platforms like Facebook or X, especially when used alongside automation tools and social media.
📄 Read Article (Source: Entrepreneur Media)
CVS to Lay Off 2,900 Workers Amidst Talk of Breaking Up The Company
CVS Health Health is laying off 2,900 employees, mainly from corporate roles, to save $2 billion over the next few years.
These layoffs represent less than 1% of its workforce and come during a challenging time as CVS faces declining profits and shareholder pressure to potentially split its insurance and retail divisions.
This news follows similar cost-cutting efforts by Walgreens, which has closed several underperforming stores.
📄 Read Article (Source: Yahoo Finance)
Google’s User-Generated Content Push: Sullivan Explains Shift in Search Results
Google is boosting the visibility of user-generated content (UGC) in search results, driven by the growing demand for human perspectives and frustration with low-quality content in search results.
As we’ve covered in The Grip, both Google and OpenAI have struck deals with Reddit, Inc. to use its content for training their AI models. In response to users increasingly adding ‘Reddit’ to their search queries, Google has also been featuring more Reddit threads in its results.
While this shift boosts UGC's relevance in certain searches, challenges remain in managing content quality and relevance at scale. In the age of AI chatbots, this might prove to be easier said than done.
📄 Read Article (Source: Search Engine Journal)
Ad Copy Tactics Backed By Study Of Over 1 Million Google Ads
A study analyzing over 1 million Google Ads reveals key strategies for improving ad performance.
Surprisingly, ads with "average" Ad Strength outperform those labeled "good" or "excellent" in key metrics like CPA and ROAS.
Ads using sentence case outperform those in title case, especially in RSAs and Demand Gen campaigns. Shorter headlines perform better in CTR and conversions, with long, keyword-heavy copy offering diminishing returns in modern ad formats.
Read the full report below for more takeaways.
📄 Read Article (Source: Search Engine Journal)
Making SEO Decisions With Confidence: A Guide To Data-Driven Strategies
To succeed in SEO, data-driven decisions are crucial.
By analyzing keyword performance, traffic data, and competitor insights, businesses can craft strategies that significantly increase the ROI of their SEO programs.
In the below guide from Search Engine Journal, you'll learn how to improve your SEO decision-making to increase your brand's visibility in the SERPs and stay ahead of your competition.
📄 Read Article (Source: Search Engine Journal)
LinkedIn Removes Its Top Voice Badges for Collaborative Articles
LinkedIn is retiring its "Top Voice" badges for contributions to its Collaborative Articles, acknowledging concerns that the system wasn't accurately reflecting expertise.
While these badges had driven increased user participation in Collaborative Articles, feedback from the community highlighted quality issues, with many contributors seen as lacking genuine expertise.
Wait, you’re telling me not every Top Voice on LinkedIn is a true expert? Oh no. Anyway...
Starting October 8th, 2024, users will no longer be able to earn these badges, and all existing badges will be removed by December 7th, 2024. Honestly, I feel bad for all the folks who spent an ungodly amount of time working to earn and retain their Top Voice badges.
In any case, Collaborative Articles will likely flounder after this development, as there is no clear incentive for users to contribute anymore.
📄 Read Article (Source: Social Media Today)
Nvidia’s Venture Capital Arm Is Silently Investing Millions Into Healthcare
NVIDIA's venture capital division, NVentures, is making significant investments in healthcare technology.
Recent funding includes contributions to Hippocratic AI, which is developing a safety-focused healthcare large language model. Other investments include Moon Surgical, which uses Nvidia’s Clara Holoscan platform to advance robotic surgery, and CHARM Therapeutics, which leverages AI for drug discovery.
📄 Read Article (Source: Forbes)
The Biggest Opportunities for Healthcare AI and the Hurdles That Stand in the Way: Bessemer Report
A new report from Bessemer Venture Partners outlines the biggest opportunities for AI in healthcare, emphasizing the potential of AI in areas like simulation, multimodal data, and specialized tasks.
While healthcare markets are fragmented, offering opportunities in niche sub-sectors, AI has seen rapid growth in FDA-approved devices and VC funding.
In the report, Bessemer calls out the need for solutions in areas like real-time data analysis, cybersecurity, and the de-identification of patient data.
📄 Read Article (Source: Fierce Healthcare)
Google Rolls Out AI-Organized Search Results Pages
Google is rolling out AI-organized search result pages in the U.S., beginning with recipes on mobile devices.
These pages combine different content types—articles, videos, forums—to provide personalized, diverse search results.
While the new format offers a broader range of perspectives, it raises concerns about reduced traffic to individual websites. However, some marketers have shared anecdotes of seeing increased search traffic from AI search results.
Google plans to expand this feature to other categories, including movies, books, and shopping, as it continues to evolve how users engage with search results on both mobile and desktop platforms.
It's worth noting that Google has begun to introduce ads within its AI Overviews.
📄 Read Article (Source: Search Engine Journal)
Inbound Marketing Trends in Digital Health
In this 60 second video from Grippi Media, I cover the top 5 takeaways from our 2024 Digital Health Inbound Marketing report. In the report, we reviewed 200 B2B digital health brand websites to uncover the trends and tactics that drive success - and the common mistakes that hold many brands back.
Our Latest Podcasts
Recent episodes of the podcasts that we produce.
Boosting Healthcare Efficiency With Conversational AI
A lot can be learned by monitoring individual customer service calls, analyzing patient experience, and optimizing call performance, but a systemic and scalable approach has always seemed out of reach.
But new AI technologies are flipping the script on this age-old roadblock.
Findings from Talkdesk found that 67% of individuals indicated they would feel more comfortable making appointments for sensitive health issues with an online chatbot than a human staff member and more than half believed that AI will enhance their patient experiences.
In this episode of CareTalk Podcast: Healthcare. Unfiltered., David E. Williams and John Driscoll are joined by Amy Brown, CEO of Authenticx, to explore how AI can improve patient experiences, efficiently gather and analyze data from call centers, and what the future of AI in healthcare holds.
How Weave Helps Small Practices Grow Faster
Value-based care often focuses on primary care rather than specialties.
But can and should that change?
Especially when it comes to cardiology.
In this HealthBiz Brief, George M. Aloth, CEO of Chamber, explains how they are enabling cardiology teams to excel in a value-based system by ensuring providers are rewarded for delivering the right care at the right time.
Decoding Human Biology with Single-Cell Insights, with Lindsay Edwards from Relation
In this episode of the AWS Health Innovation Podcast, host Yin He, Principal Business Development for Healthcare & Life Sciences Startups at AWS, sits down with Lindsay Edwards, CTO and President of Platform at Relation, a biotech company leveraging single-cell multi-omics, machine learning, and clinical insights to develop transformational medicines.
What We’re Listening To
New music that has been inspiring us.
MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks
2024 is the year of the ‘breakout fourth album,’ and this couldn’t be more true for MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks. The album feels like a loose blend of Pavement, Uncle Tupelo, and Neutral Milk Hotel, yet it brings something fresh and deliberate to the table. The lyrics are incredibly honest and straightforward, striking a perfect balance between tongue-in-cheek and heartfelt.
Thanks for reading! See you next week! 👋
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