Allina Medicare Retention
A sales campaign case study spotlighting brainstorming and multichannel design.
Background
As a UX/UI designer, my goal is to create a cohesive and user-centered marketing campaign — spanning direct mailers, web pages, and email communications — to guide Allina Health | Aetna Medicare members through the process of selecting a new plan after being notified that their current plan is no longer available. This campaign is designed to reduce confusion, build trust, and support a seamless transition by delivering clear, accessible, and empathetic messaging across every touchpoint.
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From a user perspective, we wanted to reduce the cognitive load and provide reassurance, helping members understand their options quickly and confidently take action. From a business perspective, we wanted to minimize member attrition by promoting retention through personalized, intuitive experiences that reflect our brand’s commitment to care and clarity. Ultimately, we wanted to drive plan selection through a streamlined, supportive digital and print experience that respected the needs of our senior audience.
Goals & KPI's
This site reflects a dual-brand identity that successfully blends Allina Health’s community-based healthcare focus with Aetna’s national Medicare insurance presence. It was the example we were asked to follow. The brand voice feels reassuring, service-oriented, and clear, which is appropriate for the Medicare audience. Visual elements like logos and imagery reinforce a feeling of partnership, care, and stability.
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Overall, the site demonstrates user-centered design principles: it prioritizes clarity, ease of use, and trust — all crucial for a Medicare-age audience making important healthcare decisions. While visually conservative, this is intentional and well-suited for the context. The experience is calm, professional, and empathetic—exactly what users in this space need.
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Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)
General Brand Design Patterns
This site reflects a dual-brand identity that successfully blends Allina Health’s community-based healthcare focus with Aetna’s national Medicare insurance presence. It was the example we were asked to follow. The brand voice feels reassuring, service-oriented, and clear, which is appropriate for the Medicare audience. Visual elements like logos and imagery reinforce a feeling of partnership, care, and stability.
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Overall, the site demonstrates user-centered design principles: it prioritizes clarity, ease of use, and trust — all crucial for a Medicare-age audience making important healthcare decisions. While visually conservative, this is intentional and well-suited for the context. The experience is calm, professional, and empathetic—exactly what users in this space need.
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Allina Health | Aetna Medicare Personas
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Prior to any design sessions, we consulted the current Aetna Medicare customer personas.
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The product team decided to focus primarily on two of our personas, the Willful Endurer and the Balanced Seeker.
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These would inform our brainstorming sessions later.
Brainstorming Sessions
To design a comprehensive marketing campaign that spans websites, print materials, and emails —especially one focused on member retention and plan selection — a mix of UX design brainstorming and collaborative workshops can help generate ideas, align teams, and center user needs. We invited a wide variety of members to these sessions, including developers, accessibility experts, content writers, UI designers, product experts, and marketing strategists. These workshops were critical in developing creative ideas and keeping us all on the same page.​​​
Kickoff
Purpose:
Align cross-functional teams (design, marketing, content, compliance, etc.) on business objectives, user goals, and constraints.
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Activity
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"How Might We" Activity. Reframe challenges into design opportunities (e.g., "How might we make plan changes feel simple and safe?").
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Clarify the scope, timeline, and success metrics​​
Crazy 8's: Idea Generation
Purpose:
Quickly generate a large volume of creative ideas across different mediums.​
Activity
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Used it to generate visual approaches for mailers, web, and emails
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Helped create ideas for messaging and calls to action.
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Gathered the team together to create quick sketches of their ideas within a specific amount of time.
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Worked great because we were all remote.
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We did this for the design and headline generation.
Sketching Exercise
Activity
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Our group sketched a postcard, landing page, and email that support the same message — then review together.
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Time boxed.
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Prioritize them based on clarity, message, and visual alignment.
Purpose:
Collaboratively sketch layouts and ideas.
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The UX brainstorming workshop was such a great experience — super collaborative, creative, and full of fresh ideas. It really showed how much better our work gets when we bring different perspectives to the table.
Aetna Content Designer
Service Blueprinting
Activity
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Map the current experience (e.g., receiving the letter → going to the website → selecting a plan → calling support).
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Identify pain points, gaps, and opportunities for improvement.
Purpose:
Understand the full user journey across touchpoints — print, digital, and support channels.
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The Content
Activity
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Work with content experts and branding partners to write the content.
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Submit all content to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for review 3-6 weeks ahead of launch for approval.
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Make any updates and resubmit as necessary.
Purpose:
Create compelling content that drives sales and conforms to the "Aetna voice" and branding standards.
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Adobe Experience Manager
Activity
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For the web portion of this experience AEM was used to create a consistent, responsive experience.
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All components and templates were created to conform to Aetna branding standards and WCAG 2.0, AAA standards.
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Components were created in FIGMA that conformed to AEM components, making the transition from design to authoring environment more efficient.
Purpose:
AEM (a content management application) was utilized for all web design examples.
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Example of AEM Authoring Application
Design Choices for email, web, and print
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Brand duality
We tried to balance the Aetna and Allina Health brands. We wanted the visual identity (logos, imagery, color) to feel consistent yet differentiated enough so that users sensed both local/community care (Allina) and national scale/security (Aetna). This helps build trust in a healthcare context. -
Clear, calming visual tone
The palette and typography are restrained, clean, with plenty of whitespace. For older Medicare-age users, we reduced the visual clutter and cognitive load. These choices improved legibility and reduce anxiety. -
Mobile-first mindset
Starting with mobile designs, especially for email / web, helped to ensure the most constrained screen is addressed first. Remembering that “Over 25% of Medicare users use mobile devices for exploring the internet …” illustrates that we grounded our UI decisions in user behavior driven from our personas. -
Consistency across channels
We attempted to keep design elements aligned (imagery style, tone of voice, color, layout logic) across print (mailer/postcard), email, and web/landing pages. That coherence helped users recognize the campaign at every touchpoint, which is especially important when dealing with sensitive decisions, such as choosing a health care plan. -
Empathy & clarity in content and messaging
The wording and information hierarchy are clearly oriented toward reassurance (“safe”, “simple”, “care”, “partner”). which was good for this audience, reducing confusion. The visual hierarchy, such as, headings, supporting text, and calls to action are separated and easy to scan. -
Built-in user testing
We conducted both unmoderated test sessions and focus groups, and adjusted images and language based on feedback. This means our UI choices are not just theoretical; they have been validated with actual users. -
Medicare timeliness & constraints
Medicare campaign periods have rigid deadlines (like the Annual Enrollment Period). The campaign launched on time (October 1) and stayed under budget showing that our design choices weren’t just aesthetic—they were practical and respected real constraints. UI decisions had to be realistic.
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Email Designs
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Following discussions, we created high-fidelity mockups starting with email.
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As always, we started with a mobile-first approach. Over 25% of Medicare users use their mobile devices for exploring the internet and transacting business.
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Colors, type, and images were based upon existing Medicare Marketing branding.​
Direct Mailer Designs
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I created several versions of the postcard that was sent directly to members.​
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The marketing team had these images custom photographed by the Aetna photo studio.
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My direction was to keep it friendly, clean. and easy to read.
Web Design
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I created a landing page that was directly tied to the email and print material.
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Here customers could go to obtain more information on Allina Health | Aetna Medicare plans.
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We used a very simple color pallet in an effort to keep the design clean.
Testing
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All of the designs were tested in UserTesting in unmoderated test sessions to understand user responses to the text and images.
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Some items were also tested by marketing in focus groups to judge their responses.
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Reception was relatively positive, however we did end up substituting some language and images per their responses.
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We also added customer testimonials designed to encourage confidence and trust.
Conclusion
Medicare relies on the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) that goes from October 1 to December 7 each year. As such, there is a definite timeframe in which Medicare campaigns must be run with little room for delays. Budgets are determined in April and so there is not a large margin for any type of budget ballooning. Due to precise project management and cost oversight, this campaign was delivered on time for an October 1 launch and was well within the established budget. Analysis after the AEP period determined that 82% of the members chose to remain with the company and moved to another plan, which was considered extremely successful.
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