eHealth Insurance CRO Michelle Barbeau, Part 1

Michelle Barbeau: Personally and professionally, that is where you find growth and opportunity. You have to challenge your limits. You build resilience in that. And ultimately, I mean, you open yourself up to new possibilities that would drive success that otherwise you would not have gone after if you had stayed in your comfort zone.

Greg Stuart: Welcome to Building Better CMOs, a podcast about how marketers can get stronger and smarter. I am Greg Stuart, the CEO of the nonprofit MMA Global. And that voice you heard at the top is Michelle Barbeau, the Chief Revenue Officer and former CMO of eHealth Insurance. She previously served in marketing roles at AbleTo, United Health Group, and General Mills, but as CRO, she continues to oversee marketing for eHealth, as well as sales, data science, and analytics.

Now, today on the podcast, Michelle and I are going to talk about the difference between traditional health insurance and an online marketplace, the excitement of leading a turnaround, and of course, what it's like to go from CMO to CRO. Now, this podcast is all about the challenges marketers face and unlocking the true power that marketing can have. Michelle Barbeau is going to tell us how she did that, right after this.

Michelle Barbeau, welcome to Building Better CMOs.

MB: Thank you. So happy to be here.

GS: Good. I'm so glad. So listen, this is interesting. The listener hopefully knows that this is a show about CMOs, but we actually have a CRO with us today, correct?

MB: You got it.

GS: Okay. So I think we need to do two things. We certainly have to explain what that role means and how it differs. You have been a CMO for a couple of other businesses, so you've got that background, obviously part of the reason you're here. So I want to get into that. But also, can you just maybe take the listener through a little bit of who eHealth Insurance is, just so they have a sense. I don't know if everybody's familiar with the company.

MB: Yeah, very much appreciate that opportunity. So what we do is we really help people find the right insurance plan. When you think about that, that's a very big, sometimes overwhelming, complex decision. And mostly we're helping individuals, a lot of Medicare and seniors. So you've got the whole world of options open to you. We do also help some employers and individuals, but really you think about that choice can be quite overwhelming and the decision that you're making, it's probably one of the most important for your year because it impacts your health and your finances. So it's a free service that we offer to people. We actually get paid from the carriers to be able to kind of deliver, give that unbiased choice to people.

GS: Okay. So then you would be connecting them with the other... probably the names that I know from my company health insurance program, correct?

MB: You absolutely got it. Yeah, we offer over 50. I think the largest carriers: United, Humana, Aetna. You got it.

GS: So the business is about 25 years old. I think I saw something like that. Is that about right?

MB: Yeah, that's right.

GS: So is there somebody else doing this or have you guys uniquely positioned yourself in this way? I guess I've not gotten to the place of having individual health care, so I honestly hadn't heard of the company prior to Andrea Brimmer connecting us.

MB: Yes, that's right. That's right. And Andrea is on our board. Absolutely fabulous board member.

GS: Oh, you're very lucky to have her. Oh my goodness. I didn't realize that connection. She's exceptional.

MB: Yes.

GS: Absolutely.

MB: Yes, she is. Okay, so say again. Remind me the first part of the question.

GS: My question was just around are there other competitors, then, to that individual health care? Like I said, I didn't know that from my corporate experience health insurance.

MB: Yes. I mean, basically you can think in the simplest terms that we are a broker in terms of being able to help people offer choice across carriers. Although we are one of few public companies, so not as many are publics. There can be private, think even boutique, kind of local type firms. And then also one of our big differentiators is that we do also have an online... Think kind of like Kayak for health insurance. So you put in your doctors, your drugs, and we'll help you make that comparison and you can do it all online. But at the end of the day, this is not an airline ticket. As we said, this is a very important, sometimes very stressful decision to make. And so we do also have licensed advisors, over a thousand. So you can call telephonically, and we will help give you that comparison to your current plan and what else is available. We'll sit down and do a full... I mean, it's about an hourlong phone conversation to really walk deeply through and understand what their health needs and financial goals are.

GS: That so closes the loop for me too, because I'll tell you, so I was doing a little background research on the company and you. Just making sure I was sort of prepared for here. There was a real emphasis, even when I put it into ChatGPT, it sent the same thing to me. So it wasn't just your marketing message. I started to pick up a theme of the company, and it was all around how you have people who actually spend time on the phone with you to help figure this out. And I thought, well, that's like no insurance company I've ever dealt with in my entire life. So first off, I was suspicious of the claim, but then I see a bunch of backup for it. And so obviously you're delivering against that because of things... I think maybe it's some stuff your team sent me, too. Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah, it's a very personal touch, I think, then.

MB: Yes, it is. And we can get into the story, but I'll tell you. I came on just over two years ago, and so we were talking about the company had been around for 25 years, but we had really never created a brand. And so, a recruiter reached out and talked about this as a company that is going through transformation. It is a direct-to-consumer, marketing-driven organization, and it needs to create a brand. And I was like, those are my three favorite things. I am all about driving transformation and change, but also creating that brand strategy that our entire organization, quite frankly, could rally behind. And so anyway, I can take you down that, but it starts with listening to the consumers and what did they need and what were we not telling them about the services that we deliver.

GS: Why hadn't anybody taken the time to build a brand? I mean, you're a consumer-facing product for a category that's kind of complicated. Listen, I don't want to be disrespectful to the great work you guys did, but some of what you said there was like that was the obvious, like you needed to go do to differentiate... I mean, to differentiate in this category. As a marketer, you're like, of course that's what you do. But I guess the company didn't see it that way for whatever reason. I don't know.

MB: So our headquarters had been in Santa Clara and so very much saw ourself as a Silicon Valley. And like I said, one of our real differentiators is that online e-commerce platform. And so very much really kind of focused on the technology aspect and not as much on the marketing side of it.

GS: Honestly, I think I just needed to know where you were based to sort of realize that. So I am a dot-com guy. I was out there and as I said, I went out for the dot-com boom and stayed for the bust. And so I lived out in the Valley for some period of time until eventually I went to my wife in early 2000s. I said, "We need to move back to New York because these people out here don't appreciate anything that I do for a living." And that was really true. I think the Valley's changed, obviously. They built Yahoo, Google, and they built a bunch of other companies and they've become very consumer facing. But VCs at the time weren't oriented that way. And so they had no appreciation. I mean, none whatsoever. They thought advertising was a dumb business. They didn't even like it until they made a bunch of money, obviously. But yeah, you're right, it was just a very different marketing mentality. It was product marketing.

MB: That's right.

GS: If you build it, they will come. It was not this, how do I build a brand to create value? Yeah, interesting. Wow, that's a very interesting opportunity, then.

GS: So, let's go back: You came in there as CMO, you were hired as CMO, correct?

MB: Yes. You got it.

GS: And then it appears that if you've only been there a little over two years, very quickly, they somehow made you CRO. CMOs don't always get asked to do the CRO kind of role. I don't know. Tell me more about that.

MB: For sure. And so we can go through and I'm happy to tell you about the brand story and what we created and launched in kind of record time. It was really about driving change in the entire industry, but that our organization was looking for and willing to get behind. Cut to the end of the story, but suffice it to say that the results were stellar immediately in year one, and then the opportunity... there was an opening to oversee sales. And so that's when our CEO created an opportunity. It was a year in for me, so it's been just a year now as CRO. And so I oversee sales, marketing, and business development. And so it really is about driving the revenue and growth agenda for the organization.

GS: And we had talked earlier here, the listener wouldn't know, but you also mentioned data analytics sit underneath you, too. I mean a little bit separate from those other things, but underlying it all.

MB: Data and analytics is at the foundation of everything. I am incredibly passionate about that. And yeah, that was one thing that I established when I came in as CMO. There really wasn't even a marketing analytics function and knew that we needed to transform how we were looking at that. Again, I mean marketing ends up being the biggest outlie of cash for the organization, hundreds of millions of dollars, and that is an incredible responsibility to have to deliver the ROI. And you can't do that if you're not all over tracking every KPI and performance metric. And also I came in and looked at... My training comes from General Mills days, and I know that it is not about last touch marketing attribution.

GS: Thank you for saying that, Michelle. Thank you.

MB: That's exactly right. So we needed to build some real capabilities and hiring people that could build a true marketing mix model so you can look at it very comprehensively and understand the impact of that brand lift and an integrated marketing campaign.

GS: Where'd you get your data analytics orientation in the world? I wouldn't have thought that would be a General Mills as a very brand-strategy-oriented company. Where'd you pick that up? I'm curious.

MB: Well, I love that you ask that. Maybe that's a little known secret, but at General Mills marketing is the path to CEO, and so you very much are the P&L owner and the general manager of the business. You're setting pricing for the product and sales distribution priorities. And so at the end of the day, that financial performance, that accountability resides with you, far beyond just kind of the brand and marketing strategy.

GS: Okay, true. I mean, I grew up on the agency side working with Procter & Gamble, so at the very center of that sort of classic brand manager, really P&L with the business, own everything. Okay, got it.

GS: You want to give any reflections to other CMOs or other marketers on what it means to then go run sales and maybe how you're having to think about that world differently?

MB: Yeah, happy to. I will tell you, it has been just another unlock in our organization. I think that — and I've seen this in past lives — sales and marketing can often feel like they're competing against one another, right? If they work in different silos, it can be very easy to point the finger and say, well, marketing is bringing in crappy leads. The leads aren't high quality, the people that are coming in... Because at the end of the day, both organizations have a responsibility for conversion. And so yes, marketing plays a very clear role in that, but so does sales. How do they drive the conversion at the end of the day? In this case it's a phone call, over a telephonic call. Bringing those organizations together so they are operating under one set of objectives, and it's a shared accountability, has created massive unlocks. So marketers join, we have sales training podcasts. And so how do you bring that word out to a thousand agents to help them understand how marketing is working so hard to cultivate and drive quality leads and what does that mean? So that every time you pick up that call, you're not just waiting, "Well, I might get one that's going to convert higher," right?

It's really understanding that we're working this together as an organization to lift and grow eHealth. So anyway, that's just one example, but so many different... How you build loyalty, referral programs, how we work the pipeline, how we collect contact information so we can reach back out and bring. Really, again, demonstrating that magic of the team, seeing how sales and marketing can so effectively work together.

GS: Hey, I'm just curious, not to get too distracted, but is there a sales team there that's direct sales or is it often operating through brokers or maybe always operating through brokers?

MB: We are a broker, so that is the service. So yes, it's direct sales.

GS: You have your own sales team in-house. It's not just working through other agents or any of that kind of thing. It's not like there's independent out there. Okay.

MB: That's right. We're building some of that capability, but primarily it is our own agent sales force. That's right.

GS: Okay. Have you ever run a sales organization before, by the way?

MB: No, I hadn't before this. But again, in marketing you work so closely with sales all the time that it is a very natural extension and these teams work together so effectively.

GS: But to your point, I do think I get a sense, I've not spent a lot of time and MMA's not spent a lot of time trying to figure and assess this dynamic. It doesn't always exist, but there is sometimes a tension between the organizations. There's different balances of power, I've noticed, in different companies around this depending on who you are. Sort of another whole thing. I always like to sort of ask people... I tend to find that the best of people have gotten advice somewhere along the line that they really appreciate and remember. In fact, I've never met anybody who can't really call upon one, ten, five, whatever situations. What is some really good advice that still carries with you today that you really appreciate?

MB: For me, a big one that has probably continued to shape me in many ways, but I do remember a mentor that really emphasized the importance of getting comfortable with discomfort.

GS: Hence maybe going from CMO to CRO, but we'll come back to that in a moment.

MB: That's right. I mean it is really about being willing to step into some of that uncertainty, which can be intimidating. I mean, yeah, truthfully, I got that call and was like, wow, that's a big ask. But when you lean into that, and I'm going to be honest, it's personally and professionally, that is where you find growth and opportunity. You have to challenge your limits, you build resilience in that. And ultimately, I mean you open yourself up to new possibilities that would drive success that otherwise you would not have gone after if you had stayed in your comfort zone. And again, that's true for the business as well and what marketers can do to drive growth in business.

GS: I tend to be a believer in say yes first, then figure it out from there, then assess.

GS: By the way, do you have an example of — for yourself or you can maybe even watched others — in this sort of idea of being comfortable with discomfort? Just to be clear, that's what you said. Yeah, give me an example of that.

MB: Yeah, I mean I'll talk about eHealth Insurance, right? It absolutely thrills me when I saw that opportunity to set a transformation for this company. And so came in and did an assessment of what is it going to take? What does this... In fact, it was two different marketing organizations. We weren't structured the right way. We were missing a lot of capabilities. So how do you structure this organization for success? How do you build in the right team? And then like I said, we didn't have a brand identity. And so knowing that that was going to be a big charge. And so what do you do as a marketer? The very first thing that we all should do, we always should be doing, is consumer research. Go talk to people and understand their needs, what they're feeling, where are the pain points? And they told us very clearly — and again, also another part that we do, you go look at the competitors, you look at the industry, what are they all saying? Consumers told us that it was pushy, the advertising, it was intimidating, it wasn't helpful, quite frankly, almost scare tactics.

"Your time is running out, don't miss out." It's sort of everyone had this very formula: celebrity, B-list celebrity spokesperson kind of yelling at you, big flashy, "Don't miss out."

GS: Let me give you comfort with a person you know, but she or he are going to scare you.

MB: That's right, that's right. And like we talked about, this is a really important decision because I don't know if you know, but health care cost is the number one reason for bankruptcy in America. So getting the right coverage really does make a difference for people, and there is a real need to help people through that and not just sort of flashing gimmicky and intimidation tactics. But at the end of the day, what we found was it's all about transparency. So consumers, in this research, one talked about how he had to go do research across 35 different websites trying to go insurance to insurance to look at and compare these options. And he had no idea that that's what eHealth offers. We make it very easy for you to plug that in, we'll do that comparison for you. We just had literally never told our story. And then to find out, so we give them kind of this overview: what's our valve prop, here's kind of what we do. And you do the typical marketer, you expect them to circle what they like, cross out what they don't. And they were shocked. They literally said, "Wow, this is like the light at the end of the tunnel. I can't believe that this thing is real." But again, we had just never told the story. And so that's where our campaign was born. Our strategy was "Your remarkably transparent advisor." And so we used real people really using our experience and our tools, working with our real advisors, and it was literally unscripted. And so again, this idea of change and driving change, we do the exact opposite of what the rest of the industry is doing.

GS: Hey, let me ask you, Michelle, so two things: I'd be curious to know how you got to the insight, what happened, some of that process, but I think even equally interesting or more so is what did you do first? So you walk in, you obviously knew the financial state of the company, you knew that you were in a potential turnaround-ish kind of situation, which by the way, I've done a lot of turnaround. I happen to only really like turnarounds and startups because you're either all in, either win it or you don't. I love the risk of that.

MB: That's right. I love it.

GS: Okay, so you come in there, what'd you have to do? And you've got two different marketing organizations, as you said, no clear brand orientation. So kind of in the first six months, talk people through that steps, what you got to do first.

MB: Yes. So what I would say is, I mean I throw myself into the numbers and the data and understanding our business. Where is it currently at? What marketing are we doing? How is it performing?

What is our message? What are we telling people? And doing an assessment of our team and our capabilities. Like I said, it was pretty clear right away we need to unify, we need to have one marketing organization. It was almost like these two organizations had different charges. So that's not going to work. We're going to bring everyone together. We were also missing some very real capabilities. We didn't have anyone over consumer research, which is going to be a key piece of this. Marketing analytics was highly critical. And really kind of reorienting our teams, not to just channel-level marketing. There's a role for that, an expert in direct mail and paid search and et cetera, but real true consumer strategists that are going to focus on segment by segment and can think through the end-to-end experience. So again, a big piece of it was doing an assessment of our current organization, strengths, capabilities, and then setting that team up: how to organize the team, how to give them the processes. And then from the brand standpoint, like I said, you're doing an assessment of the industry, the competition, what are they saying? And immediately, I mean I'm talking within the first couple months, we started talking to consumers to understand what was working and wasn't.

GS: When was the unlock on that? What happened that you went, "Ah, I know what this is about." Or has it actually been kind of an evolving, like we're coming up to a greater and greater understanding? I'm just curious.

MB: The answer is that there's always both. But there was a very key pivotal moment, that first set of research that we did. And we did the traditional-style sit back in the back room, and we had a broad collection across our organization, our agency. But the themes were coming through so clearly in terms of, again, I can't overestimate the pain of people, the frustration, the skepticism that they have for this industry and that people are really looking out for them. It became so clear. And then like I said, as we started to just sort of put in front of them, "Have you ever heard of eHealth?" We knew that answer was going to be no. But when we described what we did, it was this massive unlock about the type of service that we offer. I will tell you the biggest thing, though, that we had to overcome is we also heard skepticism. I talked about they said, this is the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, the skepticism is, "What's in it for you? How can this possibly be free? How can it possibly be unbiased?" And so we wove that into our advertising. It's free because the carriers pay us. So it's free to you as the consumer.

GS: You acknowledge it, then backed it up.

MB: That's exactly right. You have to know how to get over those hurdles. And it's unbiased because our advisors are paid the same no matter which plan you pick. So they are literally always looking out for you. So it's truly... and that's why I say it's always an evolution because there's always continued parts of going back and checking in with the consumers of how can we do this better? What else do you need? But yeah, that was the big unlock.

GS: Yeah, I love that point. It was sort of the lesson I learned early on. I was asked to do a position for a company. It really crystallized to me, you can't just make the claim. You then have to give a reason to believe. That's become at least one of my own mantras in doing marketing is how do I really make sure that I can back that up in a way that they go, "Okay, I'll give 'em a chance to believe that. I'll at least lower my suspicions for a moment." It sounds like you guys did that very effectively and directly.

MB: And then the other piece of it was how do you... In marketing, we don't get a lot of time. People have very short attention spans.

GS: I've heard.

MB: And so very quickly, succinctly explaining what we do. So I've never heard of eHealth like, who the heck are you and why should I go to you? And again, I think that as the advertising started coming together and they brought this concept... Our big ad last year was side by side, so we brought real consumers into a room. Half of them could use any way they ever wanted to usually traditionally search for Medicare but eHealth, you cannot use eHealth. The other half of the room got to use eHealth. They could go online or they could call, we had advisors standing by ready to take calls, our real advisors. And again, this was all completely unscripted, so we just had cameras everywhere in the room. We did this experience multiple times that day, filming it. Every time, the results were the same. And then we brought people afterwards to sit on a couch and tell us about your experience. What was it? And so again, that's the ad. And so that demonstrates faster than you could in words when you can see it happen and you know that it's other people. Of course people still probably have the skepticism, "Are those real?" But we do have it big, bold, "These are real people, these are not actors." And so there is developing a sense of trust in the transparency of the process.

GS: You were doing your own kind of Pepsi challenge, I think.

MB: That's right.

GS: We used to call that or some variation of that, right.

It's time for our favorite question: What do CMOs get wrong? We'll find out what Michelle Barbeau thinks in a minute, but first, let's take a quick break.