Speakers:
- Janet Jaiswal: Global VP of Marketing, Blueshift
- Kyle Sandsmark: Senior Director, Digital Marketing, AMN Healthcare
- Alex McKeown: Manager of Omnichannel Solutions, AMN Healthcare
Welcome and Introductions
Janet Jaiswal: Welcome, everyone. I'm Janet Jaiswal, Global VP at Blueshift, and I want to welcome two special guests from AMN Healthcare, Kyle and Alex. Can you two briefly introduce your roles and what AMN Healthcare does?
Kyle Sandsmark: Yeah, so my name is Kyle Sandsmark. I am the Senior Director of Digital Marketing here at AMN Healthcare. AMN Healthcare is essentially a full-service healthcare staffing organization. We support clients (healthcare facilities) find staff, and then we also help individual clinicians, physicians, and allied healthcare professionals find jobs. So, we are essentially what we call a full-service industry, really empowering the future of care across both the client and candidate experience.
Janet Jaiswal: Nice. Alex?
Alex McKeown: My name is Alex McKeown. I'm Manager of Omnichannel Solutions at AMN, and I lead the Omni team in the implementation of all omnichannel solutions, including Blueshift, to advance our capabilities in terms of communicating with, marketing to, and digitally communicating with candidates for nursing, allied professionals, and physicians across the board.
Overcoming Significant Challenges in Healthcare Staffing
Janet Jaiswal: Thanks for the introduction. Talk to us a little bit about your most significant challenges. You both alluded to matching clinicians with healthcare facilities. Describe how Blueshift helps address some of those challenges.
Kyle Sandsmark: Really, our biggest challenge is that we have at any time thousands and thousands of jobs out there. It really comes down to trying to identify and match the right clinician to the right role. We get down to the level of specificity of trying to figure out which facilities are best for brand new healthcare professionals versus someone who's been in the industry for several years. We try to figure out preferences, ultimately, where someone wants to go, what shift they want to work. We tap into our knowledge of being an organization for 40-plus years to really help a seamless marriage, ultimately, matching that right person to that right job. But with all that, it is tough trying to pinpoint the right person for the right role.
Janet Jaiswal: Makes sense. Alex, do you want to add anything to that?
Alex McKeown: I think in general, when we think of targeting the right people for the right opportunity, we're looking for somebody who's nearby and has a short commute, and we actually have the exact opposite. So, just solving for the geography challenge of where somebody wants to go work a temporary assignment for 13 weeks, and then adding on top of that, are they qualified? Do they meet the right level of experience to match that facility and their opportunity to ensure the level of healthcare that that facility wants to provide for the patients? Ultimately, at our heart is that goal of maintaining the highest level of patient care across all these health systems.
Janet Jaiswal: Yep. Makes sense. Talk to us about how Blueshift helps address these challenges.
Kyle Sandsmark: We've been able to see success with Blueshift given the fact that we have so much kind of first-party data. To be able to comb through things really in a quick and organized facet, how do we be as fast as possible in matching those clinicians to those specific roles, because our industry is very competitive, and these roles and opportunities go very quickly.
The Clinician's Journey: Balancing Self-Service and Recruiter Assistance
Janet Jaiswal: Can you describe a little more the clinician's journey, and then how do you balance self-service tools with recruiter-assisted experiences in supporting the clinicians?
Kyle Sandsmark: Yeah, it's a great question. I think we always try to thread that needle between leveraging and utilizing technology to make us more efficient and streamlined, but then also knowing at the end of the day that this is a very hands-on, white-glove experience.
Typically, clinicians come through, showing interest in a job, perhaps liking or favoriting it, or even getting to an application. We have a good mix of recruiter and technology. For someone who's brand new, we don't always know right away if this is their first time traveling, their second time, or what their past experience was like. So, having that really personalized human, white-glove touch is critical at the very beginning, especially for someone new to our database. But once we figure out who that person is, that's when our technology arm can really take over and supplement what's being done on the recruitment side.
Leveraging First-Party Data for Tailored Communication
Janet Jaiswal: Describe for us the steps you've taken to use the first-party data for tailored communication across those channels. I think you guys use SMS, push notification, and email. So how has the utilization of these channels changed since adopting the Blueshift platform?
Alex McKeown: Prior to Blueshift, we had those channels (mobile app notifications, SMS, email marketing campaigns). We had a team that could understand that each of those platforms were related and impacted the candidate's experience. However, we didn't have coordination around it.
Adopting Blueshift enabled us to pull all of that experience into the journey builder in Blueshift and allow us to say: "If they receive this message via mobile app push notification, then hold on that email and then wait for their response before sending another communication." This ensured the clinician wasn't receiving the same message across three channels at the same time every time, creating a much better experience. And in addition to that, we can now build off the preferences of the clinician and communicate with them in their preferred platform in the moment. That's really been the largest difference from a starting point – as opposed to those communications going out in silos, now they are coordinated through Blueshift, which improved our relationship with the clinician.
Janet Jaiswal: Alex, you had shared some metrics earlier around pre-Blueshift, and then over time, how that shift has happened. Can you share some of that information?
Alex McKeown: Upon adopting Blueshift and completing the implementation, we had a concerted effort to move to a mobile-first perspective. Previously, we were probably 90% email-first. We've changed from that; email is now not the majority of sends. Passport mobile activity has grown to be number two. We want to continue to push that because we have a very powerful mobile app that can do a lot of things for a clinician: manage their assignment, find new opportunities, manage their hours, receive pay stubs.
Janet Jaiswal: Is it fair to say that at the beginning of the journey, you were heavily reliant on email, but now you have a much more diversified way of communicating across email, mobile push, and SMS?
Alex McKeown: Diversified as well as preference-based. We know either by clinicians defining their preferences for receiving communications on one channel versus another. And then with Blueshift, we also know where they haven't set those preferences, but Blueshift can help us with their engagement rates across channels and help us guess at which communication they would prefer to receive, where they would be most likely to respond. So, we've just been able to continue to increase engagement rates while increasing the volume of sends across multiple channels.
Measuring Impact: Click-to-Open Rates (CTOR)
Janet Jaiswal: Tell us, how have click-to-open rates changed over time? What do you attribute that to?
Alex McKeown: Yeah, click-to-open rate is something we started to measure while we implemented Blueshift. Prior to that, we were very much open-rate and click-rate based. But to help flatten out the absence of opens from SMS, we moved to measuring click-to-open rate.
What we've seen is over time, as we've implemented and expanded our in-app journeys within Blueshift, we've been able to increase the volume of sends while actually increasing engagement. So, even though we're sending more communications to active candidates, they're engaging more.
We've seen that grow from the establishment of our baseline, which at the end of 2023, put us at about 19% CTOR. We set a goal for 2024 to get to 20%, which we thought was a good measurable goal. What we actually found is that through the increased use of first-party data and the expansion of personalized job recommendations, we were able to increase that CTOR significantly. By the end of 2024, we actually closed with just over a 30% CTOR.
Janet Jaiswal: Yeah, that is amazing! From setting a goal to finish at 20% and then closing with a 50% increase was very nice.
Alex McKeown: And then as we've continued to really drill into using first-party data to personalize job recommendations and personalized communications, we just continue to see the CTOR increment up over the first couple months of this year. Still early data in 2025, but we've actually seen continued increase from where we finished 2024. Because of that, we're continuing to invest in where we can get more first-party data and how we can improve the specificity of the recommendations that we make to clinicians.
Integrating Decades of Data
Janet Jaiswal: Given that AMN Healthcare has so much data, 40 years worth, can you talk about the various sources of data that you're integrating to build these types of personalized clinician journeys?
Kyle Sandsmark: Yeah. So 40 years of data is a blessing and a curse. The initial lift was difficult. We were able to really hone in on where the most important data was, the most recent data.
AMN has a native applicant tracking system (ATS). For every clinician that applied to a job and worked with a recruiter, we have records of any job they applied to, and if they went on assignment, data relevant to that. More recently, with the launch of better analytics suites from our website and the launch of our mobile app, AMN Passport, we were able to identify where we could get more recent user analytics data and then that historical data from our CRM and applicant tracking systems. We identified what the recent data was, because a record from somebody who started their career 20 years ago with two years of experience, the job they're applying to now is not the same job they applied to 20 years ago. So, finding the most relevant data for each of those candidates and making sure that we brought that into Blueshift enabled us to really just target the right audience with the right message.
Omnichannel Strategies for Clinician Engagement
Janet Jaiswal: That makes sense. Thank you for that. All right, so now let's switch gears to talk about omnichannel strategies. Talk to me a little bit about which strategies have been effective in building that omnichannel journey for those clinicians.
Alex McKeown: Yeah, I mean, I think the initial strategy, which we're reaping the benefits of now, was first-party data and mobile-first. How do we get the most relevant data for each candidate and how do we push the usage of what is the highest volume of activity – people on their mobile devices? Especially for those clinicians who have the AMN Passport Mobile App, that affords us our best opportunity to offer the most personalized experience.
This includes getting them to the right page, to the right opportunity, and helping them with their assignments:
- If they're missing a credential and need to get that satisfied.
- If they need a reference to go on assignment.
So, at any part in the funnel, not just matching them to jobs, but also making sure that they've checked all the boxes ahead of starting an assignment. And then when they're finishing an assignment, how do we get them to go on to another assignment, which will hopefully make them equally happy when they're done. So, just being able to stay in contact and make the most of that AMN Passport experience that we can control and continue to improve based on clinician feedback, make it personalized for them and make it to their benefit. That's been the largest strategy we've followed the first couple of years. Now that we're in a more mature state, we're starting to evaluate what other channels we can evaluate, whether it's WhatsApp or chat functionality.
Impactful Blueshift Features
Janet Jaiswal: So that leads to my next question, which is what Blueshift platforms or features have had the most significant impact on improving clinician engagement?
Alex McKeown: Yeah. And I mean, to start, it was definitely just making use of communicating with notifications into the Passport mobile app. And then I'd say since then, we've made use of certainly ad syndications to be able to serve complimentary messaging to audiences on third-party platforms with ads that complement the messaging within the communications, email, SMS, and push within a journey. That's made a big impact. And then I think the other one that we're continuing to pursue and develop our ability to create impact is just taking advantage of the custom cloud apps, being able to build more custom integrations of sending data inside of AMN from Blueshift to our other systems.
Managing the Clinician Lifecycle with Blueshift
Janet Jaiswal: Kyle, I have a question for you. Talk to us a little bit about how you use the Blueshift platform to manage the lifecycle of the clinician. Everything from the beginning where you're onboarding, to extending assignments, to transitioning between roles.
Kyle Sandsmark: We definitely leverage it a lot in different ways throughout their journey and experience. Healthcare professionals, like nurses or physicians, are on the go. They're not always sitting in front of their computer waiting for that next email. So, to be able to leverage just a quick text that says, "Hey, we've matched you up to 10 jobs, let us know if you're interested," or have them click a button, has been pretty helpful.
When they progress more onto an assignment, we do different touchpoints based on where they're at. For a 13-week assignment, a lot can happen. We leverage our technology, applying a full omnichannel approach, to just check in, see how they're doing, how their first day orientation went. We can use surveys to find out what's most important to them. We pour all that data and first-party data in so that when they are getting ready to end their assignment, extend, rebook, or go somewhere else, we already know what they're interested in. Before, this stuff wasn't created. Now we have this great robust data set that we can mobilize at any point. We can say, "Oh, we know that you're interested in this, this, and this," or "Your survey results were X, Y, and Z." We can then leverage that and send job recommendations via their mobile app or a text, like, "Hey, would you be interested in this brand new job?" or if they're interested in extending. Having that quickly on the ready has been pretty powerful for us.
Janet Jaiswal: Yeah, I like that they're able to use the AMN Passport to do a lot of that communication, and all of the data and all of the magic that happens behind the scene. It's seamless, right? For them, it's a great experience you've provided without having to worry about all of that.
Future Goals and Evolving Partnership with Blueshift
Janet Jaiswal: What can you share about goals for further enhancing the candidate experience? Maybe by lifestyle preference, geography, and so forth. And maybe tie that into how you see your partnership with Blueshift evolving to support those objectives.
Kyle Sandsmark: It's a fun and interesting kind of thing about the future and where we want to go, because I think for us, it's how do we be everywhere to everybody as best as possible, knowing that in a perfect world, they're seeing our text or push notification and they're responding. We've seen tremendous growth since onboarding Blueshift, just even having that level of detail. But then to take it kind of beyond that when they're interacting with our websites or interacting with other things outside of platform, to be able to leverage, we've talked about utilizing AI in certain aspects or pulling in different data sets or different content. I think that's been a big opportunity for us. So, the one point is just to expand our footprint beyond traditional media and leveraging Blueshift to do that.
The second part is just speed and being able to run different tests. I know there are some great things on the horizon within Blueshift that I'm really excited about around being able to utilize AI and have that help with our campaign development. When we're thinking about A/B testing and analyzing data, having that tethering with Blueshift's capabilities in the future to cut down the time it's maybe taking by 30-40% to send out a variety of multivariate tests and then analyze that data quickly and act upon it even faster. That's where I think the partnership with Blueshift gives us that buffer, those guardrails to do that.
Janet Jaiswal: Yeah, you're alluding to the agentic AI capabilities. As a marketer, I spent a decent amount of time doing A/B testing. It is so time-consuming that after the first batch, I'm kind of like, "You know what, we're good." And that's not ideal. So the fact that you can continue to do that by using agentic AI, I think, will help you guys to improve those already impressive numbers even more.
Confidence in Digital Clinician Engagement
Janet Jaiswal: How does Blueshift help you feel more confident in all of the strategies that you've described when you're engaging with the clinicians digitally? How does it help you feel more confident?
Alex McKeown: When we seeded Blueshift with our clinician data, we were able to identify and go through the process of identifying what is the most relevant data and then being able to look at that inside of Blueshift without being distracted by hundreds of other data tables that might exist within multiple databases. So, being able to start with a good prioritized focus and then build out from there.
As we've been able to launch and establish our baseline communications and then grow upon there and identify the new unique aspects of first-party data that improved our job recommendations and vastly improved the engagement rates with our ability to present job opportunities to our clinicians. I think the next step that we're really excited for is how do we improve our recruiter's knowledge of that activity? That's where Blueshift has really helped us:
- Identify the best data to have available to communicate with our clinicians.
- Allow us to distribute it in a very coordinated fashion across multiple channels.
- Now, how do we start to feed that information back to our recruiters?
This provides that level of first-party data transparency back to our recruiters so they can maximize the relationship with each clinician and ultimately put each clinician into the best opportunity for them. I think that will pay dividends in terms of ultimately creating that human relationship between AMN and the clinician.
Key Outcome: Confidence Through Predictive Insights
Janet Jaiswal: Kyle, I'll ask you one last question, which is if you could highlight one key outcome that the Blueshift platform has enabled for AMN Healthcare, just pick one. What would that be?
Kyle Sandsmark: Yeah. I think I would tie it back with some of the predictive insights that we've gathered from Blueshift, because if I had to summarize the relationship, it's been about confidence at the end of the day. When we talk about speed and trying to match clinicians with the right job, there's nothing worse than not having that match work. As a consumer yourself, if you're getting recommended for something that doesn't tie to you whatsoever, it's not a great user experience. Having that confidence that we know, when we think about predictive insights, that Blueshift is taking a lot of our data and giving us those recommendations that allow us to be quicker, but also still have confidence that the data and the intelligence will be accurate, is super helpful. Having that confidence around those capabilities has been a big one for me.
Closing Remarks
Janet Jaiswal: Wonderful. Well, that about wraps things up. So Kyle Sandsmark, Alex McKeown, thank you so much for sharing your experience at AMN Healthcare.
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