Trust as a Competitive Advantage During AEP & OEP

  • September 23, 2025
  • Blog Post
  • Kathleen Ellmore
medicare member trust

As Medicare Advantage plans head into another Annual and Open Enrollment Period (AEP and OEP), the stakes have never been higher.

Healthcare consumers face rising costs, shrinking supplemental benefits, and a flood of marketing messages. Given these factors, member trust is eroding, with plan shopping and switching rates at a record high. Brand trust, once considered a “soft” concept, has become a hard competitive advantage for payers.

During our recent webinar, "Trust as a Competitive Advantage During AEP & OEP," we explored how health plans can turn trust into a measurable differentiator. Drawing on consumer research, behavioral science, and lessons from major brands, three strategies stand out for health plans that want to retain members, reduce switching, and grow Medicare Advantage membership in 2025 and beyond.

Define Your Brand Promise and Back It Up

“What word can you own in the mind of the consumer?”  

That question may sound simple, but it’s the foundation of brand differentiation. Without it, health plans risk a race to the bottom on price - a contest no plan wants to win.

Our research highlights the challenge: when members were asked to share the single word they associate with their health insurance company, 80% offered a negative term. That signals a trust gap, but also an enormous opportunity.

In healthcare, a brand is far more than a logo or tagline. It’s a promise members expect you to keep. For product companies, brand strength often comes from features or design. But for service organizations like health insurance, the brand promise is defined by the sum of every interaction: from the clarity of an ANOC letter to the speed of a call center response.

Other industries have long understood the power of owning one clear brand position. Volvo owns safety. Nike owns performance. Apple owns innovation. That singular positioning, which drives emotional connection and clarity, breeds loyalty. Health plan positioning, by contrast, remains wide open for brand differentiation. This lack of positive differentiation signals both a challenge and an opportunity: health plans that choose a position, and deliver on it consistently, can stand apart in a market where trust is in short supply.

To succeed, health plans must:

  • Define a clear position (and keep the promise): Are you the easy-to-understand plan? The customer support plan? The transparency plan? Capture a position and make it yours.
  • Get the table stakes right: Engagement infrastructure, data, and communications must be aligned to deliver on that promise.
  • Stay consistent: Every touchpoint should reinforce the positioning you’ve chosen, not undermine it.

By defining and delivering on a brand promise, plans move away from competing on price alone and instead compete on trust,  which can be won by health plans that put the consumer first.

Personalize Engagement to Meet Members Where They Are

Consumers today expect personalization. Amazon, Netflix, and even wireless carriers have set the standard. Healthcare can’t afford to lag behind.

The data shows that generic outreach doesn’t work. Despite being “bombarded” with plan communications, many members still fail to understand their benefits. The solution is smarter, not more, communication. That means tailoring outreach to individual member needs, preferences, and behaviors.

Proven personalization strategies include:

  • Customized ANOCs and summaries: One plan boosted re-enrollment by 10% by sending members a personalized year-in-review showing what benefits they used, what’s changing, and where they received value.
  • Onboarding that goes beyond enrollment: Redesigning the first 90 days of the member journey - especially for seniors, people with disabilities, or those with health literacy barriers - led to a 5% increase in retention and satisfaction scores, nearly doubling in some segments. The key isn’t just helping members understand what their benefits are but showing them how to navigate and use those benefits with confidence.
  • Proactive engagement during OEP: Members are most receptive right after choosing a plan - the “honeymoon phase.” Reinforcing their decision with reminders, education, and validation builds lasting trust.

In fact, personalization is no longer optional. It is the most effective way to transform member engagement, improve outcomes, and deliver ROI at scale.

Improve Transparency to Strengthen Loyalty

One of the fastest ways to erode trust is to surprise members with unexpected costs or coverage changes. Yet data from Deft Research’s latest AEP Gut Check shows that more than 30% of consumers only noticed benefit changes after January 1, when it was too late to act, fueling record switching during OEP. The lesson is clear: transparency isn’t optional. Even when the news isn’t positive, proactive, clear, and honest communication builds credibility and strengthens long-term loyalty.

Effective tactics include:

  • Right-sizing outreach: When benefits shrink, plans can proactively recommend next best actions, whether it's staying on the plan or moving to a different plan design. This approach mirrors tactics from other industries, like wireless carriers contacting customers who were overpaying for roaming.
  • Clear, confident communication: Replace vague statements like “you may be covered” with definitive information. Provide direct phone numbers instead of “call the number on the back of your card.” These details matter for improving member satisfaction and retention.
  • Behavioral science-based framing: Emphasize the value members are receiving. Even when coverage changes, reframing the message around member outcomes builds credibility.

The results speak for themselves. In our work with one Blues plan, optimized and transparent OEP campaigns drove nearly 30% year-over-year growth in Medicare Advantage membership and a 900% increase in QR code scans.

Conclusion

Every AEP and OEP, members face a choice: stay or switch. Too often, that decision comes down to cost and confusion. But it doesn’t have to.

By clearly defining a brand promise, delivering personalized engagement, and embracing transparency, even when the message is difficult, health plans can turn trust into their most powerful competitive advantage.

As consumer expectations continue to rise, the health plans that win will be those that move beyond price competition and position themselves as trusted partners in their members’ health. Now more than ever, trust isn’t just nice to have. It’s the ultimate driver of retention, loyalty, and growth. 

Kathleen Ellmore

Ms. Ellmore is one of the earliest pioneers in bringing the best of consumer marketing and data driven methodologies to healthcare. Instead of getting you to eat when you are not hungry and buy things you don’t need, we can finally use the same strategies to instead change the health equation in America. Kathleen previously led the Consumer Engagement consulting practice for Welltok (formerly Silverlink) for 12 years, leveraging its data repository of over a billion consumer health interactions, the best of behavioral economics, and the latest in clinical research, to create evidenced-based communications on what works to drive consumer healthcare behavior yielding better outcomes and lower costs. She is often quoted in the trade and national press and is a regular speaker on the national stage, having spent the first twenty years of her career in brand marketing at leading consumer marketing organizations, including General Mills and P&G. Additionally, she was a Vice President at Digitas, a leading direct marketing firm. Recently she was selected as Consultant Member of the first ever FDA’s Patient Engagement Advisory Committee.