Given how much of your budget goes to lead generation, it’s understandable that you’d do just about anything outside of giving up a literal arm and leg to convert more of them. Once your campaign gets those leads to the website or on the phone, like most healthcare marketers, you’re just kinda hoping for the best. Sure, you can optimize landing pages, run nurture campaigns, and retarget until your face turns blue, but many of those leads will still stall, drop out, and even go to the competition for reasons seemingly out of your control.
It was often difficult for marketers to accelerate these stalled leads, but the new generation of AI SMS messaging agents is a high-performance arrow to add to your lead-conversion quiver. Here’s how it works.
AI Messaging Agents Should Be Used as a Conversion Channel
Healthcare providers texting patients isn’t anything new. For years, SMS has been used to confirm appointments and to send patients notifications and receipts. Most providers still rely on this one-way SMS messaging, but they can’t support how patients want to interact with them. And they’re not much help when it comes to converting all those leads you pay to drive.
The latest generation of conversational, agentic AI-powered SMS messaging solutions changes the game. Tools like Invoca’s new AI Messaging Agent enable highly personalized, two-way communication, transforming SMS messaging from a simple engagement channel into a powerful conversion channel.
Not only can our AI Messaging Agent converse with leads, but it can also take actions like setting appointments and scheduling callbacks. It’s also connected to data from the entire patient journey, enhancing your attribution capabilities while providing a simple, personalized, and seamless conversion channel for your patients.
Now, here are three ways you can use Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent to convert more leads, drive more revenue, and boost your ROAS.
1. Provide an Always-On Channel to Assist and Convert Leads
According to a LeanData study, nearly 80% of customers buy from the first company to respond, and after one hour, the odds of qualifying a lead drop by 80%. Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent enables you to engage patients immediately via SMS from web forms or your IVR.
And SMS isn’t a last resort channel, either. Some patients prefer the convenience of SMS over calling. Others want the immediate confirmation and information that an SMS can provide, rather than filling out a form and hoping someone gets back to them. It’s all about instant gratification these days, right?
When you can meet your leads where they are, in their preferred channel, you’ll inevitably convert more of them into patients.
2. Recover Leads from Unanswered Calls
Our latest Healthcare Consumer Experience Report shows that 76% of patients called a healthcare provider when making a care decision.
Unfortunately, it’s virtually impossible to answer 100% of these calls 24/7. In fact, our healthcare call conversion report shows that 41% of calls to healthcare providers go unanswered. That’s a significant revenue leak, and it’s most likely to be siphoned off to your competitors.
With Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent, you can instantly and automatically re-engage unanswered calls with SMS 24/7. Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent also uses context from the patient journey, such as ads and web pages viewed, as well as past conversations. This means that patients get personalized, accurate answers that advance them through the funnel, not generic canned responses.
The AI agent can set appointments, schedule callbacks, answer questions, and more, turning missed calls into more conversions. It also reduces BPO costs and agent workload by automating follow-ups for missed calls, further lowering your cost per conversion.
3. Progress Stalled Leads from Abandoned Forms and Shopping Carts
With two-way SMS AI Messaging, you can do more than just send a follow-up message when a lead doesn’t complete a form. You can immediately start a personalized conversation that saves stalled leads.
Say a local skier who just got diagnosed with a torn ACL calls a highly rated orthopedist they found through a Google search. They call the office, but no one answers, so they fill out a form on the office's website. They hit “submit,” put their phone down… and wait. And wait. Three minutes later, they’re back on Google, clicking on the next orthopedist in the business listings.
With Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent, they’ll get a message like “Hi Mary, I see that you’re interested in setting an appointment at our knee clinic. I can answer your questions or schedule an appointment for you if you prefer!”
From there, the agent can schedule a callback or set an appointment to keep that lead moving forward. And since every interaction is tied back to the campaign, ad, or other marketing touchpoint that drove it, you still get the attribution data you need to defend your marketing spend.
What Makes Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent Different
Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent isn’t a one-way messaging tool. It combines AI-driven conversations, journey context, and conversion attribution, turning SMS into a true performance channel. It meets patients in the moment, in their preferred channel, providing 24/7, instant, two-way conversations that move them toward setting an appointment. Here’s what makes it better than the rest.
Trained on your calls so it’s on-brand from day one
Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent is pre-trained on your calls, so the agent speaks like your best rep and is ready to convert from day one. Most other agents are “one-size-fits-all” solutions that require extensive training and testing, which can take months. With the AI Messaging Agent, you can get off the ground quickly and start improving the patient experience and driving more conversions right away without risking your brand.
Delivers seamless experiences with contextual data
The AI Messaging Agent combines digital journey data, call history, and approved brand sources to deliver personalized, accurate responses that advance and convert patients, not just answer questions.
It keeps learning to convert more leads
Your patient’s needs aren’t static, and neither is AI Messaging Agent. It learns and adapts like your live agents, drawing from every call transcript, engagement, attribution signal, and campaign outcome to stay accurate, on-brand, and conversion-focused.
Boosts marketing optimization with connected buyer journey data
Other AI SMS agents operate in a silo, creating new gaps in your marketing data when buyers jump from other channels to SMS, and that’s the last thing you need. Not Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent. It’s an integrated part of Invoca’s AI-powered ecosystem, making it the only AI messaging agent that ties every SMS, callback, and conversion back to the original marketing source, proving ROI across the buying journey and powering smarter marketing optimization.
Built with enterprise-grade AI
See the benefits without the risk with Invoca’s modular, adaptable, and continuously improving AI Messaging Agent. Built for enterprise scale and compliance, it offers advanced, AI-powered redaction that automatically scrubs sensitive data (e.g., PII, payment information, and health data) from transcripts and logs, ensuring every conversation is secure, compliant, and brand-safe. It also automatically captures and honors SMS opt-in and opt-out preferences during every exchange, keeping your business compliant without slowing the path to conversion.
Get Started With AI Messaging Agent Today
The AI Messaging Agent is currently in open beta and is available free for 90 days to all Invoca customers. Contact your customer success team to sign up for the beta or watch the webinar to learn more.
Not an Invoca customer yet? We’d love to meet you! Schedule a demo to learn more about how you can drive more revenue with Invoca’s AI Messaging Agent.
