The Ultimate 2025 guide to HIPAA-compliant marketing automation

Marketing automation in healthcare is a bit of a balancing act–it's essential for patient engagement but strict privacy regulations can make it challenging. Unlike other industries, healthcare marketers must make sure that every step meets HIPAA compliance. This might feel daunting, but the alternative—avoiding automation altogether—means losing efficiency and missing valuable opportunities to connect with patients. The good news? With the right tools, you can streamline marketing, enhance engagement, and stay fully HIPAA-compliant.

In this article, we’ll explore some of the best HIPAA-compliant marketing automation tools, highlighting their features, benefits, and potential drawbacks. We’ll also show how you can incorporate HIPAA-compliant form builders like Formsort in your workflow to optimize your marketing cycle.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a qualified attorney for specific guidance on HIPAA compliance and related matters.

What is HIPAA-compliant marketing automation?

Marketing automation involves using software to handle tasks like sending emails, segmenting patients, or tracking interactions, all designed to save time and enhance personalized patient engagement. In healthcare, however, the use of such tools comes with a critical caveat—HIPAA compliance. You can’t just send out marketing emails, track website visitors, or use the latest automation tool without first implementing strict privacy safeguards. If patient data is involved, it must be handled with care.

HIPAA-compliant marketing automation means using marketing tools and strategies that securely handle protected health information (PHI) while maintaining compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This includes encrypting data, obtaining proper consent, and only using PHI for permitted purposes.

While HIPAA compliance is a legal necessity, these safeguards also play an important role in building trust with patients and ensuring ethical, effective outreach. With the right tools, you can automate their marketing efforts while safeguarding patient privacy and enhancing engagement.

What are the challenges with HIPAA compliant marketing automation?

How do you actually do marketing in healthcare without running into HIPAA roadblocks? You can’t just track every click, retarget visitors, or blast out emails without considering patient privacy laws. Every message, every tool, and every data point has to be handled with care.

Here are some of the biggest challenges in healthcare marketing:

• Protecting patient data – Marketing platforms must handle PHI with airtight security. Even a small misstep—like using the wrong tool to store patient data—can lead to compliance issues.
• Limited personalization – You can’t track users the way e-commerce or tech brands do, making it harder to personalize outreach without crossing privacy lines.
• Secure email & SMS – Any message containing PHI must be encrypted and sent via HIPAA-compliant platforms—no casual email blasts here.
• Strict consent & opt-Ins – Patients must clearly agree to receive marketing messages, and you need a way to document that consent.
• Third-party tool compliance – Any CRM, email service, or automation platform handling PHI must also be HIPAA-compliant and sign a BAA.
• Advertising restrictions – Traditional tactics like retargeting ads or tracking website visitors won’t fly when dealing with PHI, limiting digital marketing options.

The good news? While these challenges make healthcare marketing more complex, with the right approach and the right tools, you can build meaningful connections with patients while keeping data secure and staying fully compliant.

How to stay HIPAA-compliant in marketing

Staying compliant with HIPAA while automating your marketing might seem overwhelming, but it really comes down to a few best practices. Here’s what you need to keep in mind:

• Use a HIPAA-compliant form builder to collect data– Any tool that handles patient data—whether it’s a CRM, email marketing platform, or form builder—must be HIPAA-compliant and sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
• Encrypt emails, SMS, and patient data – Any message containing PHI must be securely encrypted to prevent unauthorized access.
• Get explicit patient consent – Before sending marketing messages, patients must opt in and clearly agree to receive communications. Keeping records of this consent is essential.
• Be careful with integrations – Any third-party tools you connect (for automation, analytics, etc.) must also meet HIPAA requirements—one non-compliant integration can put data at risk.
• Avoid behavioral tracking & retargeting – Standard marketing practices like retargeting ads or tracking user behavior can expose PHI, so they should be avoided or adapted for compliance. Read more about ads in our article How to use ads in digital healthcare.

A HIPAA-compliant marketing automation workflow

Marketing automation in healthcare is about creating a seamless, personalized experience for patients while keeping their data secure. With HIPAA regulations in place, every tool in your workflow needs to handle patient data carefully. Here’s how you can use HIPAA-compliant tools to attract, engage, and retain patients.

Attract – Capture interest & securely collect data

The first step in HIPAA-compliant marketing automation is to engage potential patients with smooth, secure interactions. Whether it's a webinar signup, an eligibility check, or a service inquiry, the process should be simple and safe.

Simple Tool Descriptions for Marketing Automation

• Formsort - A HIPAA-compliant form builder that securely collects patient information. Use it to create clear, engaging forms—like a sign-up form or an “Am I a Candidate?” form—that both inform users about your services and help you qualify leads.
• Freshpaint - An analytics tool that tracks what users do on your website or app while automatically removing any sensitive health data. This gives you safe insights into user behavior for better marketing.
• Segment (by Twilio)- A data tool that gathers patient information from various sources and sends it to your marketing systems. This keeps your data organized and helps you create personalized, secure campaigns.
• Intercom - A marketing automation and support tool that brings patient data together in one place. Use Intercom to set up automated messages, send targeted emails, and chat live with users, all in a HIPAA-compliant way.

Capture & segment – Organize patient data for personalized outreach

Once you’ve collected patient data, it’s time to store and segment it in a way that makes personalized marketing possible—while staying compliant.

• PhaseZero → A HIPAA-compliant CRM that keeps track of patient interactions, history, and communication.
• Customer.io → Helps group patients based on their behaviors (like appointment history or website activity) ensuring you send the right message to each patient at the perfect time.

Engage & nurture – Build patient relationships through secure messaging

Now it’s about staying in touch—reminding patients about appointments, sending helpful content, and keeping them engaged.

• ActiveCampaign → A secure platform for email newsletters, appointment reminders, and follow-ups. You can use it to share valuable updates and educational content that keep patients engaged over time.
• Customer.io & Braze → Automate messaging across email, SMS, and push notifications while keeping PHI secure.

Convert & communicate – Secure messaging for follow-ups & confirmations

Once patients are ready to take action—whether it’s scheduling an appointment or confirming details—it’s important to make communication smooth and secure.

• Twilio → Sends HIPAA-compliant text messages, emails, and even phone calls for appointment confirmations and reminders.
• Braze → Supports secure multi-channel messaging so patients never miss an important update.
• PhaseZero → Helps manage all patient conversations securely in one place.

Retain & re-engage – Keep patients engaged long-term

After an appointment, staying in touch keeps patients coming back—through reminders, educational content, and personalized follow-ups.

• Customer.io & Braze → Automate post-appointment follow-ups, wellness check-ins, and re-engagement campaigns.
• ActiveCampaign → Sends long-term patient communication, like ongoing treatment reminders or newsletters.

Analyze & optimize – Track performance & improve strategy

To keep improving, you need to track what’s working and what’s not—without exposing sensitive data.

• Freshpaint → Tracks patient interactions privately, ensuring PHI doesn’t end up in non-compliant tools.
• PhaseZero & HubSpot → Provide insights on patient engagement, marketing performance, and campaign effectiveness.

How to use Formsort in your marketing automation workflow

Collecting patient data at every stage of the patient journey, from the first touchpoint to ongoing patient engagement, helps you provide better patient care and personalized communication. You can securely use this data to refine messaging, segment audiences, and automate follow-ups–ultimately enhancing the patient experience. Whether you’re capturing leads, qualifying potential patients, or gathering health assessments, your forms should be seamless, engaging, and fully secure.

To achieve this, your forms must be seamless, engaging, and fully secure. That’s where Formsort comes in. As a HIPAA-compliant form builder, it ensures patient data is collected safely while giving you the flexibility to design forms that feel natural and intuitive. With advanced conditional logic, customizable designs, and built-in consent collection, Formsort helps you increase form completion rates and capture high-quality data that fuels your marketing efforts.

For marketing automation, Formsort allows you to:

• Qualify leads with interactive forms like “Am I a Candidate?” quizzes, dynamically adjusting questions based on responses.
• Segment audiences by capturing detailed patient preferences and automatically routing them to the right workflows.
• Streamline onboarding with secure, personalized intake forms that integrate with your CRM or email platform.
• Enhance email personalization by collecting relevant details that inform targeted, compliant outreach.
• Track marketing attribution by capturing UTM parameters (e.g., utm_source, utm_campaign) from URLs to enrich form data and understand which marketing channels drive engagement.
• Run marketing surveys like NPS scores and patient satisfaction surveys to gather valuable insights and improve outreach efforts.

By integrating seamlessly with HIPAA-compliant marketing tools, Formsort enables you to securely collect, organize, and act on patient data—helping you build stronger, more personalized marketing campaigns without compromising privacy or compliance.

Secure marketing automation powered by Formsort forms

Navigating healthcare marketing automation while ensuring HIPAA compliance doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right tools, like HIPAA-compliant form builders and automation platforms, you can streamline your workflow, protect patient privacy, and build stronger connections.

Formsort offers secure, customizable forms for intake, medical assessments, and consent collection—ensuring compliance with HIPAA at every step. Ready to simplify your marketing automation and safeguard patient data?

Sign up with Formsort today and create HIPAA-compliant forms that enhance your marketing cycle and protect patient privacy.