Client Story

UF Health Cancer Center was a new, unknown partner to Orlando Health group in a highly competitive market. 

Despite this anonymity, Director of Marketing Chantal Stephens was under pressure to build awareness, establish credibility, and drive patient demand. Fast. 

Drawing from her Ritz-Carlton background, she wanted patients to experience the same personalization, sensitivity, and high-touch service as luxury travel guests. (Think soft and supportive, not clinical or pushy.) 

So, with Smart Panda Labs’ help, she built a personalized, digital-first marketing strategy focused on education and empathy. 

As a result, UF Health booked out its surgical program, attracted patients from 29 states, and drove over $1.3 million in attributed revenue. Here’s how Chantal did it.  

UF Health Cancer Center – Orlando Health (UFHCCOH) is a leading cancer treatment provider serving Central Florida. With over 250 researchers and clinicians, the center investigates prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment. 

Known for its advanced reconstructive and restorative surgeries—especially for breast cancer survivors—it offers one of the few vascularized lymph node transfer (VLNT) programs in the nation. 

Chantal had to educate her audience about a complex, under-the-radar surgical option (VLNT) and fill a high-value pipeline before competitors caught up. 

That meant transforming UFHCCOH’s strategy and culture, within an industry deeply rooted in traditional systems and slow to adopt new tech. 

But moving beyond broad messaging and billboards to personalized, trackable patient journeys is both complex and highly technical. 

To pull it off successfully, Chantal needed a partner she could trust backing her up. 

Chantal wanted to build a targeted, data-driven marketing engine from the ground up. 

Instead of scattered efforts, she harnessed our technical expertise to launch a cohesive omnichannel strategy with human-centered messaging. 

Her vision focused on: 

To create a system that informed and converted, Chantal needed the right infrastructure, meaningful content, and an aligned organization. 

Here’s how she brought a service-first mindset to healthcare marketing: 

Chantal began instructing us to lay the digital groundwork for an intelligent, more responsive marketing program.  

Together, we implemented eVariant (a leading healthcare CRM by Salesforce) to support precise segmentation and automation. 

This infrastructure allowed UF Health Cancer Center to move beyond spreadsheets and manage complex patient journeys. 

Integrating Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud also allowed Chantal to automate communication flows (offering support, not just reminders) and track engagement at scale. 

Because healthcare is highly regulated, she asked us to design everything with compliance in mind. 

From data capture to content delivery, every campaign honored HIPAA guidelines and patient privacy standards without compromising UX. 

With this solid base, Chantal launched a full-funnel strategy to educate, empathize, and convert. 

While patients were a portion of UF Health’s database, Chantal pinpointed that an even larger segment was friends, family, and caregivers. 

So, she tasked us with developing campaign assets like: 

Informing and reassuring searchers with educational content gently guided them toward scheduling an appointment. 

Running paid search campaigns (bidding on around 477 keywords with multiple ad variations) drove traffic, leads, and appointment requests to custom-built landing pages. 

By empowering us to work on the post-click experience (PCX), Chantal launched tailored email nurture sequences with content for each: 

That way, every single message felt relevant and timely. 

She also asked us to test subject lines, CTAs, layouts, and content types to continuously improve PCX performance. Then, adjust comms accordingly. 

A successful digital strategy must reflect the offline experience. And Chantal knew this consistency was especially critical at UF Health’s call center, where first impressions could make or break trust. 

With our support, she coordinated training to ensure agents interacted with the same compassion and attentiveness that defined the campaign’s tone. 

But alignment had to be cultural, too. Changing how a large healthcare organization thinks about marketing is no small feat. 

Chantal challenged the long-standing focus on generic brand awareness, which had relied heavily on billboards and broad messaging. 

In its place, she introduced a targeted, data-backed approach centered on each contact’s needs. 

This internal shift was one of the campaign’s biggest wins, laying the groundwork for sustained success across service lines and future initiatives.  

Together, Chantal and Smart Panda Labs built trust with patients and stakeholders, drove action, and proved clear ROI. The campaign exceeded expectations across every major metric, driving over $1.3 million in patient revenue.  

Awareness of UF Health Cancer Center surged. 

Paid search ads generated over 816,000 impressions and 26,000+ clicks, with an average cost-per-click of just $1.31—a sign of strong targeting and message relevance. 

Educational content played a key role across the PCX, with more than 2,253 condition guides downloaded by patients and caregivers actively seeking answers. 

What began as awareness soon turned into action. The campaign: 

In fact, patients from 29 states booked out the surgery program for months. 

Email also became a powerhouse channel, consistently outperforming healthcare benchmarks: 

Chantal’s bold approach reshaped how UFHCCOH engaged with patients and solidified her reputation as a transformational leader. 

That success led to an executive role at a larger health system, where she again partnered with Smart Panda Labs. 

Today, she still calls us whenever she needs to bring a new marketing vision to life.