How A Multi-Location Healthcare Group Modernized With HubSpot
OVERVIEW Orthodontic Partners chooses HubSpot to centralize data and streamline practice communication.
Orthodontic Partners offers a host of support services for their network of Partner Practices. From digital and referral marketing strategy, vendor negotiation, and clinical efficiency to strategies for measuring and improving patient outcomes.
HubSpot and Instrumental Group proved to be a perfect fit to support their centralized marketing strategy, which would prove essential in helping Orthodontic Partners build a better orthodontic partnership model. Streamlining its communication infrastructure would ultimately support its mission of sharing insights that inspire our partners, teams, and patients.
CHALLENGE A critical decision would shape the future for the entire group of 28 orthodontic practices.
Do we go with Salesforce or HubSpot? That's pretty much the decision matrix when your requirements are as complex as Orthodontic Partners were. They were evaluating both vendors, including implementation partners, for a robust multi-location marketing and sales strategy.
As the evaluation advanced, the evaluation team for Orthodonitic Partners became confident that HubSpot was the superior solution. HubSpot's unified code base, superior UI, codeless configuration, and leaner administrative costs won out.
Throughout the evaluation, we discovered a number of challenges that would need to be solved over a phased implementation strategy:
- Current marketing solutions did not operate with critical patient data in OrthoFi
- Issues controlling brand and location data across all locations
- Critical data lived in Azure, necessitating the need to integrate with their data lake
- Need for unified data at the group, while also segmented over 28 different locations
- Limited ability to track customer journey and marketing attribution
- Inability to create automated communication workflows
- Marketing strategy gaps across different locations
- Critical need to include SMS messages from Podium into email workflows
MULTI-PHASE SOLUTION A multi-location HubSpot implementation with intent to grow and scale.
Phase 1: Onboarding, Business Units, Workflows, Integrations
Instrumental Group developed a phased activation methodology in 2022. The North Star for the implementation was to support the organization's desire to re-platform in HubSpot while facing the necessities to integrate with its existing software stack.
Onboarding
- Our HubSpot Success Managers (HSMs) are Master Training Certified by HubSpot. We introduced the Orthodontic Partners' marketing team to their dedicated HSM and completed the following onboarding plan.
- Kickoff and Goal Setting: The kickoff call covered introductions, the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder, the project's priorities, and areas of focus for subsequent training calls.
- Global License Configuration: Next, we configured all the global license settings on the new HubSpot licenses.
- Template Setup & Styling: Build-ready templates for landing pages and emails we styled and staged for quick activation.
- User Support: Our HSM also reviewed early progress, offered advice and direction, and ran initial orientation calls. A master training dashboard was built in HubSpot to house helpful resources and training recordings.
Business Unit Configuration
- HubSpot Business Units would be the key feature set for this implementation project. Business Units will allow the management of multiple brands from one HubSpot account. Assets, contact interactions, communications preferences, reporting, and location data were loaded and segmented by location.
- Our ability to leverage Business Units would allow for effective data governance and partitioning for each of the 14 locations included in the first phase.
- Dedicated domains, branding kits, content settings, and email settings.
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Shared assets with localization.Domain setup, data partitioning, team roles, and portal permissions setup.
Technology Integration
- The integration strategy was developed during our discovery and requirements sequence at the start of the project.
- The Orthodontic Partners IT team, lead by the Director of IT, was already centralizing their data in an Azure Data Lake.
- Our team configured HubSpot's CRM to represent all of the appropriate objects with the proper field data, ensuring intuitive surfacing.
- The IT team ensured patient data integrated from OrthoFi EHR into Azure, then mapped the data into HubSpot.
- Podium SMS was integrated directly with HubSpot, ensuring SMS messages could be added to patient journey communication along with emails.
Email Workflow Development
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We developed a series of email workflows for each of the 14 phase 1 locations.
- Included 3 different master workflow
- Included customization for Podium-triggered notification for SMS
- Included 42 total workflows replicated across all locations
As the first phase came to a completion our team shifted priorities from implementation to rollout support. Instrumental Group's flexible support and administration plan aided Orthodontic Partners' marketing team as they began to manage patient communication. With a short period of successful operations, it was time to roll out the next set of locations.
Phase 2: Business Units, Dynamic Templates, Scaling Workflows
The second phase of the project was targeted towards setting up the final 15 locations while building on the automated communication foundation we put in place during phase 1.
Remaining Location Business Unit Rollout
- Instrumental Group implemented the assets and functionality for the remaining 15 Business Units in phase.
- Dedicated domains, branding kits, content settings, and email settings.
- Shared assets with localization for easy and accurate reference and utilization.
- Domain setup, data partitioning, team roles, and portal permissions setup.
Dynamic Email Templates
This was our opportunity to advance the communication strategy and bring improved efficiency to the marketing team. We leveraged HubDB and custom objects to create a single master email template for all the team's different email formats. The database logic allowed each email to automatically populate the brand elements and location information at the time of origination.
Expanding Automated Workflows
With the new dynamic email templates in place, our attention turned to developing sophisticated marketing automation capabilities. The team created detailed contact segmentation strategies based on patient status and activity. Nurturing workflows were developed to guide the patient journey, with status-based enrollment criteria triggered off the following statuses:
- Missed Consultation
- Missed Consultation - Catchup
- Pending Patient Appointment
- Pending Patient Appointment - Catchup
Phase 3: Enablement, Optimization, Support
With the multi-phase, multi-location implementation plan complete, it was time to put our foot on the gas when it came to promotional assets and automated patient communication. Our flexible support plan was focused on creating a focused list of 18 new assets for each location.
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A total of 4 new campaigns were added to the communication library available to all 29 locations.
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New Patient Welcome Series
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Treatment Complete - Parent Journey
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Treatment Complete - Payment Completed
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Appointment Reminders
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Nurture goals for the campaigns were to solidify Orthodontic Partners as the go-to provider, staying top of mind with patients.
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Holiday Email Send
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Birthday Email Send
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General Educational Send
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RESULTS Unified data with deep segmentation unlocks it all.
At Instrumental Group, we believe great technology should enhance, not replace, the human element. We help healthcare simplify complex systems, deeply safeguard sensitive patient data, and automate without losing authenticity so you can reconnect to what matters most: creating meaningful patient relationships and real impact across all your locations.
True to those beliefs, Instrumental Group helped Orthodontic Partners leverage HubSpot to fundamentally transform its marketing capabilities. With rich patient data integrated and unified within HubSpot, the team was able to build and execute sophisticated multi-location marketing strategies. We think the results speak for themselves.
Improved System Performance
The centralized marketing automation platform has created a scalable foundation for future product campaigns while significantly improving data accuracy and reporting capabilities.
- Established a centralized contact database that was deeply partitioned and segmented with the help of Business Units.
- Created a scalable foundation for future product cross-sell campaigns.
- Improved data accuracy and reporting capabilities.
Operational Improvements & Efficiencies
Beyond the metrics, the implementation has transformed daily operations for Orthodontic Partners' lean marketing team. The streamlined patient communication process has reduced administrative overhead and improved the patient experience.
- Improved patient communication, consistency, and personalization.
- Improved marketing team efficiency, accuracy, and production.
- Better alignment between marketing and local practice operations.
Growth In Key Marketing Metrics
The impact of the implementation was immediately evident in the group's marketing performance. Over the last 365 days, the improvements in marketing metrics is undeniable.
- 617% increase in email sends
- 490% increase in email opens
- 443% increase in email click-throughs
- 200% increase in landing page views
- 772% increase in landing page submissions
- 6,600% increase in new contacts
LOOKING AHEAD Transformation empowers scale.
Now in our third year partnering with Orthodontic Partners, it's all about scale. 2025 has been focused on advanced campaign strategies. Our team works hand in hand with the marketing team, crafting and executing strategies. As of publication, the following campaigns are in process:
- Retainer Guarantee Campaign - A campaign for patients who have completed treatment in case they lose their retainers.
- Pending Patient Campaign- A campaign for patients who have been to a consultation but have not signed up for treatment.
- Missed Consultation Campaign - A campaign triggered when prospective patients miss a consultation.