Marilyn P. Clark
Marketing Specialist
UT Southwestern
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
Marketing Coordinator
May 2022-Present
As the inaugural Marketing Coordinator for the UT Southwestern Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, I bring a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective to the role. My expertise spans social media management, web content oversight, and email marketing. In this position, I’ve expanded my skills by producing compelling marketing materials, creating targeted ads, and orchestrating event marketing promotion for high-profile events such as lectures and symposiums. I’m dedicated to leveraging my background and newfound knowledge to drive strategic marketing initiatives and elevate the department's presence and impact.
Social Media Management
The department has both a Twitter and Instagram that I run as part of the social media aspect of the job. Before being added to Sprout, I did most of the scheduling on my own manually or within the app. The target audiences are different with both. Twitter is more department announcements and is broader, where as Instagram is more resident centered with a few posts steering toward department news. As of February 2023, the department got approval for a Facebook page. We have been posting regularly on there ever since. As of July 2024, the department was granted approval of a LinkedIn page.
Orthopaedic Journal 2021-2022
The Orthopaedic Journal is the department's year in review publication that showcases the highlights and achievements of the department. This first one that I produced, wrote, and collaborated with the editorial team and design team on took longer than expected. New chapters that were added were the grants and fellowships, events page was expanded, and a new section summary was added for Oncology.
Email Marketing: Email Newsletters - Department (Monthly), Outreach (Quarterly)
Using Constant Contact, I create Department Monthly Email Newsletters. This project started within the second month of my job, and first letter was sent out in July. I have used a standard email newsletter template from Constant Contact and built the letter from there. Over time, I have changed where I placed content and have added sections of news such as department news, faculty news, education news, and most recently research news. This newsletter is distributed to people within the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and people within UTSW who are interested in monthly news (namely marketing colleagues at the institution). We expanded the newsletter later in the fall with the idea of an outreach newsletter that ultimately had a target audience of people outside of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery that are in other UT Southwestern Department, and Orthopaedic Alumni. The official name of the letter is the UTSW Orthopaedic Times, and is distributed quarterly.
Email Newsletters - Department (Monthly)
September 2022 Email Newsletter
November/December 2022 Email Newsletter
February 2023 Email Newsletter
September 2023 Email Newsletter
November/December 2023 Email Newsletter
February 2024 Email Newsletter
June/July 2024 Email Newsletter
Email Newsletters - Orthopaedic Times (quarterly)
Email Marketing: Grand Rounds/Department Announcement Emails
By continuing to use Constant Contact, I have done some additional email marketing and created templates for Grand Rounds lectures and Department Announcements. These types of emails help garner attention to specific audiences connected to the department.
Work - Email Invites/Announcements
Event Marketing: Webpage Content Building
In Event Marketing, I first used in the role my experiences to help build and strategies the official content for the Hansjorg Wyss Symposium page for the department's website. Since UT Southwestern has an offical web team, I didn't have to build this page all on my own. I provided the content, collaborated with the web team and created the magic of the Events page.
Event Marketing: Advertisement
As I have done event marketing for the UT Southwestern Hansjörg Wyss Symposium, I worked on facilitating advertisements and media plans with my marketing counterpart. The request first came from the Department Chair about placing advertisements in Scientific/Medical Journals, which was at the end of the summer aka early days of the event planning. From there, I contacted various publications such as SAGE Publishing, Wolters Kluwer, and more. In talking about budget, timeline etc, we consulted with the symposium committee to get their thoughts, and then started up work and collaboration with a third party media group that works with the CMPA team at UT Southwestern. They were able to get better deals in negotiating with these vendors. We presented budget and timeline proposals to the heads of the committee. They selected the appropriate one to go with for the event.
From there, we had a timeline of working with the design team to create ads with the proper specs, and at the same time wrote ad copy that was reviewed by the editorial team. By the end of January, we were able to get ads approved by the heads of the committee to then start the process of delivering ad collateral to the media group. The media group (Asher Media) worked with me and my marketing counterpart to get the right material delivered. The timeline of this media plan has spanned from February to May, and has circulated ads throughout March, and April.
Print Ad: AAOS Now, March 2023 Issue
Event Marketing: Social Media Content (UT Southwestern Hansjörg Wyss Symposium)
Social media marketing started immediately for the symposium. This is an area that I have strength in, so it was easy to start out on social media initiatives. Mid-summer of 2022, I posted "Save the Dates" for the event on Twitter and Instagram. Then, I created more cohesive content as we were approved for CME credit, and finalized a lot more things for the event. By the time registration opened in March 2023, I started to post more about "registration" and "join us" type of content. I have also been more detailed by this point with content by featuring keynote speakers and session topics.
Event Marketing: Invitations
I worked with my department chair and others in the committee on speaker invitations for both internal and external speakers. I used my department chair's letter head to start crafting the content. I created different versions addressing out of state guest speakers, and UT Southwestern guest speakers. For content review, I submitted it to the editorial team who helped fine tune the writing. Then, I collaborated with the head administrative assistant to send these letters out for our department chair.
Marketing Collateral: Revision Trauma Clinic
My marketing counterpart and I worked with two leading Orthopaedic Trauma doctors to create a referral card for a new clinic, Revision Trauma. The card was created in partnership with the Physician Outreach team. This referral card would be passed around the referring physicians for patients who need secondary treatment or surgery after having surgery on a traumatic injury. This process involved approval of content (written by me) from the two physicians, and from the head of the physician outreach office. Then, I submitted it to editorial for review, and then it was off to creative. This material took a while to produce, because of designer questions, content that needed to be re-written, or approval from the physicians. The end result was a flat postcard that was two sided with information about the clinic, and the proper contact for the clinic.
Revision Trauma Clinic Referral Card
Event Marketing/Planning: UTSW Hansjorg Wyss Symposium 2023
In addition to social media content, advertisement, and other marketing materials, I was involved heavily in the planning process as a part of the symposium committee. This work comprised of pre-event, event, and post-event planning. For the pre-event, I was heavily involved in the registration platform creating and facilitating. I had to utilize my skills in user testing to make sure that the site was working. That site went live March 2023, which was three months before the event. We partnered with a group called BroadcastMed to put that into effect.
The communication of the event was through social media, reaching out to groups for outreach communication, there was internal communication to staff, faculty, and residents/med students. In part of doing the outreach communication, I was able to work on promoting the event by pitching announcements or ads on our event. Texas Health Resources, Own the Bone, International Geriatric Fracture Society were a few groups that were eager to promote it.
The actual event was a day and a half of sessions and talks from orthopaedic and geriatric experts. I coordinated with the AV team to make sure everybody had their slides in on time. I assisted on registration check in both days. I also covered the talks on social media and did event coverage. I also coordinated having a photographer there to take pictures, so I don't have to do another role. Signage, materials, and more came in on time.
What I could have done to strengthen this event was provide paper copies of the schedule to folks who relied on that type of material. There was a lot of work with the CME office that could be improved on. Overall, I felt like I grew in event planning in the project. Below are some highlights from the event.
Social Media Campaign: Sarcoma Awareness Month (2023, 2024)
Over the course of my time at UT Southwestern Orthopaedic Surgery, I have expanded the kind of content that is published. Namely, I create a lot of educational content to target the patient audiences who are seeking certain care.
We have a growing Orthopaedic Oncology section within the department. One type of care that they specialize in is Sarcoma, which is a bone cancer. Sarcoma Awareness Month happens each July, which has been a good opportunity to talk about the care our Orthopaedic Oncologist provide for this type of bone cancer. The following are posts that I have created that have been a part of this educational campaign.
Marketing Material: Journey Guides (Patient marketing)
The number one marketing material that the department has established for patients that have been successful is patient journey guides. These guides are meant to assist patients in their surgical experience with their orthopaedic surgeon. The foot and ankle section, fragility fracture section, total joints section, and shoulder sections have their guides. Check out the following ones I have had for projects:
Hip & Knee Journey Guide (Updates for the Total Joints section)
Early in 2023, I assisted the Total Joints ambulatory representative in updating the journey guides for Hip & Knee Surgery to reflect the current state of having this surgery with the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. The English version was complete at the start of this summer, while the Spanish translation is in progress. First, we went through editorial to edit, and then we worked with the project manager for the design team at UTSW. Overall, it took several months to get this process complete because of changes and the communication involved.
Hip & Knee Journey Guide (Updates) PDF Copy:
Shoulder Journey Guide for UTSW Frisco Clinic
In the beginning of 2023, I started working on the first ever Journey Guide for a satellite clinic in Frisco, TX. The shoulder team out in that clinic was wanting to start a guide specific to their patients and demographic. We first took the existing Shoulder Journey Guide that was originally created and wrote what was needed as far as content. Then, we submitted it to editorial for copy editing and then to design for the creative piece.
Throughout the project, I was able to grow in my communication and project managing in order to get this project completed. I also had to work in a team and coordinate with the Lead APP for the project completion. It was finally printed and digitally completed by January 2024. It took a very long time to complete because of clinical section and surgery changes as well as financial aspects. Digitally, the journey guide lives on the UTSW clinical site (utswmed.org).
Shoulder Journey Guide for UTSW Frisco Clinic (Copy)
Marketing Material: Journey Guide Patient Cards (Patient Marketing)
As a way to make the Journey Guides more accessible and affordable (for printing), we created Journey Guide Patient Cards, which are a small easy postcard handout that patients can get during appointments prior to their surgery. On the card, there is a small statement about the journey guides, and a QR code individuals can scan for easy digital access. I assisted in creating patient cards for all the journey guides, thanks to the help of the design team and editorial team.
Journey Guide Patient Cards (Foot and Ankle, Hip and Knee, Fragility Fracture, and Shoulder)
Marketing Content: Orthopaedic Surgery Conferences
Whenever faculty go to Orthopaedic Surgery Conferences, I have posted ahead of time on social media. Here are some compilations of content that I have created to promote faculty at conferences.
Marketing Reporting: OS Monthly Marketing Deck
Each month, I present to marketing leads and my boss (department administrator) on how we did throughout the month for marketing. I usually talk about social media analytics, email marketing analytics, news releases we had, the MedBlog analytics, and much more. It is helpful for my boss, who is a numbers driven type of guy and isn't well versed in marketing lingo. This type of monthly task has helped me grow as a marketing professional to persuade and back my claims as to why marketing has benefited the department for the month. Here is an example of a marketing updates deck that I would present to the group:
Orthopaedic Marketing Updates: January 2024
Event Marketing: UTSW Hansjorg Wyss Symposium 2024
I got involved again in the UTSW Hansjorg Wyss Symposium 2024 and assisted on marketing efforts with the education committee. I didn't do extensive marketing like the 2023 symposium, but I updated the website (click here), set up a registration form via Microsoft Forms, helped put together swag for the guests and much more. I also helped with communications by working with the internal communications team at UT Southwestern and the Physical Outreach team to create email blasts. For the actual event, I covered the symposium activity on social media, which drove engagement on the department's platforms. I also coordinated a photographer for the first day. Check out some of the content for the 2024 symposium below:
Physician Outreach: UT Southwestern Orthopaedic Surgery Frisco Clinic Referral Flyer
As part of my role at UT Southwestern Orthopaedic Surgery, I collaborated with the Physician Outreach team to enhance the Frisco Clinic Referral Flyer. In early 2024, I was approached to facilitate important updates and improvements to this key marketing material. I collaborated with the editorial team and the graphic design team to make this flyer happen. My contributions included:
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QR Code Integration: Added QR codes to provide easy access to additional information and streamline the referral process.
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Content Revision: Revised existing passages to ensure clarity, accuracy, and alignment with current clinic services.
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New Physician Additions: Incorporated profiles and contact information for new doctors, keeping the flyer up-to-date with the latest team members.