GoodRx Turns to Data to Rebuild Customer Base

Pharmaceutical price-shopping platform GoodRx is looking to leverage its user data in a bid to drive engagement.

On a call with analysts Tuesday (Nov. 8) discussing the company’s third quarter 2022 financial results, GoodRx Co-CEO and Co-Founder Doug Hirsch said the company has been investing in ways to drive engagement with targeted communication, a strategy he said will continue for the next couple quarters.

“[We] anticipate seeing meaningful benefits as a result of deeper relationships with our consumers,” Hirsch said. “Allowing consumers to provide us with more information through registration increases the LTV [lifetime value] of each user to prescription transactions and other areas of the business over time as we leverage data to create new tools and products in quarters and years to come.”

The company news release reported monthly active consumers fell 9% year over year and prescriptions transactions revenue fell 16%, both declines attributed to the “grocery issue” (see below).

The GoodRx app is a leader in its category. According to PYMNTS latest Provider Ranking report of prescription apps, GoodRx came in at No. 1 by a considerable margin, scoring 98 while its next competitor, SingleCare, lags way behind with 85 points. This means that, across all the factors measured — channel coverage, up-to-date downloads, monthly average users, sessions per user and average session length — the price-shopping platform is head and shoulders above its rivals.

Certainly, many consumers are engaging with health services digitally. Research from PYMNTS’ July study, “The ConnectedEconomy™: The Trend Toward Digital Healthcare,” created in collaboration with CareCredit, finds that 43% of patients have engaged in digital healthcare, as of May.

Get the report: The ConnectedEconomy™: The Trend Toward Digital Healthcare

Plus, findings from PYMNTS’ October study “Super Apps for the Super Connected,” created in collaboration with PayPal, which drew from a survey of more than 9,900 consumers across the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany, found that more than half of all millennials and bridge millennials engage with prescription ordering and payment digitally.

Get the study: Super Apps for the Super Connected

However, the company is still feeling the effects of the dispute with by an unnamed grocery chain representing a meaningful chunk of the grocery prescription business, initially discussed on the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call, wherein the grocer was not accepting certain discounts the app offered.

This latest earnings release notes that this episode has had a “sustained impact” on prescription transactions revenue, estimated to amount to $40 million. This marks the third consecutive quarter in which this conflict has taken a toll on the company’s financial results.