The main finding of a recent study by Epsilon shouldn’t come as big surprise to marketers: Many patients prefer to learn about pharmaceutical products online. There you have it. Not a big surprise, right? Well, a few things from this study will surprise you.
This study focused on email marketing. It’s something that I’d say just about every pharma company does to some degree. Some do it as an “also ran” tactic, while others have truly integrated it into a larger marketing mix. A big question I’ve heard from many pharma marketers in deciding whether to invest more in email marketing is whether or not patients actually find the emails useful and if they have any positive impact whatsoever. It’s a fair question. The natural assumption might be that people don’t like pharma companies, so they don’t like emails from pharma companies. This ignores two facts. First, in every case, these people have opted into receiving emails (real pharma companies don’t spam). They want them. Second, I’ve found that people don’t like YOUR pharma company, but they like the one that makes the drug that helps them (i.e., THEIR pharma company)…an important nuance.
What the Epsilon study showed was that email marketing improves, well, everything. Here’s the data:
Not surprisingly, talking with your doctor came in first. Also not surprising: websites came in second. I think we can all accept that now people go online to find about about pretty much anything and pharma products are no different. I personally am a bit surprised that talking with a pharmacist came in so high since I haven’t ever done this, but then again, I’m not part of the study.
My favorite two data points, of course, are for “email from a brand/pharma company” and “offline advertising/marketing.” I’m glad to see email marketing so high (more on that later) and that offline is so low. Allow me to translate for those that still haven’t gotten it yet…patients would rather learn about your drug from an email versus your TV commercial. How does that impact your brand budget? More on how you can use this fact in a bit.
Since we’re focused on email marketing today, let’s continue through the Epsilon study.
Two VERY important pieces of VERY actionable information come from this question. First, if you’re not doing it already, include a coupon in your emails. It’s simple to do and it’s the number one reason why people subscribe to your email program. If they get a few emails from you (especially in the beginning) without a coupon, do you think they’re going to continue opening your email? Number two. The next most popular reason why people subscribe to your emails is to learn about new products. Unfortunately, the study doesn’t give details on what “new” means. It could mean new to the market or new to the patient (i.e., a drug they haven’t heard about yet). Learning about existing products is third, so this might be semantics. I think we can safely say that the number two reason for subscribing is to learn about new and existing products.
How can you use that information? Simple. When you opted in people to your email program, you asked them if they wanted to hear about other products from your company. You did ask them, right? If not, change your opt in TODAY (a lot of stuff in CAPS today…can’t help it). If you do have this opt in, find all the people who checked that box and put together a compelling message to them about other products your company offers or are developing. Key word there is “compelling.” Compelling to them, not you. That means you might want to do a little extra legwork. A few thoughts…if you have an email program for your asthma product and also have an allergy product, you’ve got a story. 50% of asthma can be attributed to allergies, so someone who’s asthmatic might be interested in finding out ways to control his or her allergies as well. Don’t just randomly send them something about your hypertension drug. Think about what might be relevant and compelling first.
Next useful tidbit:
Read that one again just to be sure you got it. Good. Summary: People want you to personalize their content. They don’t construe this as spying on them (as one brand manager once told me). They don’t feel like it’s an Orwellian invasion of privacy. On the contrary, they EXPECT you to do this. Good news is that you might already do this to some extent. Perhaps you asked a few questions about their condition when the person signed up for your emails, but did you actually do anything with this information? Did you create an algorithm and rule set that describes how certain combinations of answers correspond to different content? If not, you basically made your sign up process harder and added no additional value. Consumers are too smart for this and will ask themselves why they gave you all that information only to get nothing (like personalized content) in return. So, some advice, if you’re not using the information from these questions, get rid of them. Make your sign up simpler. However, I’d rather you create true customized content instead.
Perhaps you segment people and deliver slightly personalized content based on a few questions, but you can take this much further and I haven’t seen many pharma companies even dabble in this area (correct me if I’m wrong). Notice that part of the question was whether using website activity to create customized information was okay as well. The answer appears to be yes. Are you tracking website behavior of your visitors? It’s simple to do if you require people to log into your site. Now, before you simply add a log on to your site, a warning…there had better be a really good reason for requiring a log on. For example, it could be an individualized meal plan (or other content) or calendar tools, but whatever it is, people have to see it as useful or they will never log in to get it. Maybe it’s a special offering or coupon. Just make sure it’s purposeful. So, assuming you got people to log on, you can match their activity to their profiles, which should drive the content of the emails they receive. Sound like voodoo? Feel free to contact me and our company will do it for you.
How would you use this information? Simple. If someone navigates to your page on financial assistance, for example, and spends five minutes reading the content before leaving, you probably can assume that finances and how to pay for your drug are concerns. The next email you send to this person should focus on financial issues. That’s good. But you can make it great. Consider instead an email that goes out immediately and tells the patient that you know she is concerned about paying for the drug. You include a series of coupons she can use and a phone number (and a link for live chat, natch!) that connects her to someone who can talk about the different financial assistance programs you have available. Do that well and you might have saved someone who may have given up on your product simply because of price. That’s what great looks like.
One more point before I stop this ridiculously long post…
What?!? One of pharma’s biggest issues is an overall negative perception of the industry, right? Turns out you can improve this with email marketing. Read the question again: “I have a more favorable opinion of the pharmaceutical companies that send me email because of the communications I receive.” Looking for a simple way to improve your company’s public perception? Here’s a place to start. One caveat, the “because of the communications I receive” is an important part of this, so make sure you’re sending quality content that’s meaningful to patients.
Do it right and you might find that email marketing can improve…welll…everything.
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