Medical device manufacturers have perfected the traditional sales rep model: knowledgeable reps build long-term relationships with individual physicians who then become loyal users of their product. It’s a winning strategy, but it doesn’t always scale.
Most reps have many more physicians in their Rolodex™ than they can ever meet in person. When they do have one or two openings on the calendar, it’s hard to know which doctor to contact next. Extending the company’s user base becomes a slow process of reaching out to one physician and then another until each rep connects with his next promising customer.
When used strategically, two digital channels – email and your website – can streamline this process by engaging new prospects and providing detailed data about their current level of interest.
Email Broadens Your Reach
Email marketing provides an efficient way to reach physicians who may be interested in your medical device, but don’t yet have an established relationship with your company. A quality email database should contain detailed information about each of your target doctors, including medical specialty, practice location, case mix, hospital affiliation, and accepted insurance.
Using this information, you can segment your audience, develop content that is meaningful and relevant to different groups, and send emails at the time each group is most likely to be online. You can then analyze open and click-through rates to determine which messages were most effective. Over time, you’ll develop a clear understanding of what content your target doctors value most and what additional materials will help you move them through the sales funnel.
Website Data Refines Campaigns
Digital identification technology can help you learn even more about your audience by reporting the name, NPI number, medical specialty, and practice location of all “tagged” physicians who visit your website.
Suppose you send an introductory email about your knee replacement system to 1,000 orthopedic surgeons on a Monday. Your email includes a call-to-action that links to the related product page on your website, and physicians are clearly interested. By the end of the week, you’re seeing a significant increase in traffic to that page.
This is good news, but it would be even better if you could identify those physicians who visit your site, know how long each one stays, how often they return, and what other content they view. Because the physicians who received your email have opted-in to be “tagged,” audience identity
management technology can report this exact information in real time.
By analyzing the way individual physicians interact with your website, you can quickly narrow your list of 1,000 email recipients to a much smaller list of highly qualified prospects. The next time a rep wants to take a new physician to lunch, he can use this data to identify one who is already familiar with your products and perhaps even ready to buy.
And if your website includes content about your product advantages – such as cost, reimbursement, or unique features your competitors don’t offer – you’ll also know when individual physicians view that information. This provides a roadmap not only for who a rep should target next, but also for which product advantages or competitive product issues are most important to that specific physician.
Bring Your Questions to MedDev West
I’ll be in San Diego next week for the 2nd MedDev eMarketing Summit West, along with David Reim, our Chief Product Officer. David will be talking about audience identity management technology at 4:30 pm on Tuesday, May 16. I’ll be on hand after his presentation and later at our booth to answer your questions about using email and website data to expand your med device customer base. See you there!
