Pharma Marketing

DMD’s Lab Report: The Art & Science of Healthcare Email explores insights, trends, and obstacles affecting healthcare email. From strategy to creative, deployment to reporting, we aim to address the most pressing issues healthcare marketers face.

Missing images, broken links, distorted text, misaligned bullet points—these are just a few of the design flaws users experience on the Outlook email platform. But, for healthcare marketers, the concerns surrounding deployments to Outlook users are far more problematic than visual dissonance.

Namely, emails not even reaching your intended targets.

In this edition of The Lab Report, we’ll quickly summarize why Outlook is such a thorn in healthcare marketers’ sides—at least until the newest version (Outlook 2021) becomes available.

What can the pharma industry learn from financial services--particularly in regard to customer experience (CX)? There’s no better person to ask than Rusty Rahmer, Head of Customer Experience Solutions at GSK. Rusty recently shared how his vast experience at an investment management firm has translated to his current work in the pharma universe.

Specifically, we discussed three financial services characteristics that are valuable in the pharma space, why first-party data will be critical in the forthcoming “cookieless world,” and GSK’s strategy for unifying the efforts of 20+ brands.

The full text of our conversation is below.

With all the recent discussion surrounding Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies and Apple’s recent iOS 14.5 release, it’s no wonder healthcare marketers are feeling uncertain—and even anxious. What do these movements really mean for healthcare marketing and HCP engagement?

To fully understand the impact of iOS 14.5, it’s important to consider both the motivation and mechanics behind Apple’s transition to greater transparency.

To Track or Not to Track… That Is the Question

Apple’s previous options regarding privacy—in respect to location services—allowed users to choose from one of three options. 

• Only While Using the App
• Always Allow
• Don't Allow

With iOS 14.5, the options are now:

• Allow Tracking, or
• Ask App Not to Track

Customer experience (CX) has always been an area of growth and innovation. But, the past year has seen an accelerated evolution of CX within healthcare--as patients, physicians, brands, and sales teams became more reliant, if not dependent, on digital connectivity.

I recently had a conversation with Brooke Fleming, Head of Omnichannel Marketing & Digital Enablement at UCB, to explore how she is helping to optimize digital omnichannel marketing strategies in order to put the customer front and center--now and in the future. We also discussed why "data drives everything" and what she envisions for omnichannel as the CX evolution continues.

The full text of our conversation is below.

DMD’s Lab Report: The Art & Science of Healthcare Email explores insights, trends, and obstacles affecting healthcare email. From strategy to creative, deployment to reporting, we aim to address the most pressing issues healthcare marketers face.

In the Lab Report, we aim to keep healthcare marketers apprised of significant changes surrounding email marketing. As Virginia becomes the third state to enact state-level data privacy legislation, this news is worthy of “front page” status for April’s edition.

On March 2, 2021, Virginia governor Ralph Northam signed into law the “Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act” (CDPA). It follows in the footsteps of California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), a second California law—the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA)—and Nevada’s SB220.

Virginia’s law introduces new wrinkles into the current U.S. data privacy landscape. Here are some key points for healthcare marketers to consider.

DMD’s Lab Report: The Art & Science of Healthcare Email explores insights, trends, and obstacles affecting healthcare email. From strategy to creative, deployment to reporting, we aim to address the most pressing issues healthcare marketers face.

In the first issue of DMD’s Lab Report, we addressed the mounting inbox deliverability challenges within the Gmail platform. February’s installment focuses on HCP engagement and takes an in-depth look at read rate—one of the most telling engagement KPIs in email marketing. Here are some key takeaways.

Read vs. Skimmed vs. Glanced

By definition, read rate measures the amount of time an email recipient spends in an email. Eight seconds or more looking at an email registers as “read.” An email is considered “skimmed” if the recipient spends two or more seconds in the email, but less than eight seconds. “Glanced” reflects any email that receives less than two seconds of one’s attention.

Last year around this time we presented on data privacy trends, regulations, and predictions for 2020. Some of those predictions didn’t materialize for various reasons; COVID-19 included. State and federal legislators had a lot on their plates, so less urgent policies were put on hold.

However, we did see a trickle-down effect from California’s proactive stance on data privacy. An increasing number of organizations—including those in healthcare—are stepping up to meet consumers’ data privacy demands. These companies are not waiting for legislative action. Rather, they’ve anticipated the inevitable and understand the benefits of establishing trust with their target audiences.

Our recent webinar, “Data Privacy 2021: The Journey Continues,” reflected this growing trend in data privacy legislation. Here are some key highlights of the presentation, which focused on state- and federal-level legislation, how data privacy impacts healthcare marketers, and what to expect in the coming months.

While 2020 proved to be a banner year for engagement, as outlined in our “2020 Email Year in Review Report,” it was not without challenges.

Building on the research conducted for 2020’s Year in Review Report, in 2021, we’re shining a light on email with a new monthly white paper dedicated to the channel. DMD’s Lab Report: The Art & Science of Healthcare Email explores insights, trends, and obstacles affecting healthcare email. From strategy to creative, deployment to reporting, we aim to address the most pressing issues healthcare marketers face.

To kick off this educational series, we’re taking a look at inbox deliverability, specifically the calculated interference Gmail runs between healthcare marketers and their intended HCPs.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, HCPs were increasingly relying on digital channels to stay up-to-date in the healthcare industry.

I recently chatted with Regina Paris, VP of Engagement Strategy at Evoke, to discuss how brands are shifting to (and embracing) the vast opportunities of digital outreach, why qualified data sources are so imperative for achieving optimal engagement, and what is unique about HCPs’ digital behavior in the rare disease space.

The full text of our conversation is below.

No amount of planning can prepare a business for a crisis such as COVID-19. At DMD, we started off 2020 expecting to help our clients connect meaningfully with healthcare professionals, as always. The pandemic worsened and everything changed.

Confronted with varying COVID-related challenges, we committed to learning—and evolving—to better support our clients and the larger healthcare community during this time. Despite the difficulties, DMD found ways to serve our clients and help them overcome unparalleled hardships.

The pandemic may not be over, but what we have learned will carry through 2021 and beyond. Here are our top reflections from 2020...