Physician Engagement

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.

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...

2020 represented an unprecedented year for many reasons. 

COVID-19 loomed large in everyone’s life and proved to be greatly influential for healthcare marketing. DMD’s analysis of the more than 32 million emails deployed from October 31, 2019 to October 31, 2020 revealed informative trends. These emails were sent to U.S.-based physicians, nurse practitioners, physicians’ assistants, nurses, and pharmacists on behalf of pharmaceutical companies and brands.

Our 2020 Email Year in Review report summarizes year-to-year trends, delves into engagement metrics influenced by COVID-19, and provides a look to what may be ahead for healthcare marketers in 2021.

In our latest webinar, “1+1=3: Triggered Email is the Perfect Complement to Your Email Marketing,” our goal was to highlight the value of integrating broadcast and triggered email campaigns.

We use the “1+1=3” equation to illustrate why combining broadcast and triggered is not simply an average of each individual campaign’s performance. Each is effective on its own, but when using triggered + broadcast, impact increases exponentially.

Here are a few key insights we extracted from the webinar. If you’d like to view the entire session, you can access it here.

When you’re in the business of data, it’s important to follow trends year over year. In the past, we’ve identified a number of consistencies surrounding email engagement, specific to the holiday season. Healthcare marketers can expect some of those consistencies to remain the same this year, but they also have to consider the unique nature of 2020.

Our analysis of 2020 behavior to-date revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have a dramatic effect on the engagement rates of emails sent by pharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostic companies. Metrics such as open rates have experienced a downturn from the initial spike early in the pandemic, but they remain elevated over previous years. DMD’s AIM® XR data, which monitors physician activity across 2,100-plus medical websites, also shows that COVID-19 continues to be a highly relevant and engaging topic among healthcare providers.

At DMD, problem-solving is at our core. Our suite of data products solves the marketing challenges our healthcare clients routinely encounter.

Like any progressive technology company, we run into our software engineering challenges which require creative solutions. Using resources like open source libraries allows us to leverage the collective knowledge and experience of both engineers and programmers who serve the broader community. It’s a valuable go-to; but unfortunately, those libraries occasionally have issues of their own.

As we look towards the second half of 2019 and beyond, it’s important to look back at some of the changes—both positive and negative—that have already been made in email marketing just this year. Even if you’ve been adhering to traditional “best practices,” this new information requires a thorough review of your digital marketing tactics.

Capturing the attention of your physician audience is no easy feat, especially with digital communication increasing every day. It’s difficult to cut through this noise to deliver your message. The best way to reach your audience is to understand their needs – and tailor your outreach to those needs. Today, more than ever, physician-level data is critical to effectively reach and engage your targets.

In our next webinar on July 17, Edith Hodkinson, Chief of Digital Strategy, will unravel some notions about the “digital physician” to demonstrate why it’s so important for marketers to separate fact from fiction when strategizing ways to communicate with and engage healthcare professionals. In preparation for the webinar, I sat down with Edith to explore some of the topics she’ll be discussing.

In healthcare marketing, you’re always looking ahead. Learning from past strategies, whether successful or not, is crucial for ensuring the effectiveness of future programs. This is exactly what a panel of 19 marketing experts had in mind when they contributed to an infographic predicting what they believe to be the top concerns for brands in 2019.

Not surprisingly, the concept of customer experience (CX) rose to the top. Healthcare marketers are increasingly tuned in to the fact that the “end user,” be that a physician within your health system or a potential patient in your community, wants to be treated like a human—not an inbox. To up the ante, your target audience members also don’t want to be seen as a stranger; they need to believe you value their time and interests and will provide personalized content that fulfills that desire.

The key in achieving this level of human-to-human personalization—and resulting trust—lies in the quality and depth of your data.

What can you accomplish in just six seconds or less? Thanks to a few popular internet videos, you can apparently learn how to tie a Windsor knot, rearrange your roommate’s den, and strip a screw in this very brief timeframe.

As savvy healthcare marketers know firsthand, six seconds is also the length of time you have to engage healthcare professionals. You need to make every second count in order to be fully effective in your efforts.