As of May 2017, 100 percent of U.S. pharma marketers use email marketing. Think about that for a minute.
It’s a huge vote of confidence for the effectiveness of email. In fact, research shows that 73 percent of in-house marketers believe email marketing provided a strong ROI in 2017.
It also confirms that physicians get a lot of email. That means you may have to work a little harder to grab your audience’s attention.
An authenticated physician email list ensures that your messages will reach the right doctors. The next challenge is to make those messages stand out in a crowded inbox. High-quality creative is the solution—and experience has shown which methods work best.
Inboxes Are Getting More Crowded
There’s no sign that email usage is slowing down in pharma, or elsewhere. Actually, over the next four years the number of emails sent and received daily is expected to increase by 4.4 percent -- to about 319.6 billion emails worldwide.
And, as we know, doctors are consumers too. They’re as easily distracted by email offers for their favorite products as you or I.
The good news is that we’re well beyond the trial-and-error phase of pharma email marketing. The sheer volume of physician emails has shown what works and what doesn’t. When you follow proven best practices, you can count on increasing engagement rates and improving email marketing ROI.
73% of marketers believe email marketing provided a strong ROI in 2017.
It’s Still Possible to Stand Out
The most successful physician email campaigns share some common traits:
- They’re laser-focused on the current interests of their intended audience.
- They’re easy to read on a variety of devices.
- They prompt immediate action.
Targeting, proper rendering, and a compelling call-to-action all work together to make your email messages irresistible to your most promising prescribers. To check all three boxes, though, you need a comprehensive understanding of your physician audiences and their email habits.
Data Makes The Difference
The most effective email campaigns are built on accurate physician data that broadens your reach and deepens your knowledge of your target audiences. An experienced email services provider can give you access to most HCPs with email addresses (think more than one million), plus provide sophisticated segmentation criteria so you can narrow your list to the most relevant physicians.
Immediately after your first campaign, your provider should help you begin analyzing how individual HCPs responded to your email message. For starters, you’ll want to determine which subject lines prompted the most opens, which CTAs garnered the most click-throughs, and what devices your targets use most often.
By establishing detailed benchmarks and routinely testing copy and design elements, you can continue to improve open and click-through rates over successive campaigns.
Expert Advice Streamlines The Process
Like any well-designed object, a successful email campaign doesn’t draw attention to how it works. If all of the creative elements are in sync, your campaign should appear seamless and convincing to your audience. But seasoned marketers know that looks can be deceiving.
The inner workings of an email campaign, including accurate physician email addresses, audience segmentation and targeting, and correct rendering, are essential. A skilled email services provider can optimize your campaigns by ensuring that all those critical elements work together perfectly.
