Reinventing customer engagement strategy

Until recently, pharma companies facilitated customer experiences and engagement through a set of defined point solutions such as marketing automation and customer relationship management (CRM). They approached each topic independently and often in a siloed manner. 

Today that approach is no longer adequate if companies want to deliver the experience expected by an increasingly diverse set of customers. Expectations of greater personalisation, rapidly evolving channel preferences requiring seamless omnichannel coordination, and disruption driven by new platforms and IT applications make the traditional siloed approach less suitable. On top of all that, increasingly stringent legal requirements and the rapid growth of AI solutions mean that traditional approaches are even less relevant.

Reflecting the trends to hyper-personalisation and seamless omnichannel experiences seen in the retail industry, pharma is finding it harder than ever to meet HCP and patient engagement expectations. The latest research shows that 60% of pharma HCPs expect their digital healthcare experience to mirror their digital experience in retail¹, and 76% of patients expect pharma companies to provide digital tools to complement their products². And yet, 35% of senior marketing executives in the EU complain about the lack of an adequate CRM tool in their organisation³, let alone a coherent customer engagement and marketing technology (MarTech) stack. Another 50% have a CRM tool but consider it to be of limited use and not adequate to achieve their business objectives⁴. 

As a result of these trends, pharma companies are moving away from their traditional strategies and are looking to redefine their entire MarTech ecosystem. They are forced to find new ways to define customer engagement and rethink their strategy accordingly. Current shifts in the CRM vendor market make now the perfect time to reformulate MarTech strategies.

In this context, it’s crucial to take a step back and redefine our understanding of customer engagement. Pharma companies must be able to engage with physicians, payers, patients and other customer groups in an easy, personalised and flexible manner along all the touchpoints of their respective journey. Past customer interactions and activities must inform the actions taken to create an increasingly close-knit relationship with each customer. CRM/MarTech systems need to enable internal collaboration within cross-functional teams to achieve this seamless experience for customers.

This new definition of customer engagement is illustrated by the diagram below. While the steps might feel familiar, it’s the way they are orchestrated along the journey by the different functions that is new and complex. 

Business and technology strategy

Armed with this new definition, we can create an overarching strategy with a corresponding MarTech landscape that supports all functional areas of the organisation coherently (including commercial sales, commercial marketing, medical, customer service, patient services and policy & access) and serves as a structured “central engine room” to deliver against customer expectations. This is the interconnected ecosystem of solutions built to deliver the right content to the right customer at the right time through the right channel.

The new definition of customer engagement impacts the number and complexity of the different customer journeys that need to be considered when building the MarTech system. Here we want to showcase two ways in which pharma organisations can benefit from setting business-led MarTech use cases.  

As an unknown visitor to a pharma website, users want to see content relevant to their location and current medical trends, even without logging in. This ensures the site visitor can quickly access insights and resources that align with their interests while maintaining their privacy. In our HCP journey, Patrick, who remains an unidentified HCP in steps 1 and 2, experiences a site tailored to his location and current medical trends.

Pharma MarTech teams enable segmented site experiences for unknown web visitors by leveraging tools such as next best action (NBA) for dynamic content recommendations and localising site experiences to align with regional compliance and on-label guidelines. The global MarTech team acts primarily as an enabler, empowering country-level site teams to manage unknown user personalisation with agility attracting new customers to register.

This enhances site visitor experiences and engagement by attracting and retaining unknown visitors through personalised and regionally relevant content. The personalised content then encourages unknown visitors to register and is more likely to turn a prospect into a lead. It also helps MarTech teams to refine audience segmentation strategies and improve future personalisation efforts. 

The success of this use case can be tracked and measured through an unknown visitor engagement rate that tracks time spent, page views and repeat visits from unknown users and an anonymous-to-registered conversion rate that monitors the percentage of unknown visitors converting to registered users.

As an HCP, Patrick wants to receive tailored content recommendations based on his behaviour and preferences so that he can access the most relevant resources when he needs them. For example, after reading a case study on diabetes management, he might receive a follow-up recommendation for a webinar on innovative treatment options, or when he logs into a web portal, he sees curated articles, educational videos or clinical updates based on his preferences.

On the other side, marketers, medical affairs and sales reps want to leverage AI-driven insights to deliver personalised content to HCPs through their preferred channels, to ensure higher engagement and relevance for each HCP. 

In our HCP journey, Patrick receives relevant content through the channel mix he has opted for. But his content preferences were already identified in step 3 when Jane, our sales rep, noted down his areas of interest through the CLM material she shared. 

The benefits of delivering targeted content are many. Among our clients we see that delivering hyper-personalised content recommendations increases HCP engagement and builds trust and satisfaction through precise, timely information. It improves campaign ROI by focusing on high-interest areas and delivers tangible benefits that can be measured through several key metrics including content relevance scores, engagement and conversion rates, to name but a few. 

Pharma companies are uniquely positioned to capitalise on shifts in the CRM vendor market to redefine their MarTech strategies. As hyper-personalisation becomes the standard for engaging HCPs, those that adopt a business-driven, value-based approach will drive true transformational change.