Multichannel marketing. A guide for analysis and follow-up. Part 1

When a concept such as "multichannel marketing" becomes an increasingly clear part of a company's everyday work and affects many different departments, the employees need a higher level of digital awareness. In a two-part series, consultant and digital strategist Fredrik Holmboe goes through the two most common strategies within multichannel marketing, email and websites, and how they can be used and followed up to increase the company's digital competitiveness in the market.

For decades it has been self-evident that any company wanting to move a business forward should offer its products or services in the forums where the customers move and pick up information. Over the past decade all of us, as customers, have been given access to more and more personally adapted services from companies outside the pharmaceutical industry, such as Netflix, Amazon and Google.

That development leads to generally higher demands for even better and more personally adapted services. Demands that are placed on us in the pharmaceutical industry as well.

The first step we need to take as an industry is to widen our supply of information across more channels and to build a multichannel perspective into the everyday work of the organisation. Here, general digital training with a clear answer to the question "why are we doing this?" is the key to success.

The most important step after that is to follow up and analyse the initiatives.

In this article we focus on the email channel, on the different types of mailing the channel is made up of, on the KPIs worth following, and on the key factors behind a successful email strategy.

Email

There are three types of email: e-newsletters, campaign-related mailings and event-triggered mailings. In most cases these are sent from a centralised platform that holds both the email addresses and the measured data and trend analyses. Today it is more common to store the consent to receive mailings outside that platform, something that will probably change in the future.

An e-newsletter sends out one of the following: a single message, or a mix of messages, to a group of recipients with either the company or the product as the sender. It goes out several times a year to update the recipient on news about the product, the disease, the treatment or relevant trends.

Campaign-related mailings are often automated mailings that follow some form of campaign or activity. They can be anything from a confirmation of registration, a series of predefined mailings that support the campaign, a thank you for taking part, or a satisfaction survey after an event.

Event-triggered mailings usually contain personal material sent out after some form of interaction with the customer, either in person or remotely. The material connects to the discussion that was held and is often based on templates, graphics and blocks of text approved in advance, mixed to some extent with free text written by the company's own staff for that particular mailing.

KPIs

One of the most directional key factors behind successful email marketing is cost per interaction (CPI). It is calculated above all on the number of clicks on links in each mailing, but it depends on several of the measures below.

Exposure

• Number of consents for mailings
• Number of emails sent
• Number of current consents

The first point shows the activity in collecting consents over a chosen period, where a trend curve can indicate whether the effort from the staff to collect them is rising or falling, or whether the forms on a website where people can sign up for mailings are not converting as intended, with the appropriate measures following from that.

The second point shows whether the target for mailings over a year is being met. A reasonable target can be around 10 to 12 e-newsletter mailings per year. It is important, though, that everything sent out is of value to the reader and not merely available to be sent, and that the marketing department has sufficient resources.

The third point complements the first and gives a second trend curve that indicates the "health" of the email list, the possible market impact of the mailings (the more mailings to relevant recipients, the greater the impact), and it is one of the factors behind CPI.

Interaction

• Number of mailings opened
• Number of mailings that "bounced"

The first point shows essentially two things: the customer's trust in you as the sender, and your ability to write an interesting subject line. It is one of the factors in calculating CPI.

The second point gives relevant information about the "health" of the email list. The goal is to have as few bounces as possible, that is, as few mailings as possible that do not land in the recipient's inbox. Here a distinction is made between a "soft bounce", an out-of-office reply for example, and a "hard bounce", where the email recipient does not exist and an error message is returned.

Engagement

• Call to action (CTA)
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Number who opted out of further mailings (opt-out)
• Number who forwarded the mailing (referrals)

The first two points are often kept apart, since the first concerns links that usually take the form of a graphically distinct button to click on. That button can be linked directly to the registration for an event. The second point covers links of a more general kind, for example a link to deeper information on the subject placed on a website. These two points are often gathered under the term click-through rate and together they are by far the most important factor in calculating CPI.

The third point is a clear indicator of whether what you send out is relevant and meets the expectations of the target group. A high opt-out rate is an important warning bell and measures have to be taken, since it is unusual to be given renewed permission for further mailings once it has been lost. It is natural for this figure to rise somewhat as the total number of recipients on a list grows and as interest cools over time.

The fourth point is very interesting and a clear success factor for the email strategy as a whole, since a forwarded message shows that what was sent out is interesting enough for the recipient to put their own name behind it (advocacy). Make sharing easy, but keep the option to share relatively discreet so as not to breach LER (the ethical rules of the Swedish pharmaceutical industry), and remember: it is the company that is responsible for the information at every step, all the way to the final reader. One tip is to phrase this function as "share with a colleague".

Key factors for success

• E-newsletters and campaign-related mailings represent the brand or the company and should be sent with that sender. Event-triggered mailings should be sent with an employee as the sender, since the material is personal. With an employee as the sender the open rate is often two to three times higher, something that should not be abused for all communication.
• Put a strong focus on collecting consents for mailings. Use different incentives for the staff where appropriate. More consents give a lower total cost per interaction (CPI) and a more effective machine for increasing total share of voice.
• Email is by its nature a "push" tactic and should be handled as one. Make sure that everything sent out is of value to the reader; quality comes before quantity. A mailing should not go to everyone who has given consent, but to the relevant segments of the full list that have shown an interest in the content being sent. Nor should material be sent out merely because it is available, or because of internal regional or global directives, but only when it has been identified as valuable to the recipient.

Think about the customer experience. How does an individual recipient receive your mailing?

• Email allows two-way communication. Use that possibility to ask about the readers' interests (for segmentation) or what they want to read more of (which feeds the publication plan). Direct replies to a mailing, or services such as SurveyMonkey, can be used.
• In general a short subject line gives a better open rate, a long one gives a higher click-through rate (among those who open). The content of the mailing should preferably be brief, with a mix of images and text and one or more clear calls to action (CTA) depending on the aim of the mailing.
• Build an efficient approval process. To stay relevant to the customer, material with news value has to go into the mix. With a long approval process, a detailed publication plan is the foundation for succeeding.
• Standardised templates are a must for creating a consistent customer experience across everything your company communicates. In every channel, not only the digital ones. Those templates should also carry the option to opt out of mailings and any legal text required.

With a large share of the customer group on the mailing list, a well thought through strategy that involves several departments and staff with the right perspective, and a publication plan with good lead time, email marketing is the marketing measure that gives the best result both in the short and in the long term. Internally as well as externally.

The statistics from the mailings give insight into what attracts the target group, and other sales and marketing measures can be driven from that. The internal cross-functional work on the publication plan synchronises the different departments around what matters now and in the future. Once a sufficient mass of recipients has accumulated, each mailing becomes extremely cost-effective and the CPI keeps falling.

Last but not least, the mailings partly fill the void that opens up between each personal visit from the sales force, with greater competitiveness as the result.

In the next issue of Pharma Industry comes part two in this series, websites. A channel that should be the centre of the company's marketing efforts. The watering hole your customer group goes to for their own advancement within your field.

See you then.

Fredrik Holmboe

Digital strategist and consultant

www.dualia.se