Pharma Giant Nails 99% Registration Target Using Omnichannel Approach 

Background 

The client from France is a pharmaceutical juggernaut firmly positioned in the top 50. The brand did a good job building a cardiology section in its HCP web portal, populating it with evidence-based content and real-world data rather than product promotions only.  

Yet, despite the outstanding quality of content and medical reps’ reminders, HCPs continued to ignore the new channel. The brand got only 232 registrations in six months. 

This raised a cascade of questions: Is it an HCPs’ bias that web portals are just for sales content? Do HCPs prefer getting info during face-to-face visits rather than via digital channels like the web? Or are we simply using the wrong channels for portal promotion?  

The company turned to Viseven to find the answers and figure out the way forward. 

Challenge: Getting Cardiologists to Register on the Web Portal 

We had to dig deep into market research to understand why the target audience disregarded the HCP portal.  

Naturally, the first question was: is web portal still a thing? 

We had to investigate how HCPs felt about them. In the past, they were often seen as nothing more than a place for pushy sales messages.  

But that’s changed. More brands were investing in content that offered providers value they could pass directly to their patients. And HCPs had taken notice. Our research showed that 82% considered pharma web portals reliable sources, compared to just 46% a few years ago. 

We also wondered if MedReps had the kind of impact on providers we assumed. 

According to our findings, France was the EU market with the strongest preference for digital communication among providers. Specifically, 30% saw digital as the best channel, and 48% considered reps and digital equally effective for delivering information.  

This made it clear: it wasn’t that HCPs didn’t want to engage with the web portal. It is that promotion also needed to happen through digital channels, not just the field force. 

So, we needed a solid action plan and customer journeys across channels to guide HCPs every step of the way to registration. 

Solution: Action Plan 

We kicked off with a four-stage action plan: 

Stage 1. Make sure your target audience is really your audience 

When promoting a product, the audience you reach might not be the one you originally expected. To uncover who was actually engaging with the portal, the Viseven team used Adobe Analytics to analyze the behavior of registered cardiologists.  

We also pulled CRM data to paint the full picture. By comparing the actual audience with the intended target group, we were able to identify key misalignments. 

Stage 2. Choose the right channels 

We also needed to pick the digital channels where target providers were most active. This would help us land the message about the new portal faster and make it easy for HCPs to follow the link and register in a few clicks. 

Email and SMS were the channels shaping our customer journey. Social media was held in reserve in case engagement fell short. But spoiler alert: we never had to use it. 

Stage 3. Close the gap between data and marketing execution 

At this point, we needed to build an omnichannel ecosystem, so HCP details and behavioral data travel instantly to an automation engine to suggest the next best actions. To achieve this, we integrated the CRM with the marketing automation tool — Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) in our case. We also extracted data directly from the web portal.  

We then created personalized customer journeys, while the Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) tool helped us analyze 90 days of engagement data to predict the best day and time to send emails, making it more likely they’d be opened. 

Stage 4. Create a persuasive content 

Our Digital Content Factory (DCF) faced a tough challenge: convincing cardiologists that the information on the portal could support better patient care, while also making a message engaging to read. After all, if the content isn’t interesting, no one will stick around long enough to see this value.  

At the same time, it was important to follow brand guidelines and use standardized templates so HCPs would recognize the familiar brand they’ve known for years. 

Solution: Omnichannel Customer Journeys 

A customer journey is your roadmap for targeted communication. It adapts based on how HCPs behave, with different paths branching off depending on their actions. This way, cardiologists receive tailored interactions with your brand without any manual input from your side. 

Here is our omnichannel customer journey example: 

The DCF crafted a compelling email that introduced the portal and invited HCPs to register. We waited two days for their engagement. If they clicked and signed up, they would receive a bonus video. If not, they got a follow-up email with a new subject line and a reworded CTA, offering a fresh angle to re-engage them. 

Some HCPs didn’t open emails. Then what? 

The customer journey mapping above depicts the ideal situation. But in practice, providers often have different priorities, needs, and schedules, even though they’re all part of the same target group. 

Copywriting’s golden rule is to tackle one pain point per message because people aren’t psychologically wired to juggle too many worries at once. When cardiologists clicked but didn’t finish registering, it meant our message didn’t hit the right pain point. That’s why we sent a follow-up message addressing another pain point they could relate to. 

If they didn’t click the link in the second email, it showed that email might not be the best way to reach them. In that case, we switched to SMS. For those who registered after receiving the SMS, we sent the bonus video link via text message as well. 

Results  

From our experience with pharma giants like our client, we’ve seen that digging deeper into audience data, breaking down data silos, and tailoring interactions makes a difference.  

No need for fancy-pants theories when the data from Salesforce Marketing Cloud tells the real story: 

• We hit 99% of our registration goal, getting 296 new sign-ups in two weeks.  

• That’s more than 12 times the registrations we saw in the previous six months when field reps were the only ones encouraging sign-ups.  

• Throughout the campaign, only 17 cardiologists unsubscribed, and these cases were managed in full compliance with GDPR.