Professional digital marketing management: the key to avoiding physician digital fatigue

Reprinted with permission: Pharma Stats Insights

Digital marketing plays an important role in today's healthcare landscape. However, over-sending and poorly crafted marketing have led to "digital fatigue" among physicians. Research conducted by Indegene shows that the keys to successful email marketing are professional design, appropriate frequency, and content that delivers value. This article explores how to build more effective digital marketing strategies in healthcare and underscores the need for professional management.

Doctor, did you see the email I sent?

Physicians want email marketing that is high in quality and low in volume. Send too many emails, or emails without substance, and physicians may develop "digital fatigue."

Healthcare consultancy Indegene launched a study analyzing 7.9 million emails across 15 email marketing campaigns in different therapeutic areas between April 2020 and August 2021.

The report shows that for an email to be noticed, opened, read, and acted on, an eye-catching template is not enough — a well-structured design matters too.

Sending physicians more than one email per week lowers the engagement rate. Indegene recommends sending once every 4 to 6 weeks.

The report also found that sending more emails does not produce higher engagement from physicians — quite the opposite. Physicians who received 10 to 15 emails had engagement rates above 3%, while those who received more than 16 emails had engagement rates below 2%.

Indegene Executive Vice President Gaurav Kapoor says future email marketing must focus on being easy to understand, valuable, meaningful, and concise.

For email marketing to capture the attention of healthcare professionals, pharma companies need a mindset shift: replace brand-centric content with content that enhances clinical practice.

Indegene's Digitally Savvy HCP report, conducted in January 2022, found that the emails pharma companies send do not meet physicians' needs — and there are too many of them.

These findings echo a survey Accenture conducted late last year

Digital marketing is vital to healthcare, yet over-sending and low-value email marketing may fall short of expectations. The research shows that professional design and appropriate frequency are key, and that pharma companies should adjust their mindset to focus on delivering content that is easy to understand, valuable, and concise, meeting the needs of healthcare professionals. Overall, digital marketing in healthcare calls for more professional management and strategy to ensure success and avoid "digital fatigue."

References

Ben Adams (April 19, 2022) Pharmas risk losing doctors to digital fatigue in the post-COVID-19 world if they don't get their email strategy right, Fierce Pharma, Marketing.