From ordering your Starbucks latte on your iPhone to skipping the line at Splash Mountain with your Disney Magic Band, omnichannel strategies transform how consumers interact with their favorite brands. The most successful brands create an immersive experience that meets the 
needs of their consumers with a personalized touch. Instead of falling for the temptation to “be everywhere," omnichannel meets consumers where they are to make every engagement count.
Recognizing the major advantages of omnichannel thinking, many pharmaceutical manufacturers have started to adopt a similar strategy for their own brands. While manufacturers often disseminate compelling promotional messages across various channels, in many cases message strategy is still confined to siloed, overlapping efforts that generate data from multiple sources and teams – without connection or the ability to mine deep insights to inform what happens next.
Manufacturers should expect more from their investments in datasets, technology and promotional campaigns — especially now. Traditional launch and in-market strategies mostly dependent on expensive field teams with basic promotional materials to drive sales are no longer effective models to ensure brand success. Over the course of a single year, the industry’s needs have evolved beyond one-dimensional playbooks, disconnected promotional efforts and limited ability to assess stakeholder engagement.
Instead, manufacturers need to adopt a comprehensive omnichannel model that allows for data-driven planning and real-time analysis of results from marketing campaigns, field activities and patient services programs to create a cohesive brand experience with maximum impact. In doing so, the impact goes well beyond “marketing" to inform touch points across an array of stakeholders, optimize resources to reduce waste and inefficiencies and, ultimately, drive therapy adoption and brand success. The good news? That need to evolve is now matched with a model that can drive real omnichannel success.
Data-Driven Omnichannel Activation Model Optimizes Promotional Campaigns
In a market where 40% of worldwide drug launches between 2009 and 2017 failed to meet their two-year sales forecasts,1 manufacturers can’t afford to overlook the full potential of a data-driven omnichannel strategy. Omnichannel success requires a comprehensive suite of pivotal datasets and a data-driven technology model that provides real-time visibility into the impact of sales calls and marketing efforts. Industry studies show that 77% of pharma marketers believe a personalized, omnichannel approach needs to be a higher priority, but 25% of these marketers say that they don’t have the technology in place to achieve this goal. Even after data implementation, almost 50% of senior-level pharma marketers admit they struggle to gain actionable insights from their data.
As the only organization to house all commercialization services under one roof, EVERSANA is helping the industry overcome this challenge with a best-in-class omnichannel model that aggregates and synthesizes pivotal datasets from marketing campaigns, patient services programs and field activities to analyze and predict trends and behaviors that better inform promotional and support strategies. Driven by predictive analytics and machine learning, EVERSANA’s omnichannel activation model develops personas to predict the “next best action" for impactful, personalized engagement across direct, digital and telehealth channels with just-in-time recommendations. Serving as a seamless router of actionable data and deep insights from all channels, the model provides the optimal coordination of customized touch points required to create a seamless brand experience for healthcare providers, patients, payers and other key stakeholders. As a result, the model affords manufacturers the ability to develop precision messaging and deploy an array of targeted one-on-one conversations for maximum impact. With EVERSANA’s model, one-size-fits-all strategies and messaging are things of the past.
Additionally, all campaign results are funneled into the omnichannel activation model for further analysis to direct the frequency of campaign tactics. The model continuously learns audience behaviors and preferences — and evaluates the impact of promotional messages in market — to inform how the channel and messaging mix can be optimized for maximum results. With real-time visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs) and return on investment (ROI), EVERSANA’s model helps manufacturers strategically leverage insights across all commercial functions to pivot brand strategies, augment and scale effective tactics and optimize channel spend.
Hyper-Targeted Engagements Drive Higher Territory Profitability
According to a recent EVERSANA ENGAGE survey, 43% of primary care providers and 57% of specialists are engaging less frequently with sales reps. As a result, provider engagements have to be redefined to grow sales territories in an unprecedented hybrid selling environment composed of both in-person and virtual interactions.
Data-driven HCP targeting and persona development has never been more 
crucial for brand success. A recent case study conducted by Pharmaceutical Online states, “At a minimum, reps spend 25% of their time detailing new drugs to conservative physicians who will never prescribe them within the first year of launch. By targeting sales efforts and detailing to early adopters, who are at least 75% more likely to prescribe a new drug, reps can increase the number of detailed physicians who prescribe a new drug by over 10%. Ensuring that the physicians targeted for detailing are both high prescribers and early adopters improves the number of specific prescriptions written per physician by more than 20%."
With EVERSANA’s omnichannel activation model, manufacturers start with strategic identification of key high-value targets and then leverage target personas to develop customized engagement strategies that match specific needs and preferences. When a rep or field team member leverages these deep insights, they deliver more impactful engagements with more key targets to drive therapy adoption. Simultaneously, informed non-personal experiences are deployed to these key targets to supplement HCP-rep engagements. This full-loop connectivity empowers manufacturers to deploy a true omnichannel strategy that immerses the HCPs into a seamless brand experience.
On average, it takes six to seven calls between an HCP and a rep before the first prescription is written.* In the span of that time, hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars are spent on lunches, gas, materials, salaries, etc.
Deploying a field team is expensive, and the investment doesn’t always pay off for an industry with a long sales cycle. With EVERSANA’s omnichannel activation model, manufacturers offset costly field resources, strengthen sales teams and synchronize personal engagement with digital outreach.
Leveraging the right assets to individual prescribers with high-service follow-up interactions enhances field relationships to drive sustainable brand loyalty. In addition, by aligning targeting with dynamic promotional messaging, commercial teams can optimize their outreach opportunities to decrease the first time to fill, accelerate prescriber base growth base and, ultimately, drive higher territory profitability.
Real-Time Visibility of Patient Needs Drives Therapy Adoption
Leveraging de-identified patient data and insights has created a new sophistication in campaign outreach and personalization. Oftentimes, data funneled into patient services programs (also referred to as “hubs") is not used to its full potential. The key for manufacturers who increasingly play a role in supporting patients through their treatment journey is to think about how to implement predictions in the apparatus of patient services. A prediction alone is not interesting. A prediction that enables an action — and learns from the outcome of that action — to streamline patient onboarding for a new therapy is what creates a high-performing operation.
EVERSANA’s HIPAA-compliant omnichannel activation model allows manufacturers to develop pivotal patient personas and predictions that can overcome access, affordability and adherence barriers. Additionally, the model can even predict the personas most likely to discontinue or switch their medication and then offer a corrective action to assist the patient.
To illustrate the accuracy and significance of predictive analytics, EVERSANA’s Brigham Hyde, Ph.D., President, Data and Analytics, published a recent white paper outlining the results of a predictive modeling he conducted with historical data:
Comorbidity impact scores predicted patients who were highly likely to not execute first fill of newly prescribed specialty mediation with an ~80% accuracy rate (AUC/ROC of 0.81) and Patients who were likely to abandon (switch) brands with an accuracy rate of 70%.
With an effective omnichannel strategy in place, manufacturers predict patient actions to provide the personalized support they need to navigate the complexities of new therapy adoption. Similar to developing dynamic content for HCPs, omnichannel also allows manufacturers to develop and disseminate patient education resources to help patients better understand their diagnosis and treatment.
Patients are — and should remain — the center of any manufacturer’s core mission. As such, understanding their journey and providing them support at each stage (e.g., hub enrollment and adherence) is essential in creating a valuable brand experience.
Optimize Commercial Investments to Elevate Brand Success
Manufacturers can’t afford to miss a piece of the puzzle in multi-stakeholder support — and they certainly don’t want to underutilize marketing campaigns, datasets, and technology.
Seamless coordination between all commercial assets is a key to brand success, but accomplishing this cross-team alignment requires the right team of experts, synergetic processes and data solutions, and an established and data-driven model that continually informs and optimizes what happens next.
EVERSANA is leading the way in meeting manufacturer, patient, and provider needs with an omnichannel activation model integrated into a complete, full-scale, customizable infrastructure driven by best-in-class analytics. By providing clients unprecedented visibility into ever-evolving and increasingly complex patient and provider journeys, EVERSANA is maximizing brand impact, customizing dynamic promotional campaigns, and helping manufacturers optimize all commercialization investments to elevate brand success.(PV)
Note: 1 McKinsey & Company. “Ready for launch: Reshaping pharma’s strategy in the next normal." December 2020
EVERSANA is the leading provider of global commercial services to the life-sciences industry, with integrated solutions rooted in the patient experience that span all stages of the product life cycle to deliver long-term, sustainable value for patients, prescribers, channel partners, and payers.
For more information, visit eversana.com.
