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As the levels of HCP engagement with sales reps decreased, the need for new approaches emerged. E-detailing, a unique Pharma Marketing channel, became the solution to this problem. It provided access, interactivity, and up-to-date information incomparable with legacy pharma detailing.
This comprehensive guide covers all the key e-detailing aspects, including its benefits, best practices, a step-to-step implementation checklist, and tips on using it in omnichannel marketing.
In the past, pharmaceutical sales reps worked with printed materials to educate HCPs on their products. Unfortunately, the engagement of medical professionals with classical sales approaches was dropping continuously in the pre-pandemic era.
The studies of that period clearly showed the reluctance of HCPs to communicate with pharma sales representatives. For example, 40% of primary care doctors claimed they hadn't talked to the reps.
Among the key reasons HCPs are reluctant to see sales reps are the lack of time and overwhelming workloads leading to burnout. Other issues include the lack of novelty and bias of the information provided by sales reps, as well as their pushiness.
To address the crisis in the engagement with HCPs, pharmaceutical companies began a shift toward the digitalisation of informational materials for medical practitioners and the detailing process.
E-detailing is pharmaceutical detailing that uses electronic technology to reach out, engage, and interact with healthcare providers.
The key elements of e-detailing are as follows:
Modern technology enables pharma companies to use mobile devices (mostly tablets) for detailing healthcare providers. These devices are easier to carry and manage compared to printed documents.
Software solutions create interactive interfaces with buttons, hyperlinks, quizzes, and calculators, making the educational process easier and more entertaining.
High-quality images and videos can be included in electronic media to increase the impact.
E-detailing software collects data on HCP behaviour by analyzing their choice of information, answers to surveys and forms, and interactions with widgets.
Apart from mobile devices, e-detailing is also accessible on computers via the Internet, enabling medical practitioners to return to your data at any time.
The main types of e-detailing include:
In this scenario, a pharmaceutical sales representative conducts one-on-one meetings with HCP and uses mobile devices to go through e-detailing steps. The main advantage of this approach is the possibility of building rapport with the HCP and answering all their questions.
Remote detailing is becoming increasingly popular. In this scenario, the rep and the HCP meet one-on-one via online video calls. Remote detailing has multiple advantages, such as:
No reps participate in this scenario. HCPs interact with your e-detailing independently, gaining access to the platform from their devices via the Internet. Self-service detailing gives HCPs full control over when, where and to which extent they engage with your e-detailing.
Many marketing experts believe that detailing should be a part of omnichannel marketing. In this case, detailing can become a step in outreach campaigns across several channels. The benefits of such an approach are consistency and the ability to get through to the HCP.
Some sales and marketing specialists consider webinars a form of remote detailing. However, in this scenario, several HCPs participate in one online event. The benefits of this approach include communication with the rep, social endorsement, and the ability to save the rep's time and effort by detailing several HCPs at once.
In the future, we'll see e-detailing becoming more and more interactive. This is especially true for products that require physical manipulation (e.g., a special way of injecting the medicine).
VR and AR can help HCPs learn about pharma products more efficiently.
E-detailing has multiple benefits compared to its "paper" counterpart. Let's review them.
The cost of printing detailing materials has always been high, especially if high-quality images were included. The cost of a paper document (black & white) is 141 times higher than a digital document.
Furthermore, the cost of disposing of unused materials in the case of major data updates is also high. Meanwhile, the environmental impact of using paper for detailing is enormous.
E-detailing fixes all these issues as there's only one copy of data stored in the cloud. The reps and HCPs access the data using electronic devices. Not only is it environmentally less harmful, but it is also cost-efficient.
Searching through dozens or even hundreds of printed pages to find the data you need can be a daunting process, especially when the time is tight and the HCP is looking at the clock impatiently. Storing all the printing materials and carrying them around is yet another issue.
Finally, updating paper documents can also be challenging, much like getting rid of outdated booklets.
E-detailing fixes this problem by enabling search features and program menus that can decrease the search time.
Moreover, e-detailing provides a single source of truth so that any update is immediately available to all reps and HCPs.
Legacy detailing mostly contained long-reads and photos sometimes followed by practical training. This form of education has proven to be the least engaging.
E-detailing enables you to create interactive environments with videos, audio, and even gamification to engage with HCPs. These features make the detailing process easier for medical practitioners and have a greater impact.
With paper-based detailing, analysing what works and what doesn't, as well as collecting HCPs feedback, heavily depends on the sales reps' report. They might not always correctly recollect the interviews.
E-detailing software enables you to track which content and program elements HCPs mostly interact with. Based on this data, you can make informed marketing decisions.
Tracking interactions can also help pharmaceutical marketers fine-tune their e-detailing to meet the specific needs of a segment of the target audience. Furthermore, with some e-detailing providers, you can personalise the experience for each HCP.
As a part of omnichannel marketing, e-detailing can provide a consistent experience with your brand to HCPs. This increases brand recognition and protects brand reputation.
According to Elsevier research, 95% of HCPs highly appreciate the ability to download data for further study. E-detailing gives them round-the-clock access to educational materials and the ability to continue their education journey at any time from any place.
Healthcare professionals work long hours, saving lives, communicating with patients and their families, making hard life-altering decisions, and withstanding bureaucratic work. If you occupy their precious time, make sure it's worth it.
In this section, we collected the best practices of e-detailing pharma marketing that you can use to build your unique educational experience for HCPs.
Provide HCPs with access to your e-detailing via the Internet and the ability to download materials. This will significantly increase the time they spend studying your product.
Interactivity makes e-detailing more engaging and impactful than legacy detailing. Make sure you make the most of it when planning the educational journey for HCPs.
Interactive elements include:
Interactive elements are critical for customer engagement and data collection.
As mentioned above, the lack of novelty in detailing aggravates overwhelmed medical staff. That’s why many pharma marketing experts emphasize creating unique medical content for HCPs.
93% of HCPs want to read concise and digestible content, the Elsevier report says. Below are some tips from content specialists on how to achieve this goal. We used italics to showcase the examples of bad writing:
Create a consistent narrative for your HCPs. Storytelling will make it easier to focus on the learning materials and follow your logic.
There is no need to create a complex plot with tons of twists. The best marketing storytelling follows a simple logic:
The software enables you to make your e-detailing flexible. You can plan and provide an educational roadmap. However, we suggest providing HCPs with the opportunity to shape their learning journeys.
You can achieve this with two main features:
E-detailing is part of the sales process. So, it should push a definite product featuring its best qualities for HCPs.
However, it's crucial to remember that professional medical writers should work on e-detailing. They can maintain a healthy balance between scientifically correct educational materials and product sales.
User Experience plays a critical role in any software. Most likely, the vendor's UX designers have already worked on the main software elements, their position on the page, size, and interactions.
However, since every detailing is unique, we highly recommend conducting usability testing for your final product before launch.
Make e-detailing a part of your multichannel or omnichannel marketing. In one of the next sections, we discuss the omnichannel approach in pharma marketing in detail.
Similar to other knowledge workers, HCPs are dependent on the opinions of medical practitioners. That's why many pharma marketing specialists suggest adding social endorsement elements to your e-detailing materials.
There are several ways to implement social endorsement:
Busy medical practitioners are often reluctant to hear out pharmaceutical sales reps. That’s why we suggest creating a short version of your e-detailing. It should contain all the critical talking points of a longer version, avoiding in-depth medical details and insights.
The main purpose of this presentation is to capture the attention of HCPs and invoke interest. Later, they can ask for more details, and that's when the longer version will come in handy.
One of the benefits of short-call presentations is the time your sales reps can save on meetings.
We suggest adding medical videos and compelling interactive images in a shorter version. Such content can deliver more information to the recipient within a defined time.
Not sending follow-ups is a common mistake many sales organisations make. The reasons include reps' reluctance to experience rejection, lack of a defined sales process, insufficient control, and forgetfulness.
Meanwhile, follow-ups are critical, especially when working with HCPs easily distracted by workloads.
Benefits of follow-ups include increased engagement with e-detailing materials, high brand reputation, and a better understanding of the product.
If your company uses AI-based data analysis software, make sure you feed it with the data from your e-detailing platform. You can get insights that will help you create better content and educational journeys for your HCPs.
With the emergence of e-detailing, some pharmaceutical companies decided to reduce the number of sales reps. The hope was to cut costs and switch to entirely virtual interactions.
However, in our opinion, sales reps still play a critical role. First, many people perceive information better when interacting with other humans. Second, reps can guide through e-detailing, helping to find necessary information quicker.
Third, reps can connect with HCPs on a personal level, breaking the ice with a witty joke or simply having small talk. Some HCPs say they appreciate the emotional contact over “a halfway sterile online conversation.”
Finally, sales reps manage the entire e-detailing process of individual HCPs.
In this section, we’ll walk you through the essential steps of planning and implementing e-detailing for your company.
Just like the majority of interactions in the pharmaceutical industry, e-detailing is subject to laws and regulations depending on your country of residence and the countries you operate in.
Make sure you consult your legal team on this matter and collect all the necessary dos and don'ts before planning your e-detailing campaign.
In one of the previous sections, we listed multiple benefits of e-detailing. Some of them can be your goals.
For example, you want to increase the engagement of HCPs with your educational materials by 10%. Another example of an e-detailing goal is decreasing its costs by 14%.
Your goals will determine other aspects of your e-detailing strategy. For example, to acquire valuable marketing insights into HCPs' behaviour and choices, you’ll have to purchase the data analysis platform.
It’s important to set attainable and measurable goals. Additionally, set key performance indicators that will help you understand if you attained goals at certain checkpoints in time.
If you use multichannel or omnichannel marketing, you should select channels for interactions with your sales reps.
The channels include:
Simply choosing channels isn't enough. You should create engagement scenarios for these channels. They will identify the sequence of interactions and their timeline.
For example, you begin your engagement with an email to an HCP. The answer to the letter should trigger one scenario, e.g., a sales rep responds to an HCP and begins a dialogue.
The lack of an answer from an HCP triggers another scenario. For example, a sales rep makes a follow-up phone call or reaches out via email.
The modern market offers a plethora of e-detailing platforms. In this section, we'll review three platform solutions.
Developed by Veeva Systems, Veeva Engage is an enterprise-grade cloud-based solution for HCPs, Sales reps, and MSLs. Interestingly, Veeva Engage is marketed to pharmaceutical companies and doctors. HCPs can create a free profile and add their sales reps there.
Companies can create profiles and upload materials in the cloud to provide HCPs with easy access to their information.
Pitcher is an end-to-end HCP engagement platform. It has enhanced integration with Salesforce, MS Sharepoint, Veeva, and other cloud platforms. Pitcher offers high flexibility and can be easily fine-tuned to the company's unique business operations.
IQVIA is an AI-powered cloud-based solution for pharmaceutical and medical data analytics beyond e-detailing. It can help you quickly analyze large data sets separating the “noise” from essential information.
If your company isn't ready to work with an e-detailing platform, we suggest trying Slides or PowerPoint presentations first. About 80% of our clients who ordered e-detailing materials from our company requested the presentation format.
The benefits of using this technology are:
You can start by using presentations and then switch to more pricey platform solutions.
If your company has been on the market for some time, chances are you already have some e-detailing materials. Probably they were printed and distributed directly to HCPs.
In this case, make sure your e-detailing materials are up-to-date. Next, think about how you can reorganize them to fit the digital format. At this stage, you should also look for ways to enrich your e-detailing with high-quality images and videos.
Finally, you should plan the new interactive elements to increase engagement with HCPs.
If you need to create e-detailing from scratch, here are 7 simple steps to do it:
Some agencies like Nanobot Group specialize in creating turnkey content for pharmaceutical e-detailing. We understand the interactivity of content and the peculiarities of e-detailing software. They can take over most steps mentioned above and help you by involving their expertise and experience.
This step is only necessary if you have e-detailing software and a data analysis platform. You should set up the software to collect data across the predefined touchpoints following the goals.
You can collect two types of data:
This type of data includes:
Remember, if you've previously conducted usability testing of your solution and fixed the issues, the data you gain from interactions will be more reliable since you've eliminated the error clicks and delays related to bad UX.
This data includes any information users fill out in the interactive widgets you've provided. An example of qualitative data is the answers to a survey you've included in your e-detailing.
Another example is the data your HCP enters in the dosage calculator. Remember that this data might be regulated separately (and prohibited for collection). So you need to check it before feeding it to AI.
Unexpectedly, many organizations omit this step. The key reason is the traditional lack of communication and cooperation between sales and marketing. That's often the case when the process involves more than one department within the organization.
So far, a marketing team has carried out all the previous steps. Now, it's time to engage the sales organization.
This step is critical since the sales reps will be interacting with HCPs directly. They will guide HCPs through the presentation and answer tricky questions. If anyone needs to know your e-detailing, it’s a sales rep.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to training sales reps. We suggest that you first ensure they understand the contents of the e-detailing presentation. Then, require them to memorise its key parts. If you use e-detailing software, they must also remember where to find different pieces of information.
Next, they should learn the sequence of touchpoints with HCPs for a particular campaign and the messaging they'll use on every touchpoint. Finally, sales reps should be trained in reaching out and giving their presentation to HCPs.
Testing e-detailing is critical to catching the most outstanding errors in the educational materials and reps' presentations.
Check the following elements:
Try to engage in this process with a medical professional who doesn't know the product you're e-detailing. They'll be able to give feedback on the comprehensibility and novelty of content.
Make sure at least one of the testers has never seen this e-detailing. When people work on one project for a long time, they stop paying attention to details. That's how most mistakes are missed.
As mentioned above, e-detailing can have a bunch of legal pitfalls, especially when it comes to data collection. That's why it's critical to show your content to the legal department for approval.
If you use data analysis software to collect and analyse data from e-detailing, you should also provide a detailed record of this process (which data is collected, how, how it's processed, etc.) and submit it for revision.
Launching an e-detailing campaign can look different depending on the medium you use and the campaign details.
We suggest running it for a couple of months before the next step.
This step is necessary to analyze the campaign intermediary results and the collected data (if you use data analysis software). You can now see which content and interactive elements HCPs interact with the most, collect frequently asked questions from sales reps, etc.
Based on this data, you can try tweaking your e-detailing and run it for another couple of months to see the results.
Omnichannel marketing is a relatively new approach to promoting products and services, in general, and for pharma companies, in particular. Today, many marketers do not understand the difference between an omnichannel and a multichannel approach.
In this guide, we will shortly explain the differences between the two. If you already know them, you can scroll down to the next section.
Multichannel marketing promotes the product or service across multiple channels. However, each channel can be entrusted to a separate team. Messaging, visuals, and even branding can vary on different channels. The promotional events on one channel aren't mentioned on other channels.
Here’s how it can look in pharma. One team is responsible for doing detailing for sales. The other team develops and launches the website. The third team is preparing sales sequences and messaging.
The fourth team is responsible for preparing for the conferences (booths, handouts, etc.). The company’s participation in the event is mentioned only once on the corporate website and twice on LinkedIn. Sales aren’t setting up the appointments at the conference in advance.
The marketing team hires a person to make medical animation in-house. Simultaneously, the team preparing the conference invests in medical animation for their booth.
Omnichannel marketing can operate across the same range of channels as multichannel marketing. The difference is the centralised management of the outreach and engagement across these channels. This is often achieved using special software solutions that act as a single data repository, management, and analysis systems.
An omnichannel approach makes sure one potential customer is targeted across multiple channels with consistent messaging and visuals.
The data on their interactions with the outreach is then submitted to a single system that analyzes how marketing outreach operates.
Pharma companies can benefit from an omnichannel approach in several ways:
Teams avoid doing double or triple work as all the campaigns, messaging, and visuals are managed in one place. At the same time, centralised content creation enables you to reuse content pieces across multiple platforms.
The company avoids minor (and sometimes major) discrepancies in messaging and visuals, which helps omit reputational losses.
Because data is collected and processed in one place, pharm marketers can get more accurate analysis results. By processing this data, you can understand your target audience better, tweak your outreach campaigns, improve marketing performance, and increase marketing ROI.
Reaching out across many platforms increases the chances of getting through to an HCP. On top of that, omnichannel marketing enables you to create a progressing learning curve from the first touchpoint via email to a full-fledged interaction during the detailing.
Omnichannel marketing places customer experience at the centre and plans a complex buyer journey (or educational journey in the case of pharma marketing).
Many software solutions for omnichannel marketing enable you to segment your target audience, delivering personalized messaging. On top of this, data collection and analysis in real time enables you to change your campaign on the go, catering to the specific needs of a particular customer.
E-detailing is a centrepiece in omnichannel pharmaceutical marketing. Marketers create a complex web of pathways that inevitably lead medical doctors to e-detailing documents.
Each step in the sequence of touches unveils more and more details about your product. At the end of this journey, an HCP receives an ultimate learning guide to delivering patient treatment better.
Omnichannel pharma content is crucial for e-detailing and can help you increase your marketing ROI. Unfortunately, creating content in-house can be resource-intensive for pharmaceutical companies.
That's why they hire omnichannel pharma marketing providers and outsource content creation to professionals.
In this section, we discuss the common types of e-detailing content agencies, benefits, and tips for hiring managed service providers.
Services pharma marketing agencies provide:
Enterprises usually hire a pharma animation provider while writing medical content and uploading data in-house.
However, for SMB companies, hiring an in-house pharma marketing team can be expensive. They choose omnichannel pharma marketing services.
Having one agency doing all the work significantly reduces the errors and the number of required fixes to the content.
The benefits of hiring a company that creates e-detailing content include:
Headhunting and hiring an in-house content team with experience in e-detailing or training your content specialists in creating e-detailing materials can take months. At the same time, you’ll have to adjust your content creation around their planned vacations, unexpected change of job, or emergency leave.
Agencies usually have a team of experienced medical writers, professional designers, medical animation artists, and developers experienced in Veeva, IQVIA, and Pitcher platform requirements, who are readily available once the project starts. These knowledge workers can also act as stand-ins in case of emergencies.
Hiring an agency costs less than hiring an in-house team for several reasons.
First, the agency works with medical content experts around the globe and can give them higher loads of work at lower prices. Hiring in-house could be limited to your location, which would basically tie you to local salaries and force any extra expenses like taxes, overtime, etc.
Second, an agency usually has a manager to plan, organize, and control the content-creation process. For your business, it means cutting costs on managerial positions.
Finally, most agencies have their tech stack for content creation, e.g., video editing. These tools can be pricey and increase the cost of e-detailing.
Any medical content agency has experience creating educational materials for marketing and sales teams of pharmaceutical companies. They know what works and what doesn't work in your field and can give valuable marketing insights.
They can also share their experience in medical, biotech, and other fields. Instead of searching for new ways to market your products, you can harness the readily available experience of the agency.
If you work with an omnichannel medical marketing agency, you can create multiple marketing and sales materials with one team. It will enable you to retain the consistency of visuals and messaging across various platforms you use to promote your product.
One of the most popular objections that most omnichannel marketing providers hear from their potential clients is the lack of control over the content creation process.
In reality, it's the provider's best interest to remain in close contact with the client. We make sure we receive your approval at every step of the process. It's much easier to introduce minor amends than to redo the product from scratch.
This section discusses the aspects pharma marketers should look for in companies that provide e-detailing content services.
You can save money on content creation while maintaining brand consistency.
Case studies can show you the level of expertise the agency can deliver, as well as their experience in your field or similar fields. Pay special attention to the content quality.
Check your potential omnichannel pharma animation provider on third-party review websites that collect data directly from customers.
If you have an omnichannel CRM for healthcare or specific detailing software, check if the agency has experience working with these products. Otherwise, onboarding and content creation might be staggered by the agency's need to learn new technologies.
Companies usually look at prices to see if the solution fits their budget. Sales reps can unravel the value of their services, which can help your company save money on marketing and increase revenues.
Ready to hire an omnichannel pharma marketing provider?
E-detailing is becoming a pivotal part of the pharmaceutical sales and marketing process. It provides better customer engagement, is more impactful and cost-efficient, and helps you collect data about your potential and existing customers to make data-driven marketing decisions.
The best e-detailing practices include an omnichannel approach, interactivity, storytelling & novelty of content, and creating short presentations and downloadables for later use.
To implement e-detailing, you should set clear goals and KPIs, choose channels and tech stack, create content and proofread it with scientific and legal departments, conduct UX testing, train sales reps, launch, and revise and edit.