Reshaping pharmaceutical marketing: targeting is spam

Flyers work, we get them every day; email spam works, we experience it every day. But in pharma, things are not exactly like that, let's see why it's all about 'trust' and 'conversion'.

They know everything about us now: our tastes and eating habits. Well, the marketing man in me imagines that the big chain knows everything about us, and that the offers are personalised and tailor-made, to build loyalty and increase the average receipt. But the last supermarket flyer we received reflected absolutely nothing of our preferences. Let's try to understand why GDP marketers, even though they know about new technologies, insist on producing millions of flyers a week.

Let's start with the flyer's own business model. Cost for printing and distribution 0.05 Euro, cost for distribution 6 Euro per hour, 200 flyers distributed per hour, more or less so each flyer delivered is 6/200+0.05=0.08 Euro. That is 80 Euro CPM (cost per mile), do you agree? Imagining a conversion rate of one customer for every 250 flyers delivered, a 20 Euro receipt is enough to make the deal worthwhile. And so the manager continues his flyer policy by snatching the customer away from the competitor for that round, waiting for the next flyer that might see him lose. New round, new discounts, new flyers.

Now, let's try to do some maths in the pockets of those characters who keep sending me spam and fishing. Here we can only imagine that the cost of production and reproduction is practically nil, equal to a few euro cents per thousand shipments delivered or less, or 0.005 Euro CPM. We can also assume that it is spread over hundreds of millions of shipments delivered every day. So even the conversion rate of one in a million, one fool clicking every hour, means a truckload of money. And the hacker continues his policy because the business model holds.

It works because the model is universally based on the conversion rate, and spam largely pays for itself. If only you had to pay a penny per mail sent, the spam model we know would have to be revolutionized, as there aren't enough fools or distractors to make mailing worthwhile. If the flyer paper or the cost of the delivery work were double, discount flyers would probably be different from what we are used to.

Pharma targeting is not enough

If the relationship between flyer printers and the market were fair, completely correct and based on reliability, things would probably change. Delivery could only take place with privacy authorisation, by graduate staff and after formalised training, and every visit would be tracked to avoid untrue information passing through it. Probably every flyer would be traceable, and the company would also have to pay for the disposal of the flyers if they are not returned. The person receiving the flyer would have to have a university degree and have passed at least a state exam, and with a specialist diploma to make sure they understood the message. There would be laws allowing leaflets to be delivered only if they were judged to be correct and a maximum of 6 leaflets per year...

The relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the market is correct, it is ecological, it is traceable, it takes all elements into account; therefore it cannot have the two rules of spam: production and distribution costs are almost zero, and there is no traceability. Today I cannot know who is sending me spam, the shipment is not traced, and the shipment costs nothing.

And this is why, when we have to send an e-mail to diabetologists, we have to make sure that it is only to this target and not to others, even though we have the possibility of sending it to everyone in the same way and without additional costs. Because the relationship is one of trust and is traceable. So the doctor trusts - ergo prescribes - only those companies that behave ethically in the way they provide scientific information, not just in the content. Sending e-mails to everyone might be worthwhile in terms of impact, but all professionals who receive e-mails based on specialisation would soon stop reading them and would delete them without reading them. A pharmaceutical company that sent or had scientific information sent by email or web to everyone without adequate analysis would be seen as a spammer and would lose the trust of the doctor, limiting sales in the present, and in the future reducing the possibility of promoting useful and authorised material through that channel.

This is the difference: the relationship between pharmaceuticals and doctors is based on trust. You cannot use email as a leaflet sent to specialist targets.

Pleonastic clarification on profiling and targeting

You all know the difference much better than I do, but perhaps it is worth clarifying the meaning we use for these terms in pharmaceuticals.

Profiling is the activity of defining profiles, i.e. the analysis of the information received from the relationships and transactions with the "customer" through the various channels. Put differently, profiling is the determination of segments of customer groups that behave similarly and homogeneously for the activity and message we want to convey, and that behave differently from other groups. This absolutely depends on what we want to convey, how and when: so profiles or segments cannot be defined in absolute terms, but only in relation to the communication project we have. There are no absolute profiles.

Targeting is the action of forwarding the right material to the right segment (i.e. profile). The criticism of targeting is therefore to the fact that there are tout cour stable, differentiatable, reachable, contiguous, definable, quantitatively significant and measurable "segments" of doctors, since these, according to the consolidated experience of Merqurio and probably of your informants, depend on the message and the therapeutic area.

So the doctor cannot be defined in a segment, ergo targeted, if it is not clear what the objective of the segmentation is.

But how can I define segments if I do not have any information that allows me to analyse the behavioural specifications on which to define the same profiles, given that these change with the very message I intend to send and with the therapeutic area (at least)?

Here comes the medical personas 
When sending an email you need to be sure that the recipient is the right person, i.e. that the content is right in message and form and that it fits in with the expectations and interests of the doctor. Medical personas are a way of identifying and defining the archetypes of: interest, behaviour, potential, access, type of relationship of each individual doctor. And these, we repeat, change depending on the perspective with which we intend to communicate with the doctor.

If you need epilepsy experts, only send to them and do not send to neurologists. If you want to promote a new drug you have to go to the innovators. So a new product in epilepsy requires specific medical personas. If you talk about hypertension, you have to do it only with general practitioners who are interested in listening to you. If you need to identify the segment, you don't just need specialisation and targeting, you need to go deep. You need medical personas.

You will avoid being seen as incorrect and over time the sender will be seen as a spammer. Reduced and targeted mailings cost more, but are more effective in the short and especially in the long term, because they are based on fairness and trust.