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You’re a Proofreader…Yes, You!

By Cindy Diamadi

Proofreading is one of my professional responsibilities, a critical component of ensuring my team gets quality materials out into the pharma communications space. But even if it isn’t a part of your responsibilities, I’d argue that we’re all proofreaders. Yes, even YOU there, the one saying, “I don’t proofread – I can’t proofread.” I bet you do, subconsciously at least; and you certainly can!

You’ve probably had this experience: you’re happily reading along, enjoying a book, online news article, blog post, or pamphlet for a local business, when you’re abruptly stopped in your tracks: your concentration has been hijacked by a typo, inconsistency, or a missing (or misused) word. As a reader, your flow has been interrupted. The intended message has been diluted. The person or company who created the content may just have dropped down a notch in your estimation. And…in that moment, you are a proofreader.

In your professional (and personal) communications, whether it’s for an audience of one or hundreds, make sure you don’t inadvertently tell readers they shouldn’t trust the veracity of your message.

Fortunately, there are some tried-and-true proofreading tips and tricks that even a nonprofessional proofreader can employ. And if you’re a professional proofreader, you’ve likely got some other tips and tricks of your own!

1.      Most-obvious-proofreading-tip award goes to: use spellcheck. But don’t be complacent – it won’t catch a word that’s spelled correctly but used incorrectly.

2.      Which leads to: reread for context; make sure the words that spellcheck didn’t flag are really the words you want. A few of some common “impersonators” include lead/led, then/than, and affect/effect.

3.      Check for holes in your message – did you drop a word? Be sure to fill in any blanks.

4.      Be extra diligent when typing someone’s name: spelling people’s names correctly is more important than almost anything else. Ever.

5.      If you copy and paste text from one format to another (from PDF to Word, for example), check that everything has translated properly.

6.      Tip #5 #6 is “Check those numbers” – they are easy to transpose or mistype, but errors in numbers aren’t always easy to spot.

7.      Don’t overlook paired punctuation – ensure both parts are there: parentheses, quotes, and brackets need to open and close.

8.      Get a buddy – your brain is smart and knows what you intended to type. A fresh look may uncover some hidden proofreading gems.

The more you train your eyes and brain to read for typos, the more confidence you’ll have in your communications hitting the intended target with the full intended force.

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Employee Spotlight Questionnaire: Shannon

Title: Email Campaign Manager

Years at MNG Direct: 1

What are three words that describe you?

Diligent, candid, practical

What’s your favorite MNG Direct core value?

Teamwork – everyone at MNG Direct is very generous with their time and knowledge. It makes for a great atmosphere at work and a better client experience.

What’s something that has influenced you?

Becoming a mom. Right after having our first child, I decided that if I was going to leave her to come to work everyday it better be for something good – a few months later I scored my first email gig. Having two little girls watch everything I do motivates me to always be my best.

What are some of your favorite blogs or professional websites?

·        DMA (Data & Marketing Association) - https://thedma.org/

·        Email Monday Blog - https://www.emailmonday.com/

·        HubSpot Marketing Blog - https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing

·        MarketingProfs - https://www.marketingprofs.com/

Tell us about your family!

My husband, Lou – a Travel Industry Consultant, and I have been happily married for 12 years and have two daughters. Erin is a sweet, inquisitive 8-year-old who loves art, science, and softball. Maura is a bold, fearless 5-year-old who loves soccer, her baby dolls, and bossing people around. We live in Northeast Philadelphia.

What’s something that you’re looking forward to?

Getting my hands on some of the cool things that our creative team is working on and seeing how it performs! And traveling – 2018’s trips include D.C., Mexico, and going down the shore as much as possible.

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Four Things I Learned as Interim Creative Director

By Robyn Garrett

For the last 4 months, I have been overseeing our Creative Studio and acting as Interim Creative Director. It’s been an amazing experience, but I am thrilled that Will Redmond has joined the team.  

My background is in writing and I have worked on content and strategy for hundreds of campaigns in my career – everything from the launch of the PS4 to the launch of some amazing new oncology products. So I have always thought a lot about creative (and I’ve dabbled in design for many years). But getting under the hood of digital design and video production has been illuminating. Here are some of the things I’ve learned:

It’s True – Everyone Can Be Creative

Legendary advertising ideator Alex Osborne is credited with inventing the term “brainstorming.” He wrote, “Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while discouragement often nips it in the bud.” This was extremely helpful to me over those 4 months. Great ideas can come from anywhere as long as we allow them to bloom. People are remarkably self-conscious but telling them that their ideas are valid allows them to flow, landing at a wider variety for selection.

Every Challenge Is an Opportunity

I’m an optimist and, honestly, I love a challenge. New technology or regulations can throw little wrenches our way. It’s our job to overcome those and find the best possible solution for our clients. Need sticky balance? No problem. Interactivity in your emails? Piece of cake. I like to always ask, “why not?”

It’s Essential to Be Passionate

This isn’t a job, it’s a vocation. Being passionate about the creative craft drives me and sometimes I can’t stop thinking about a new idea until I try it out. I love to make the best possible version of everything. Then I take it apart and so that I can make it a little bit better.

There’s No Rest for the Wicked

Wow, there is absolutely no room to stand still in the creative field right now. New software is launching or changing constantly, and consumer expectations are huge. I recently watched a fantastic AIGA talk about an important mindset change taking place in the design industry right now. It isn’t just about how things look, it’s about how they perform. Rapid prototyping is essential and if your agency isn’t doing it (or doesn’t know what it is), we should have a chat.

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Pharma Editing Life Rules

Cindy Diamadi

Like other rules in life, not all pharma editorial rules are black and white, and some might seem to be downright contradictory. Here are just a few rules that I try to keep in mind when working in pharma communications and marketing.

Don’t get too attached. Grammatical mores and editorial rules change – just check the evolution of “e-mail,” “Web site,” and “Internet” in the AMA Manual of Style (now “email,” “website,” and “internet”).

It’s important to be flexible. Although AMA rules change, each brand has its own style (wait – keep “e-mail,” “Web site,” and “Internet”!). When preparing marketing materials for different brands or across franchises, remember to follow the company’s style guides.

Know when to stick to your guns. Not everyone embraces the series comma – but unless it’s a hard and fast client style to not use it, push for its use: it really does improve readability.

Sometimes ya gotta loosen up. You work your best editorial magic on a concept, but the team wants to use the original text. So you speak your piece and move on…and when the client loves it just as it is, you celebrate with the team. We don’t always have to play by the book.

Consistency is a virtue. Back to those hyphens and initial caps: once you decide to go with a particular style, stick with it. Don’t distract your audience with inconsistency.

There’s beauty in order. Use conventional footnote symbols in their standard order and ensure there’s a corresponding footnote for every symbol used in your content. Sending your audience on a wild goose chase for a missing double-dagger footnote is a sure way to lead them away from your message.

A higher entity controls us all. It’s called the FDA, and no matter how engaging the content is that you’ve sweated over and whipped into shape, their regulations on pharma communications set the boundaries that we all work within. Pay heed to the client regulatory expert’s interpretation of the regs!

If you play in the pharma marketing and communications editing arena, what are your life rules?

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Delivering Physician-Level Data, a Marketer’s 2018 Focus

By Jeff Smyth

As expected, the digital trend continues in pharma. More change, more adaptation, and more education around tendencies are being applied. The goal: to gain that competitive edge and, of course, increase prescriptions. Where should marketers center their attention? They don’t need to look far; in fact, they can look in the mirror.

Across just about every industry, individuals are being targeted based on their own course of action. It’s a popular strategy – marketing automation makes tasks easier, while targeting a specific market can expand results. According to HubSpot, 64% of marketers say they saw the benefits of using marketing automation within the first 6 months of its implementation (Regalix, 2015).

This same strategy is being applied toward physicians to simplify HCP access to digital information. Marketing automation can shape the prescribing patterns of physicians, health activities of patients, and other behaviors in ways that influence results and revenues.

MarketingDirect® is a customer-centric marketing automation platform featuring five NewsChannels, including HCP Response, which is designed to ensure the right targets receive the right messages at the right frequency. All of this leads to a happier HCP/Sales Representative relationship. This strategic and data-driven solution is triggered based upon HCP activity, including prescribing activity, across the country.

Closing the gap and having the ability to use Rx behavior data to trigger intelligent messaging can effectively contribute to a marketer’s top goal: increasing brand awareness. At MNG Direct, we provide that analytical edge and have even been awarded for our efforts!

This opportunity could be just the answer for automating your disease-state messages in a personalized way and at a cadence based upon HCP preference. Consider taking advantage of what other marketers already have and increase your brand’s engagement by understanding and delivering physician-level data.

This is one of the Top 10 Pharma Marketing Predictions for 2018. For more information on making this prediction and others come true, we can help!

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Employee Spotlight: Krister

Title: VP, Customer Solutions

Years at MNG Direct: Just hit the 7-year mark.

What are three words that describe you?

Calm, focused, and curious.

What’s your favorite MNG Direct core value?

Personal Best; when you have a team of awesome people, with everyone giving their personal best, then really anything is achievable.

What’s something that has influenced you?

Learning from the innovative technology being applied in the consumer space. There is so much cool tech out there and it’s evolving so rapidly, the potential for how we can improve MNG Direct platforms is limitless. For example, take Netflix… Aside from reinventing how we consume streaming video, it’s amazing how they use their AI and a great user interface to create a content path that leads to exponential consumption (ie, binging). And as a user I’m okay with that because they’ve recommended videos that I really want to watch. The trick is how we can successfully apply this innovation within the pharma space and play by the rules…or, maybe help pharma create new rules.

What are some of your favorite blogs or professional websites?

Here are some blogs that I check on a regular basis:

- https://www.fiercepharma.com/ and https://endpts.com/ ...Pharma standards; keep up to date on latest news

- http://chiefmartec.com/ … Must give credit to Mike A for turning me on to this one; great content about marketing technology

- https://blog.intercom.com/ … Outside of the pharma space; a great blog with product development insight

- https://www.invisionapp.com/blog ... Interesting stuff about user experience and designing better products

- https://www.klick.com/health/blog/ … Good info related to pharma marketing from the agency perspective

- https://medium.com/ … Awesome app that allows you to curate the content that I really want to read

- https://mastersofscale.com/ … Fantastic podcast with interesting insight about scaling companies… Definitely more of a Silicon Valley spin on topics, but a lot of good nuggets for growing businesses

Tell us about your family!

We live in East Norriton, PA. My wife, Amanda, is an attorney at a law firm in Philadelphia doing civil defense work. I also have two sons: Logan, who just turned 3 and loves all things related to sports (he’s got a mean golf swing already); and Conor, our newest addition at just 3 months old.

What’s something that you’re looking forward to?

Warm weather and more sleep! And very much looking forward to help push the innovation envelope for MNG Direct products, figuring out how we can leverage new technologies to create better experiences around our content and platforms.

Find Krister on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristerhammar/

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Behind the Scenes at Our January Hackathon

In the fast-paced world of the pharma industry, how can you be sure that you are making the most impact? There is a variety of media, so which is the right medium to choose? Well MNG Direct has found an answer to those questions in a truly innovative new solution that is launching this spring.

On Wednesday, January 10, 2018, the MNG Direct Technology Team gathered together to work on this new solution in the form of a Hackathon.

What is a Hackathon, you ask? A Hackathon is an event where a group of computer programmers, graphic designers, and project managers come together to collaborate intensively on a specific software project.

Arriving at an off-site location, the team began the day with a presentation from new Chief Technical Officer Mark Stutzman and Technical Project Manager Pat Videll. The introduction included mini-team breakouts and the goals for the Hackathon. With a clear understanding, the MNG Direct Technology Team went to work.

The energy in the room was electric. Individuals yelled out excitedly when new features or bug fixes had been completed and were ready for the Testing Team to do their thing. The Technology Team was so engrossed in what they were doing they decided to work through lunch. Now that’s dedication!

Multiple check-ins occurred throughout the day where team members would briefly describe their progress and current hurdles. If someone was stuck for too long, teammates gladly jumped in to help with the problem. Monte Bertrand became the star MVP of the day by aiding more teammates than anyone else.

The clock struck 5:00 PM, signifying the end of the Hackathon. Each member of the Technology Team got up in front of the room and shared all they had accomplished during the event. The day’s biggest hit came from Steve Caputo and Anna Endres who designed and implemented a like button and counter for articles and marketing materials.

The future of pharma marketing is coming – stay tuned! 

By Andrew Kibe

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Is Pharma Capable of Providing the Amazon Experience?

Closed Loop Marketing, or CLM, requires understanding not only who your customers are, but using that knowledge to engage with them in a continuous feedback loop on a 1:1 basis. - Capgemini Consulting Life Sciences

When we talk about CLM, we’re really talking about the phenomenon that is The Amazon Experience. I’m sure you’re all familiar with it – everyone knows and loves Amazon. But what does that mean? In marketing, it means that every time you interact with the content on a site or that’s delivered to you via email, it learns more about you and your preferences, your wants and needs, and provides exactly the experience and products you’re looking for before you even know you need them.

Is it creepy, maybe? Or just convenient?

As we welcome 2018, I think we all know and accept that Big Brother is no longer just a concept created by George Orwell, but our reality when we use technology today.

We understand that when we’re on a website, analysts track where we click, what we spend extra time reading, and what we may skip over. All links in promotional email you receive are specially coded to see which call to action motivated you to click. And because of this insight, marketers can provide customers with more tailored content on the right channel. Customers are happier, promotional costs decrease, and the relationship between the marketer and the customer changes from a one-way street to a two-way conversation.

Capgemini Consulting created a model showing how companies can evolve from basic content and channel management to predictive analysis, a la Amazon. This model provides a high-level framework for assessing your current analytic capabilities and makes the development and implementation of such a model more manageable. You can learn more about it here.

Now, the multibillion dollar question becomes: Is this really possible for pharma? Can we gain a more complete picture of our healthcare providers so that we can anticipate the information and updates they’re looking for, deliver relevant and timely content, yet still maintain the integrity of our product label in compliance with government regulations? Can our websites get smarter when healthcare providers navigate through, so that we can show them content related to what they reviewed on their last visit, and phase out nonapplicable information?

In a word, yes. And pharmaceutical companies are taking greater strides now than ever before to make this possible. But the reality of such an undertaking is fraught with numerous (necessary) obstacles that keep our consumers safe and maintain our reputation across the globe. It hasn’t been and will not be an easy or quick transition, considering the many complex layers in our industry.

So how can you start on the path to providing an Amazon Experience to your customers today?

The first step is to start leveraging analytics. It’s a sad fact that we don’t know enough about what our customers need so we’re not putting out content they find valuable. Redundant efficacy studies are no longer cutting it – they want a lot more from us. Namely, they’re looking for a partner to come in and work with them to:

Help improve patient outcomes.

Provide support to help them to do a better job.

Create new ways to stay up to date on information without being sold something. 

Get easy access to information on their preferred channel in a format they like.

If we look back at the CLM Analytics Maturity Framework, taking a thorough inventory of all pieces in market and analyzing their effectiveness is a crucial first step for pharma. Sure, we have tons of study information and efficacy data to share, but healthcare professionals are not responding to repetitive efficacy messaging by altering their behavior. The data shows that this information is not meeting their long-term needs.

If you’re working with an agency, chances are you’re aware of the basic statistics for your tactics: open rates, click-through, unsubscribes, bounces. But CLM demands that we go one step further. We need to use this information to learn about our customers, listen to them, measure their opinions of our marketing strategy, and evaluate results. We need to let customers tell us about themselves through this data and respond to it rather than simply pushing out the messages that we think they need to hear.

If our goal is to improve our customers’ experience by providing a more predictive marketing campaign and deliver what they truly value, we must start by identifying what the customer wants. We need to transform the content messages provided to us into something that will allow us to meet their needs, rather than our own yearly objectives. And we must give it to them in a timely, relevant fashion.

For more on this topic, check out The CLM Conundrum: Three Pillars of Success.

By Stephanie Wieland

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Alexa, what is the dosing for…

January 15th, 2018

By Robyn Garrett

This holiday season, Amazon reported record-breaking sales of millions of Alexa-powered Echo and FireTV devices. In fact, the Echo Dot was the best-selling product from any manufacturer in any category across all of Amazon. It was also reported that consumers purchased 6.8 million Google Home devices between October and December of 2017.

But HCPs are technology-averse, right? Wrong. In 2017, DRG reported that 23% of physicians use devices like Alexa in a professional setting. They enjoy using the devices to save them time and to keep their hands free. “I ask specific, clinically related questions that I need information on,” said one respondent. Another, “It helps that I do not have to take off my gloves.” As of publication, there are 842 Alexa skills for “health” but only 37 for “medicine.”

As these numbers continue to rise, the possibilities seem endless. Many healthcare providers are open to using a voice assistant to quickly check drug information like dosing, contraindications, and costs. “It would have to come from a reputable source,” said Rebecca Gretsch, a bone marrow transplant nurse at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center. Others are interested in how a voice assistant could read charts or interact with centralized patient monitoring.

Of course, if Alexa or similar devices are going to truly act as virtual assistants for HCPs, protecting patient health information will be critical. While Alexa is not compliant yet, HIPAA Journal stated last October, “that could soon change.” The publication was transparent on what it would take: “All the basics are all in place, but until Alexa, and the Lex platform on which it is based, incorporate appropriate safeguards to meet the requirements of the HIPAA Security Rule, the voice recognition technology will not be able to be used by HIPAA-covered entities in conjunction with protected health information.” With that clear direction and Amazon’s investment in the adoption of Alexa, it could be a matter time before we can feel confident in the compliance of these devices.  

This is an exciting opportunity for pharma marketers to take control of a conversation that’s being had in a new medium. If you’re working on a brand, you should think about the questions HCPs are likely to ask about your product and know what kind of answers they’re likely to get. Think about developing branded and unbranded Alexa skills that are useful to HCPs. Most importantly, think about how this fits into the HCP’s overall experience with your brand.

Interested in creating an innovative customer experience for your HCPs? Let’s talk.

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11 Podcasts for Savvy Pharma Marketers

It takes a lot to be a good marketer, amirite? Like the healthcare providers we serve, we’re constantly bombarded with new information. Whether you’re in pharma or biotech, podcasts can be a great way to stay on top of all of that news. Their hardworking hosts help us sift through the clutter and entertain us along the way.

Since we’re working at the intersection of science and communication, this list includes topics that will help you stay well-rounded and informed. From new molecules to new marketing channels, spend a little bit of your time in the car (or at the gym!) on these and you’ll find everyone leaning in to hear what you have to say.

1.      Novel Targets

If you enjoy listening to NPR on Saturday afternoons, you’ll like Novel Targets for the great production value. Each 30- to 40-minute episode goes deep on a specific topic and includes interviews with multiple global thought leaders. The high-science information is presented in a straightforward and helpful way that will give you context no matter what therapeutic area you’re in.

2.      Marketing Over Coffee

Marketing Dive claims that they’ll make you the smartest marketer in the room, but I never feel more informed than I do after an MOC commute. Those of us in the pharma community can be inspired to dream big listening to the absolute latest coming out of the marketing technology sector.  

3.      Tech Tonics

This is a great podcast that will help you feel connected to everything that is happening with technology in healthcare. Their interviews cover a wide range of topics from artificial intelligence to the fail-fast thinking of Silicon Valley. These are longer episodes than most of the podcasts on this list, but if you have the time you’ll learn a lot about how healthcare is embarking on the technological frontier.  

4.      Copyblogger FM

If you’re a passionate storyteller, you’ll love Copyblogger. Yes, Sonia Simone is mainly speaking to the blogger audience, but with the success of rich content marketing we can all learn something from her approach. My favorite episode, “Advice for Poets, Advice for Killers,” got me hooked and I look forward to this one every week.

5.      Quicksand

This is a new podcast that offers a weekly digest of news from the pharma and biotech industries. It’s the kind of podcast that is read from a script, but if you can deal with the dry tone you’ll be rewarded with 5 to 10 minutes of reliable and recent news. My advice for author Robert Cormack? Find yourself a co-host and take it off-book. We’re interested but we can’t be falling asleep on our commutes!

6.      Human Proof of Concept

This is a wonderful podcast featuring interviews with the movers and shakers of the biotech industry. Sadly, host Janelle Anderson has recently gone on hiatus, but I’d still recommend checking out all of the recent interviews.

7.      The Bio Report

Daniel Levine asks the important questions that we all think about when we look in the mirror: Are we doing the right thing? Are we improving the lives of patients? Hear him discuss everything from “digital pills” with George Savage from Proteus to drug-resistant bacteria with Paul Grint from AmpliPhi.  

8.      RARECast

Yes, Daniel Levine has two spots on this list! This podcast features the same format and hard-hitting journalism approach as the Bio Report, but with a focus on rare diseases. With the huge boom we’re seeing in this area of medicine, it helps to spend 20 minutes a week keeping up with new developments.  

9.      The Science of Social Media

This is a great one to think about whether you are a social media marketing expert or novice. In each 10- to 15-minute episode, they talk about how social media features are evolving, what that means for marketers, and what is working for brands right now. It’s a great way to stay current on an important frontier for the pharma/biotech space.

10.   The Brainfluence Podcast

Roger Dooley’s book Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing is alive in this weekly 30- to 40-minute podcast. He shares fascinating insights on why consumers do what they do and how you can better understand unconscious behavior for marketing initiatives. Check out the “Print, Digital, and Your Brain” episode for immediately applicable tips on how to get great value out of print (hint: it might just be AR!).

11.   Crack the Customer Code

Let’s end on something short and sweet. This customer-experience podcast comes in 10- to 15-minute episodes and helps us think about the larger customer journey that exists beyond the many different tactics that can take up our focus. Adam Toporek and Jeannie Walters cover useful topics – I particularly enjoyed the recent episode on operationalizing new channels that discussed creating that “seamless” experience that we know HCPs are looking for.

Happy listening!

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Marketing Evolution in the Life Sciences

“I’m in love with science because I know that we are winning.”

 No matter how many times I reread this quote from Jim Senft’s The Power of Storytelling from the Content Marketing for Life Sciences conference last week, I still get goosebumps.

 A few days have passed since the conference and I’m finding myself replaying bits and pieces as I go about my daily tasks. Are we allowing customer insights to drive our content? How can we better leverage content strategy paradigms for our customers? Are healthcare professionals who engage with our content being taken to the right place to change their behavior?

 As the Content Coordinator for MNG Direct, I can tell you that we have been actively taking steps to be a more strategic partner for our clients. Our data-driven multichannel marketing solutions have been the answer to diminishing access opportunities for reps and have helped companies target their messages to those who will benefit most.

 But even as I write that, I’m reminded of another conference quote, this time from Deb Nevins of Boehringer Ingelheim. “Stop talking about yourself all the time! It’s not all about pharma, but we love to talk about ourselves and how we’re better than everyone else. That’s not really what the physician needs.”

 Oops. I’ll stop there.

 If you walked away with nothing else, the one message that resonated throughout the conference was to put the patient first. Buddy Scalera, a content strategist from Parsippany, NJ, said it best:

 “A person on a user journey wants to achieve things. They want their life to have meaning. And suddenly they are diagnosed with a lifelong chronic health condition. What does that person want? Think about it – they want to go back to normal, they want to move on with their life. Their user journey stops here at the conflict point – something got in their way – and they need something. And you might have something, but it’s not your autobiography they want to know about. We need to create content that helps them understand how we create conflict resolution. The only thing that patients care about within your content is how it can help them continue their user journey.”

 In our modern world, there are no more gatekeepers holding back information – we can search for whatever we’re looking for. And there are options to get around disruptive ads or unwanted content. Most importantly, consumer attitudes toward digital media are changing as The Four Horsemen (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google) continually influence user expectations - we now demand a better and more tailored experience every time we interact with content.

 As a result, the rules of content development are shifting as we work to meet these new expectations from our clients and healthcare network. Our analytics are improving by the minute to make sure that we’re giving customers what they want on the channel they prefer. Because regardless of how each of us interacts with content, we all benefit from the new research our fast-paced industry puts out daily, and we need to know what’s happening in our field to stay ahead of the curve.

 In the life sciences, WE ARE winning. Our technology is helping us get there faster than ever before. And to give our customers the edge they need to stay current in today’s world, we have only one choice: EVOLVE.

http://exlevents.com/content-marketing-for-life-sciences-conference/

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Data Infused with Intelligence

Like Artificial Intelligence, MNG Direct platforms and solutions are addressing an unmet need in today’s pharma/biotech marketing. Click here to see our ad in this recent Medical Marketing and Media e-book. #MNGDirect #datainfusedmarketing #pharmaAI

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MNG Direct Announces the Launch of MNG Labs as an Innovation Incubator for the Company's Industry-Leading Multichannel Marketing Automation Solutions

BENSALEM, Pa., Jan. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MNG Direct, a leading provider of multichannel communications solutions delivered through marketing automation platforms, today announced it has launched MNG Labs to accelerate innovation. The focus of MNG Labs will be homegrown platform development that will elevate the company's core expertise in data engineering, content engineering, and technology-platform engineering. MNG Labs will also serve as the nucleus for the organization's Customer Solutions center of excellence, designed to ensure alignment of the future innovations with emerging customer needs.

Drawing from the extensive experience of MNG Direct in connecting brands with healthcare professionals (HCPs) via multichannel marketing campaigns, virtual events, and collaborative communities, MNG Labs has established its charter as an "innovation incubator." As such, MNG Labs will focus upon three core areas of innovation: enhancing the company's vast HCP database with layers of behavioral intelligence; leveraging emerging technologies to engineer content that will maximize engagement and insight generation; and evolving the MNG Direct core technology foundation through best-of-breed partnerships, in conjunction with the firm's internal product development efforts. These innovations will power the MNG Direct mission to provide the life sciences industry with novel, broad-application solutions for addressing today's marketing automation needs across the commercial, economic, compliance, and clinical landscape.

"After a year of collaborating with the MNG Direct leadership team, it's clear to me that the organization possesses a powerful combination of data-driven reach potential, content engineering capabilities, and automated distribution platforms, exclusively focused upon healthcare professional audiences," stated Steve Wray, MNG Direct CEO. "Given the rapid expansion and diversification of our customer relationships in 2016, we have recognized that marketing automation, as a discipline, is rapidly becoming a focal area for our life sciences customers. Our vision, through the formation of MNG Labs, is to leverage our unique capability to effectively engineer data, content, and marketing technology platforms to produce engagement metrics that continue to surpass industry benchmarks."

"Our internal beta for MNG Labs has produced a robust set of innovations while demonstrating a high level of agility among our development and engineering teams," said Mike Anthony, Chief Solutions Officer and executive sponsor of MNG Labs. "The most impressive part of this effort has been customer receptivity to the advances we are making related to intelligence-driven programs, along with their desire to extend the shelf life and multichannel applicability of content.  I'm very encouraged by the openness of our customers to collaborative innovation efforts. As part of an organization that prides itself on being customer-focused, I'm convinced that our newly formed Customer Solutions center of excellence, with MNG Labs at the core, will enhance the value of partnership with MNG Direct at the brand and enterprise level."

The solutions and core technologies that are the foundation of MNG Direct will also continue to evolve through this framework, including the company's widely used MarketingDirect™, EventDirect™, and CommunityDirect™ platforms. "We're excited to see that new applications of our platforms, including those pertaining to payor-driven initiatives and clinical development relationships, have emerged within our portfolio during the past year," stated Wray. "Consistent with this desired trend, MNG Labs will evaluate future innovations through a lens that encompasses a wide variety of transactions across this industry landscape."

About MNG Direct

Headquartered in Bensalem, PA, MNG Direct serves over 170 life sciences brands and partners with a majority of the top 25 biopharmaceutical companies. MNG Direct designs and deploys data-driven multichannel marketing solutions that provide unsurpassed target HCP reach and the highest engagement rates in the industry for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device brands. For more information on MNG Direct, visit us at http://www.mngdirect.com.

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Innovation at the Other End of the Pipeline

By Jamie Peck

The final weeks of the year are predictably filled with critical analysis and prognostication by experts across the life sciences industry. Among the most scrutinized elements of this environment is the product pipeline – arguably, the most widely recognized key indicator of innovation and progress for the industry. In the wake of a protracted period of gloom-and-doom forecasts associated with the consequences of the patent cliff, and the convenient labeling of life sciences as a regulation-burdened laggard, there is rationale for a much more positive outlook. The most recent reports on the industry’s late-stage pipeline should give us reason to celebrate what should be obvious – that despite its unique challenges, the life sciences vertical is among the most innovative industries on the planet. In fact, the top ten of Forbes’ 2016 ranking of The World’s Most Innovative Companies includes three life sciences companies, and the current Global Innovation Management (GIM) Institute ranking of Most Innovative Industries included the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries among the world’s top ten.

Reimagining and Reinventing

A snapshot of the 2017 biopharmaceutical pipeline highlights the industry’s ability to envision and implement a markedly different combination of purpose, processes, and possibilities. The transformation that has taken place over a relatively brief period is profound in that the emerging pipeline reflects consistent innovation themes that will shape the next generation of medicine: prioritizing personalization, sharpening focus on specialization, renewing receptivity to combination therapy investigation, and integrating diagnostics and drugs to create more holistic solutions. Each of these areas holds significant promise to improve outcomes and to unlock further clinical breakthroughs.

Translating the Innovation Flow to Market

At the other end of the pipeline – the commercial side of the equation – innovation in the industry has not been nearly as transformational. Many of our commercialization practices are remnants from decades ago, indicative of a time, place, and market environment that was dramatically different from today’s attention-challenged, information-saturated, and digitally fragmented world. Perhaps it’s time to take a cue from the opposite end of the pipeline and apply parallel set of innovation themes to power a new era of commercialization and communication. The parallels are easily translatable:

• Personalization: leveraging the growing repository of customer-level data and intelligence now at our fingertips, there are increasingly fewer barriers to making communication with healthcare professionals more personal

• Specialization: armed with the intelligence that behavioral data can provide, we can (and should) engineer content that increases relevance to the customers’ specialized needs

• Combination therapies: just as researchers less frequently seek the “silver bullet” solution to disease states, marketers must adapt to a multichannel world by using propensity data and UX design to produce the greatest impact

• Holistic solutions: in most verticals, the campaigns of yesterday’s marketing practice are being converted into content marketing through platforms that enable greater marketing automation

Simple Solutions for Complex Times

Innovation isn’t easy – with it come countless challenges and inevitable failures. But when the innovation journey produces concepts and products capable of transforming a market landscape, it’s worth celebrating and replicating. Taking the lead from the research end of the life sciences pipeline, the time has come to realize the promise of engineering data, content, and technology. When these innovations flow seamlessly, they serve to simplify the execution and elevate the impact of our communications and relationships with healthcare professionals.

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Engineered to Engage for Better Outcomes

By Tyler Dunn

Earlier this month, my colleague Jamie Peck wrote a great article about Engagement Engineering as a solution to one of industry’s greatest challenges: HCP reach. But it’s not just the needs of the pharmaceutical industry that are met by engineered engagement; HCPs, too, have a lot to gain from better, more intelligent, and targeted communications from industry. In their never-ending pursuit of better patient outcomes, HCPs will continue to need new information in a timely fashion to inform their decision-making. But how do we provide that information in a way that’s effective (ie, doesn’t drown the individual in thousands of unopened e-mails, post cards, voicemails, post-it notes from gatekeepers about the sales rep that just won’t leave, etc, etc)? It begins with the right message, crafted by professionals, provided to the right target, defined by behavior, and delivered at the right time, backed by data. When these stars align, HCPs get the information they need to provide the best patient care possible. And that’s the goal.

To truly improve patient outcomes, it’s critical to be smart about our marketing solutions because HCP reach is more difficult than it’s ever been before. A ton of research released in the last year has focused on the still-present ripple effects of the 2009 update to the PhRMA Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals and the 2010 Sunshine Act on the HCP relationship with pharma sales reps. While it’s difficult to pin down an exact figure, the data certainly suggest that a significant percentage of HCPs are becoming more reluctant to meet with sales reps. As a result, multichannel marketing has grown rapidly in the healthcare industry, with an increasingly heavier focus on non-personal promotion. The result of this increase is a virtual (and paper) tsunami of information clogging inboxes, mailboxes, and ultimately, in many cases, recycling bins.

While we know that sales rep access will certainly continue to be a growing challenge for industry, a recent Medscape article reports that even in practices that officially prohibit pharma sales rep visits, a portion of HCPs rebelliously continue to allow sales visits. This is important, because it proves something we’ve known all along: there is something that HCPs need from pharma reps, and it’s not free meals, branded pens, or a full tank of gas. It’s information. Newer, better, more up-to-date, and relevant information. And it’s easy to understand why; along with the deluge of articles on dwindling sales forces and growing proportions of no- and low-see physicians has been a growing share of the industry news cycle focusing on value in healthcare, specifically as it relates to qualitative and quantitative patient outcomes.

A major character in these news stories is MACRA – the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015. On October 14, 2016, CMS released the final MACRA rule on physician payment, which ostensibly represents a big step away from volume-based practice in the direction of value-based reimbursements for physicians through a Quality Payment Program incentivizing effective use of available resources to provide the best patient outcomes possible. On the managed care side, PBMs are moving forward with outcomes- or value-based pricing and contracting strategies, especially on newer, high-cost drugs with as of yet unproven real-world benefits. There is a lot of controversy over these value-centric measures (especially MACRA – the first line of this article can serve as the bold, italicized underscore of that statement), but regardless of your stance on MACRA, VBID (value-based insurance design), or any other catchy acronym, the fact remains the physicians will continue to focus more and more on patient outcomes (not only because their paycheck may depend on it).

Where do we, as marketers, fit into this value- and outcomes-centric puzzle? We know what HCPs need: better patient outcomes start with convenient delivery of relevant, new information. The challenge is that there is a lot of “new” and not nearly enough “convenient.” A nurse practitioner interviewed by Medscape explains that rep visits occurring over her lunch hour are even more highly valued because they don’t “encroach on her patient time.” There are two factors at play here – one is that this industry moves and innovates so fast that “new” information doesn’t stay new for long, so it can be all too easy to fall behind (as I write, I have 371 unread e-mails in my pharma and marketing news folders from the past few days alone). The other factor is that HCPs are extremely busy professionals with numerous important tasks competing for their attention. The interplay of these two factors creates a need and an opportunity – HCPs need new information, and if they can get it at the right time, they can act on it in the most appropriate way possible (and provide better patient care as a result).

As qualified, savvy marketers, we should have the right message, and if we take the advice of my colleagues David Mountain and Anthony Hillman, we can use data to know when and how to deliver our messages for optimal target engagement. This is all part of Engagement Engineering: the right message, to the right target, at the right time. HCPs might recognize the cadence here – it sounds a lot like “the right drug, for the right patient, at the right time.” We have the right message and we have the timing down to a literal science, but let’s take that one step further and focus on the right target.

At MNG Direct, we put a lot of collective brainpower and data analysis into sending our messages to the right targets. Our ability to use data intelligently to put the information individual HCPs need right in front of their eyes is astounding. The individuality of our targeting is crucial if we’re going to have a real impact on improving patient outcomes. A community oncologist who has never written a prescription for a CDK4/6 inhibitor has different informational needs than does his or her colleague on the other side of town who has been writing your competitor’s brand for months. At MNG Direct, we can use behavior data to drive our targeting so that we’re providing the right information to the right individual, not only at the time when they will be most receptive to receiving it, but also at the time when it’s most relevant to them as an individual. Communicating new updates on trial data, formulary changes, or a new indication is more relevant and can have a far greater impact when it’s intelligent and follows behavioral triggers.

I have always been a proponent of more and better information, so the importance of this impact can’t be overstated: HCPs with more and better information can make better decisions, and those decisions have real, life-changing impacts on patients. Engagement Engineering is critical to helping healthcare professionals make the most informed decision possible for their patients. To put it simply: HCPs with all the facts provide better patient care and achieve better outcomes.

HCPs need and want more information to drive better decision-making. The key is to get the right information to the right target at the time when they need it, when they want (or have the time to receive) it, and when it’s most relevant to them. If we can do this, we can provide HCPs with the tools they need to do what they do best – improve patient care.

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Healthcare Provider (HCP) Customer Journey

By Duffy Hutchinson

Marketers who understand the impact of the HCP customer journey are more successful in driving impact from brand messaging deployed in the marketplace.  In the early days of digital and non-personal promotion (NPP), HCP and other stakeholder email address databases were not as developed or robust as they are today.  At that time, a primary focus for NPP was strictly reach where campaigns were largely deployed by blanketing therapeutic categories with messaging that could have benefited from a more personalized and coordinated approach. Since then, the approach to NPP has become far more sophisticated, along with a shift away from reach as the sole focus, which now includes engagement as the primary currency.

The customer journey is all about the experience that an HCP has with a company or brand.  This customer journey truly matters.  In deploying NPP, we are trying to develop a digital relationship with an HCP, and we’re doing so by having a digital conversation.  Just as is the case with a live conversation, the digital conversation needs to feel sincere and genuine.  That is far more difficult to accomplish in a digital fashion.  One major advantage in the industry today is having the ability to implement and execute integrated campaign architecture across platforms and solutions in a way that both meets a brand’s strategic imperatives, while still providing a seamless customer journey that feels coordinated, genuine, and sincere.  The reason this is important is because NPP is no longer just about reach, it’s about engagement.  Without engagement, we can’t change behaviors that drive incremental revenue, which drive ROI on a marketer’s spend.  Driving engagement across our platforms and solutions is a core expertise of MNG Direct.

A proven formula for impact includes a combination of reach, engagement, and optimization:

Reach—Include a robust database of HCP’s and other stakeholders including NP’s, PA’s and Nurses.  On average, we typically achieve >90% list match against a brand target list.

Engagement—Achieve superior engagement rates by crafting the appropriate campaign architecture, which is often deployed in an integrated fashion using complementary platforms and solutions across the engagement continuum.  Our solutions offer timely, relevant, and personalized attributes that drive higher than industry average engagement rates.

Optimization—Commit fully to a data-driven NPP approach.  Our data analytics, advanced segmentation, and intelligent automation, deliver an informed approach to NPP deployment, whether using scheduled or triggered campaigns to targeted HCP’s.

Careful control of variables in the campaign architecture such as the placement, cadence, frequency, and integration of individual solutions allows a seamless customer journey and experience for the HCP audience, which delivers optimal engagement and impact for clients in a cost effective manner.

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Sticking With E-Mail In Its Golden Years

By Dave Mountain

Nothing’s gonna touch you in these Golden Years. – David Bowie 

Consider the humble e-mail.  Like the great Bowie, they first hit the scene in the early ’70s.  Many of your targeted healthcare providers (HCPs) have been getting them for decades, with domains that go back to the early ages of Internet usage. They may get over a hundred of them in a workday, from professional to personal, and consider whether or not to read any specific message in seconds. When compared to the impact of other channels, e-mail does not seem like it can be heroes for your marketing needs. 

So it may surprise you to learn that we are in E-mail’s Golden Years – because while the medium clearly has challenges, where e-mail stands in the market has actually gotten better in the past 5 years. Which is not true for many marketing and advertising channels. 

Television’s reach, ratings, and engagement are down sharply, especially for younger HCPs, who have always lived in a world where they could skip the ads or look at a second screen. Visits from brand reps are increasingly rare due to regulatory and accessibility-related constraints. Print ads require, well, print, and page counts and market penetration have shrunk as users have gone digital. Websites have their own set of challenges, from viewability, fraud, and ad-blocking, to falling engagement rates. Even channels like outdoor and terrestrial radio are eroding, with eyes and ears going to mobile devices.  

Distraction and fragmentation rule the day. 

But not for e-mail. 

Our classic channel is the most used utility for mobile. HCPs see or triage more e-mails on mobile than on desktop, laptop, or tablet combined, which means the channel is always on. While you can do more than one task at a time on a phone, you don’t share your screen when reading an e-mail. So every e-mail open in pharma is to an HCP who has committed real attention to your message and has shown they want to learn more. For as long as they engage with your message, you have full consent mindshare. Even the act of just reading a subject line, without an open, can increase brand awareness and prescription activity, especially if you send with optimal frequency and dayparting. 

The good news doesn’t stop there. E-mail costs are well-contained. It’s not hard to test creative or other elements, and in many therapeutic categories, engagement and list sizes are large enough to allow for fast insights from testing. While you have to view all data with the correct amount of skepticism and use trusted providers, incidents of fraud are very rare. Your readers aren’t any more or less distracted than they’ve always been, and responsive coding and improving bandwidth means that multiscreen use does not usually cause rendering or playability issues. So you can let the data take the guesswork out of creative choices.  

In an upcoming post, I’ll go into future opportunities and challenges for the channel. But in the here and now, there’s never been a better time to send e-mail to a targeted HCP list.  

Never look back, walk tall, act fine. - Bowie