Digital Doses: Leveraging Pharma Email Marketing 

Let’s face it: doctors are busy. They have patients to see, treatments to plan, and research to keep up with. The last thing they need is a sales rep interrupting their day. 

But as a pharmaceutical company, you still need to get the word out about your latest products and answer doctors’ questions. 

So, what’s the best way to do that? Pharma email marketing.

It’s the practice of sending targeted, informative emails directly to healthcare professionals. These emails can include product updates, clinical data, and answers to frequently asked questions. 

Join us as we explore the benefits and strategies of effective email marketing in the pharmaceutical industry. 

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Benefits of Pharma Email Marketing for Pharmaceutical Businesses

Doctors, like the rest of us, live in a digital world. When they need information, they turn to the internet. They also check their emails multiple times a day. 

This makes email marketing a perfect way to reach them. It’s non-intrusive, meaning you aren’t disrupting their busy schedules. Instead, you’re providing them with valuable information they can read when they have the time, without the pressure of an in-person meeting.

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Email Marketing Success Starts with Establishing Deliverability  

In email marketing, you want to make sure subscribers see your messages in their primary inbox because emails that end up in the spam folder often get overlooked.

Your deliverability rate shows what percentage of the emails you send successfully reach the subscribers’ inboxes. The higher this rate, the more likely your subscribers will see and interact with your emails.

At Campaign Refinery, we put deliverability first. We’ve designed all our features and tools to improve your email success. From automatic list cleaning to engagement gamification and sender monitoring, we work hard to make sure every email counts.

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Pharma Email Marketing Best Practices 

Email marketing for pharmaceutical companies has its nuances, but the basic principles aren’t very different from healthcare email marketing.

In a nutshell, you need to build an audience — doctors and other healthcare professionals in your case — that values your content. Then, engage and grow this audience by understanding subscribers’ needs and sending tailored messages to address their questions and concerns. 

Once you establish trust with your audience, you can occasionally send them promotional messages. This approach helps maintain a healthy relationship with your subscribers.

Let’s review the top practices to optimize your email marketing initiatives for maximum effectiveness.

Avoid Cold Emailing 

Investigating the best approaches for pharma in email more closely, we found many services advertising “outbound email marketing” and “email outreach” for the pharmaceutical industry. Although some of these services may be legitimate, they often involve cold emailing.

Cold emailing means sending unsolicited messages to people who may be interested in your products — healthcare professionals in the case of pharma companies.

Cold outreach can seriously harm your company’s reputation because people often view unsolicited emails negatively. You’ll get more spam complaints, and over time, ISPs will start sending your emails straight to the spam folder. 

And there’s more. The practice can get you in trouble with the law in many places. Recently, Gmail and Yahoo cold emailing, and it’s likely that other service providers will follow suit soon. 

Grow Your Pharma Email Audience Without Spamming

Building a healthy email list takes time, and there are no shortcuts. Your list should only include subscribers who genuinely want to receive content from your brand. This approach is the only way for your email marketing efforts to yield results in the long-term. 

Keep Your List Clean

Growing your list organically is just one part of the process. Sometimes, subscribers lose interest in your content or sign up just to receive your lead magnet offer. So, you need to make sure only people who really want to be on your list are there.

Segment Your List

As a pharmaceutical business, you likely have a diverse audience, ranging from individual doctors to B2B customers like hospitals and clinics.

These groups of subscribers have different interests. For example, a cardiologist may want to learn about the latest advancements in heart medications, while the Dean of Medicine at a large hospital likely wants information on overall healthcare trends and new service offers. 

If you send these people the same content, you’ll likely see a drop in engagement because it is not relevant to everyone.

Email segmentation means dividing your audience into smaller, more specific groups so you can tailor your messaging to meet their unique needs.

At Campaign Refinery, our powerful tag-based segmentation engine sets us apart. Unlike other services that use multiple lists for different segments, our system lets you tag subscribers to sort them into segments. This means no messy, overlapping lists — just easy tagging.

We’ve also launched a new feature called Audience Groups. This lets you combine several segments into one group, making it easier to send targeted broadcast emails and run drip campaigns to the right people, all from one place.

Personalize Every Email 

Segmentation categorizes audiences by similar interests, but email personalization focuses on each subscriber’s unique preferences. 

What do they need? What excites them? And what keeps them coming back? These are the questions you need to answer about each subscriber. 

Luckily, though, you don’t have to create each email separately.

Merge fields let you include specific details about your subscribers directly in your emails. For instance, if you know a healthcare professional has just earned a new certification, you can address them by name, congratulate them, and suggest further educational materials.

For more sophisticated personalization, use dynamic content. Analyze your website and email marketing data to find out which content each subscriber prefers. Then, send them more of that type of content. 

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Consider Regulatory Compliance 

Every email marketing platform should help you comply with privacy regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR. However, pharma email marketing involves additional layers of complexity due to strict industry regulations.

As a pharmaceutical company, you have to work closely with your compliance department to make sure your email marketing materials adhere to all the legal standards.

FDA Regulations for Prescription Drugs

In the US, the FDA closely regulates the promotion of prescribed drugs. When using email marketing to promote these products, your email content has to comply with FDA guidelines. 

FTC Regulations for OTC Drugs

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Healthcare providers in the US also have to comply with HIPAA’s stringent regulations. 

The Act has strict guidelines for storing and transmitting protected health information (PHI), which includes patient records and any details that could reveal a person’s identity.

For example, you need express authorization from each patient to send their private information over email, and you need strong email encryption when doing so. 

Make sure your marketing emails don’t contain any PHI. Failing to protect this information can lead to hefty fines for your company, ranging from $50,000 to $1,500,000.

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Pharma Email Marketing Examples 

Your email marketing strategy can involve a variety of messages tailored to your products, audience segments, and marketing goals. Some types of emails are more commonly used because they tend to resonate well with readers.

Let’s see how each email type works. 

Welcome Emails 

Whether you run a pharmacy selling medicine to patients or a pharmaceutical company marketing to doctors and healthcare professionals, you need to start your interactions with a warm welcome. 

A welcome email is designed to give the reader a sneak peek into your business, what you do, and who works for you. Thank the subscriber for joining your list. You can introduce your team, who you serve, and what kind of products you offer. 

The key to crafting a perfect welcome email is to be warm and inviting. Even for B2B emails, you can put aside the formalities and paint a professional yet human picture of your business. 

This welcome email starts with a thank you message and an introduction to their products. But it doesn’t stop there. They offer a 10 percent discount on their product for joining their email list. 

Product Launch Emails 

When you launch a new product at your company, let your subscribers know about it!

Start with a catchy subject line that makes the reader want to open the email. In the email, emphasize how the new product can solve specific health issues or improve patient care. 

Explain the unique features and the scientific backing behind your product to build trust and credibility. Finish with a straightforward call to action to direct the reader to your website, where they can access detailed studies, clinical trial results, or prescribing information.

This email from a multivitamin company effectively encourages the reader to take action by showcasing the product’s benefits, ingredients, and what makes it different from others. The icing on the cake is the 25 percent discount to seal the deal. 

Newsletter Digests 

Newsletter roundups provide busy healthcare professionals with a consolidated update on the latest industry articles, trends, and studies. 

Carefully curate content that adds value to your subscribers’ professional lives. Choose reliable sources known for their authority in the pharmaceutical field. Include a mix of news, recent research, regulatory updates, and actionable advice. 

Design your newsletter to be easy on the eyes. Use clear headers, bullet points, and occasional images to break up text. Make sure it renders seamlessly on smartphones and mobile devices. 

Include links for further reading and encourage your subscribers to dig deeper. The Fertility Focus newsletter hits all the right marks with a clean and reader-friendly layout. Each issue highlights key developments in fertility treatments and includes links to detailed articles. 

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Lead the Way in Pharma with Campaign Refinery’s Top-Tier Email Marketing

Are you aiming to become a leader in the pharmaceutical industry through email marketing? You’ll need an email marketing service that delivers industry-high performance and reliability. Anything less, and you won’t make much of an impact.

At Campaign Refinery, we’re the go-to choice for companies with big email marketing ambitions. We have the highest deliverability rates around because we truly understand the complexities of reaching the primary inbox.