Using Mobile to Drive Lift Throughout the Patient Engagement Journey
By Margie Kupfer, Vice President of Marketing, 3Cinteractive
Pharmaceutical brands, like other industries, are continuously looking to find ways to leverage technology in order to enhance the patient experience, outpace the competition and positively impact the bottom line. Introducing mobile into the patient engagement journey is one such way that brands can drive efficiencies across three key areas — customer acquisition, downstream adherence, and patient behavior through analytics.
Acquiring New Customers
With mobile messaging and mobile wallet pharma brands can more efficiently acquire patients into their programs and execute the pre-qualification process — removing barriers to entry and achieving “near perfect” distribution.
One reason for this is that it does not require a physical card to commence enrollment into the co-pay program. No matter where the patient is, enrollment is made possible. Thus replacing the physical through digital and the customer will always have it with them.
Physician practices may still leverage the physical card in-office, creating initial awareness and used as an opportunity to engage and ask questions about the program, as well as the program’s benefits. The physical card may also be used to educate customers on the enrollment process and contain mobile sign up instructions.
Mobile Fosters Increased Adherence
With mobile, patients are more likely to participate in first and subsequent fills. Patients can be opted in to receive adherence reminders driving behavior and engagement. According to the AMA, mobile phone text messaging approximately doubles the odds of medication adherence. And when it comes to driving secondary fills, text messaging has proven to be up to 250% more effective than email with ensuring patients purchase their prescription.
Mobile can also be integrated with the contact center to provide easy access to on-demand support and education programs. From one-on-one live chat support with agents, to delivering helpful videos and tips, mobile enables pharma brands to encourage positive patient behavior through education.
Analytics Power the Program
Mobile enables a unique level of measurement and tracking to draw insights into the program and allows for real time optimizations, driving results and ROI. Brand managers and marketers have greater power over the effectiveness of each campaign. Performance can be tracked across channels and can expose gaps and drop-offs in order to increase conversions.
The analytics gleaned from patient use and effectiveness can serve as the foundation of critical market research that internal teams can study for future program evolutions. The understanding of intra-campaign trends and patterns, analyzed in real-time, can offer insight into specific campaign pivots that can be executed to lift campaign effectiveness and program ROI.
About the Author – Margie Kupfer is Vice President, Marketing at 3Cinteractive, which uses mobile marketing to deepen the connection between customers and brands and increase loyalty and results. She was recently named to the 2017 Mobile Women to Watch list by Mobile Marketer.