HCP Email Do’s and Don’ts

Data shows that even as healthcare professionals’ (HCPs’) time stretches thin with more jobs to be done, they appreciate the convenience and non-intrusiveness of email from pharma. Approved email in particular ranks high in utility for HCPs’ clinical practice and as a supplement to in-person visits.

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Effective email use is an art and a science, especially when multiple business units rely on it heavily to expand reach, strengthen ties, and maintain costs. We offer do’s and don’ts to maximize email’s competitive advantages.

Do authenticate your email domain regularly

Authentication, or validation, is essential to ensure your emails get past spam filters. In brief, it protects your domain from spoofing and other attacks by marking your company’s emails as legitimate. Google and Yahoo already announced the enforcement of authentication standards, and Microsoft will likely follow suit soon.

What Microsoft’s pending authentication rules mean for you

The forthcoming email authentication and sending rules help validate your emails to prevent spoofing (changes making it appear as if the email came from someone else), ransomware, and phishing attacks. Microsoft describes its authentication rules as ‘interdependent building blocks’ that offer the best protection for legitimate emails combined. Microsoft’s validations include:

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF): This specifies the source email servers and domains (e.g., brand.com) authorized to send mail for the domain.
• Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM): This uses a company’s domain to digitally sign parts of a message, flagging whether the message is tampered with during transmission.
• Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC): This protocol uses SPF and DKIM to verify authenticity and specifies where to send the verification report’s results.

Don’t let bad data affect engagement

The average hard bounce rate — meaning the email was never opened, read, or acted on — for a purchased healthcare marketing email list is 1-3%. If your bounce rates are higher, you may be working with subpar data.

Bad contact lists are a red flag to spam filters, meaning the difference between your emails hitting or missing an HCP’s inbox. Because HCOs constantly undergo mergers and acquisitions, HCPs’ email addresses change frequently, leading to high undeliverable rates if you aren’t conducting regular data hygiene exercises. Avoid focusing only on content and subject lines without putting the same focus on email list accuracy.

Do use data stewards to your advantage

As HCPs become more selective and access to them declines, reps rely on email to make crucial connections and keep conversations going. The use of data stewards to proactively identify and correct information through data change requests (DCRs) is directly tied to productivity gains and resource conservation. Although an increasing number of data vendors provide DCRs in as few as 24 hours, many still take days. Check with your vendor to see how quickly they update data after receiving a request.

Don’t waste resources on duplicate data

Across your organization, customer-facing groups need to align on customer targets. Otherwise, they risk sending poorly timed or excessive emails, inconveniencing customers. Reduce costs and complexity using one vendor that services sales, marketing, medical, service teams, and others to achieve better-coordinated customer interactions.

Successful email engagement starts with high-quality data. Choosing a partner focused on delivering the most up-to-date and complete email lists will save your team time and money. Veeva OpenData Email gives you access to over 1.5 million validated prescriber email addresses, processes most data change requests in 24 hours, and helps you reach the inbox with a 95% deliverability rate.

Learn more about using OpenData Email in your next campaign.