Tips to Optimize the Event Attendee Experience Using Data

Healthcare professionals (HCPs) receive dozens of event invitations and attend only a handful, so maximizing their time away from clinical practice is essential. To deliver an optimal experience for every event attendee, start with clean customer data. It’s the foundation of every successful event and enables event teams to compile detailed customer profiles to tailor events to customer preferences.

Patel and Kevin Sheehy, director of digital events product management at Veeva, spoke with Karyopharm Therapeutics and other biopharma representatives about creating exceptional customer experiences and using all the features available in Veeva Vault CRM Events Management.

More stakeholders and more at stake

Events drive strong engagement; they’re also expensive and require precise cross-team coordination. Today, there are more decision-makers, data, and financial risks than ever (Figure 1). As a result, Patel says data deficiencies can have broad ripple effects that span compliance, reporting, messaging, and branding.

Achieving customer-centric meetings requires biopharmas to know what has worked for the HCP in the past, what will deliver the most value at the next touchpoint, and the business impact of choosing one type of event format or content over another. Sheehy says embedding event data into the CRM solution makes it faster and easier to flow insights to the right decision-makers.

Karyopharm uses Veeva Vault CRM Events Management, including integrations such as Veeva Vault CRM Approved Email, extensively to:

• Deliver relevant messaging and a positive experience for attendees
• Support field teams in acting on insights before, during, and after events
• Ensure compliance and data security for transparent reporting

Karim Kovacevic, director of commercial and medical systems at Karyopharm, emphasizes the importance of using clean, connected data for impactful and compliant events and ensuring users understand the tools in the event software can reduce costly errors and improve the attendee experience.

“Globally, we have so many markets in a single harmonized organization that we're constantly rolling out new features. Promoting adoption is partially about education and reeducation,” the associate director and product line lead at a global biopharma says.

Clean foundational data is the optimal, customer-centric way to deliver relevant messages in a positive event experience. Here are tips to improve the event attendee experience using data and technology.

Use a harmonized event system

Delivering relevant messaging and engaging attendees starts with understanding that live, virtual, and hybrid events aren’t standalone channels but touchpoints along your customer’s journey. Viewed that way, collecting and measuring event data apart from all other HCP activity data doesn't make sense.

The associate director and product line lead at the global biopharma spoke of this pain point in the company’s legacy events system, which was disconnected across different engagement channels. Not only did this negatively affect the field reps’ experience, but it also made keeping track of HCPs difficult. Systems inconsistently stored an HCP’s identity, and when it came time to report on aggregate spending for events, the lead and his team had to worry about matching HCP records from different systems. All this time spent on transforming HCP data meant there was less time to spend on the front-of-house experience for HCPs.

The company switched to using a single, harmonized events system globally with Veeva Vault CRM Events Management, natively integrated with Veeva Vault CRM. Using the system’s standardized data model, the company can accommodate customer data for all events — conferences, trade shows, speaker programs, virtual events, and more — while maintaining the same HCP identity data across events and CRM.

With a single repository containing standard data types, supporting your field force from start to finish during an event becomes easier. The rep can easily see an HCP’s event attendance in the same place they view alerts, notifications, calls, and emails. Visibility between the medical and sales teams is improved, too, leading to highly tailored discussions with HCPs at or following an event for increased customer centricity. And, your commercial teams show up as ‘one company,’ avoiding mistakes like over-communicating and overlapping messages.

Give teams a single source to see ‘one HCP’

Karyopharm pairs Veeva Vault CRM Events Management with Veeva OpenData Commercial and Veeva Network for HCP data validation and visibility. For example, if a user adds a walk-in attendee or cannot locate an attendee who presents as having registered online, they’re easily added as a new account.

"The value proposition is that the attendee has been validated with the NPI of specialty, secondary specialty credentials, any licensing information, and so forth." Karim Kovacevic Director of Commercial and Medical Systems, Karyopharm

The associate director and product line lead supports global events for his company. He led the team in examining event types and categories, comparing them to policies, and striving to simplify compliance. He says, “Compliance starts before the event happens; for example, we ensure the right ratio of the speaker to attendees and use approved emails. Adherence is essential, but the more complex we make it, the harder it is for [reps].”

Push past paper sign-in and go digital

Sheehy sees abundant opportunities to create efficiencies using digital events tools. “Getting past paper sign-in sheets is just one example. The amount of work that gets done twice is mind-boggling, and it can lead to HCPs and reps having a negative experience,” he adds.

Yet, moving teams past paper remains an elusive goal for many biopharmas despite digital’s ability to:

• Prepopulate attendee data to avoid misspellings
• Log clean data for walk-in attendees
• Aid in compliance efforts
• Meet attendees’ expectations for convenience

Field users resistant to change often reason, ‘We’ve always done it this way,’ or ‘The system might crash, and I need a paper backup.’ Kovacevic stresses the importance of education and reeducation regarding using tools designed with optimal experience and efficiency. He cites using the QR code: “I believe the sign-in sheet should be optional and the QR code required, so a field user going through the reconciliation process only needs to match things rather than decipher handwritten signatures.”

Maintain accuracy in invites and RSVPs

Event invitations are another stage in the events lifecycle where HCP data can be distorted and create inconsistencies in the attendee experience. Karyopharm and the global pharma use Veeva Vault CRM Approved Email to schedule emails throughout the attendee journey to combat this. Reps stay connected to HCPs, inviting, informing, and engaging them about events. The associate director and product line lead says using the integrated email system is a convenient support system for reps, and those using it appreciate that it’s another effective communication channel.

Reps create an email using approved templates, add links, and personalize the greeting. “It helps with sending RSVP links to get acceptances back automatically, and they’re capturing consent when they start using Approved Email,” the associate director and product line lead says. Eliminating manual steps in collecting RSVPs also reduces the potential for errors, so HCP identity information is consistent.

He adds, “If you’re using Veeva Engage for events, you can send approved emails with the link to a virtual event. You get rich data on the backend once an HCP clicks the link. For example, we see the join time, leave time, duration, and other data and track them automatically because we planned up front.”

Last, he advises keeping content fresh in emails. “If you don’t have new content to send to an HCP via email, they’ll stop engaging that way.”

The takeaways for optimal events

Kovacevic’s team maintains an openness to trying new things and activating initiatives quickly, which is an advantage of having trust in their data foundation. “Using Nitro as a business rules engine and Vault CRM as the connector, we were able to generate next best actions that manifest as Veeva suggestions. And we were able to do that within a matter of weeks. I thought that that was something truly unique,” he says.

The associate director and product line lead’s takeaway is to consider the end-user experience. “Reps aren’t doing a speaker program daily, so the more complex we make it, the harder it is for them. We need to balance staying compliant with simplification,” he says.

"Using Nitro as a business rules engine and Vault CRM as the connector, we were able to generate next best actions that manifest as Veeva suggestions. And we were able to do that within a matter of weeks. I thought that that was something truly unique," Karim Kovacevic Director of Commercial and Medical Systems, Karyopharm

Patel adds, “When you have all your HCP engagement data in one place, you can do ‘ultimate reporting’ with clean data. The benefits extend beyond speaker programs to sampling for calls. Clean, connected data creates an excellent experience for your customers and end users.”

Getting your attendee data right is the foundation of a great HCP experience and can elevate your events into something educational and memorable.

Connect with your Veeva events experts on the Veeva Connect Events Management Community.