Email marketing in the healthcare industry: Much room for improvement

According to a recent study by the UK based email marketing firm, Pure360, the percent of companies in the medical and healthcare field (in the UK) lags other industries by a considerable amount. This may be due to the tight regulatory environment in which healthcare operates or a very conservative mindset when healthcare marketing is involved. Nonetheless, there is a lot of upside potential in using email marketing (and SMS and fax) to reach out to prospects, customers and stakeholders.

Source: “The Current State of Email Marketing Strategy” Pure360

Not all campaigns have to target consumers and clinicians. We recently developed an email campaign to help support independent distributors of a a well-know brand of laboratory diagnostics. We developed very segmented emails in Spanish, Portuguese, and English with customized content specific to their markets.

The goal of the email was to help the manufacturer better sell into and help the distributors sell through products and services. In addition to providing timely communications to the distributors we also wanted open a dialog between the distributor and the manufacturer so that information could flow back and forth quickly.

We incorporated a Q&A section, links to videos (hosted on a private video distribution network to ensure visibility throughout Latin America) and contact information.