Multichannel and closed-loop marketing need to come together to drive value, says Capgemini

Both “multichannel marketing” and “closed loop marketing” have been popular catchphrases in pharma marketing in recent years, with the latter often being blurred together with sales reps’ enthusiasm in using interactive tablets during presentations to prescribers. In a new report in its “Vision and Reality” series, Capgemini Consulting (New York) suggests that, between where the pharma industry is today in its outreach to prescribers, and where the technology is for both MCM and CLM, the time is right to consider them in a coordinated, structured manner.

Some definitions: Capgemini defines CLM as incorporating personalized messaging, analytics to understand how messages are received and understood, and responsiveness—the ability to “evolve the conversation” to prove that the marketer is listening to the market. MCM is simply using mulitiple channels (email, tele-detailing, face-to-face and others) to interact with customers, and to bring the results of each channels’ interactions together through analytics. CLM, which has been around for a while, has lost and then regained favor as the iPad became a preferred sales tool. But in a survey of pharma execs, Capgemini has found that even today, pharma marketers rate their maturity in a 2.0-2.5 range (on a 1-5 scale) in their ability to personalize messaging, to perform analytics and to be responsive.

“A key measure of maturity in CLM,” says Tim Moore, a principal in Capgemini’s life sciences group, “is the time it takes to alter promotional materials in response to market reactions.” Many pharma companies have an arbitrary schedule of updating promotional materials on quarterly or semi-annual basis; the companies that are using CLM successfully can cut that to 6-8 weeks. Another missed opportunity, says Hala Qanadilo, also a principal, is that pharma companies tend to organize their sales operations units around brands—thus missing the efficiency of using the same CLM or MCM tools across brands, and (for some prescribers, such as general practitioners involved in many different therapies) combining knowledge about that prescriber from multiple campaigns.

Overall, pharma marketers should be organizing their efforts around three teams: product (brand), channel and customer. The full report can be downloaded here.