Gamification Applied - How Rep triggered email drove a 4X increase in HCP Engagement

The next few articles will focus on gamification - one of the recommendations from my previous articles on Critical Success Factors and KPIs. I will share detailed examples from projects I have implemented over the years where gamification has driven positive behavioural change and improved performance outcomes.

Gamification

Case Study 3 - How a Company improved their Rep Triggered Email adoption and utilisation, while significantly increasing the number of HCPs receiving their emails across multiple campaigns without reducing Open Rates & Click to Open Rates

Background: Rep Triggered Email offers a fantastic opportunity to extend the relationship of Medical Rep interactions beyond face-to-face calls. With costs per email production typically exceeding $5,000, our Client was unaware that the percentage of relevant HCPs receiving any given email campaign was < 20% of the potential recipient universe, meaning each campaign could have driven 4X greater HCP interaction at no additional production cost per campaign.

While the Client had done an excellent job on achieving a very high email consent rate across all territories, we identified significant variance in the execution of individual campaigns across Reps. This had not raised any red flags within the Brand Team, as the metric measured (volume of emails each Rep was sending per week) was at or above the set target.

Applying Gamification and how this helped achieve a 4X increase in HCP email engagements

1. Our recommendation started with any understanding of the objective of each Email campaign, the content that could be leveraged and expectations for its use.
2. Emails were then categorised, and expectation of their use was agreed. Email campaigns lent themselves to call follow-on (with the potential for personalisation of content & links), value-add service-related offerings, CME invitation, patient educational material & sample request ...etc
3. Each campaign had specific objectives related to its delivery within a timeframe and these metrics were reported and communicated to the Brand Team and First Line Sales Managers down to the Rep level
4. The impact of setting these objectives meant the number of emails required to execute the strategy dramatically increased (from 2 emails per Rep per day to 10 emails per Rep per day)

When this was discussed with the Client a range of concerns were voiced including;

1. Concern the company would be seen as spamming HCPs
2. Negative impact on Open Rate (OR) & Click to Open Rate (CTOR) - Metrics tracked regionally and globally
3. Rep pushback on sending more emails
4. Potential for HCPs to unsubscribe

Email engagement was explained from an HCP centric perspective, and we highlighted that ~20% of consented HCPs were currently receiving less than 1 email per month (with only 50% of those emails being opened!). The primary objective was to increase HCP email coverage - not frequency of individual HCP email engagement.

Setting expectations

Medical Representatives were given Campaign specific objectives on utilisation of emails e.g.

• 50% of F2F calls will have a personalised suitable follow up email
• 100% of consented HCPs will receive Campaign X in the next 2 weeks
• HCPs who do not open the campaign will have the email resent in week 3 or 4

First Line Sales Managers were incentivised to ensure Sales Rep execution (with near real time reporting provided to the Manager and each Rep by Campaign)

• This was a significant change for the organisation and put the responsibility and visibility on the manager to drive execution across their team.

Brand Managers were provided with Campaign specific reports, which included number of emails delivered per campaign, Open rate, Click to Open rate and % eligible HCPs who have received each campaign

• These reports were discussed at Brand team meetings, with visibility of the use of each campaigns becoming a major area of focus
• Insights helped improve future campaign creation

Results

• Email volume increased 4X for specific campaigns at no additional cost for that campaign
• Overall Open Rates increased by 20% where emails were resent to HCPs who did not open the campaign in week 1 or 2 (from 50% OR to 60% OR)
• Click to Open Rate (CTOR) remained the same (~15% depending on individual campaign)
• Unsubscribes were not impacted (< 3% annually)
• All First Line Managers hit their bonus for email execution

What next?

This article is intended as a starting point to help the reader determine the concepts applied in different gamification situations. It deliberately does not tackle the details that went into the change management, data validation, performance monitoring, coaching and capability building required for the success of such a program. If you would like to better understand the concepts outlined here and more, feel free to reach out to Varese Group