THOUGHT STARTER SERIES
Today, many healthcare professionals (HCPs) expect to
engage with pharma companies through various digital
channels, such as apps and virtual chat tools, and the majority
(87%) say they want to participate in virtual or a mix of virtual
and in-person meetings after the pandemic ends.* Engaging
through digital channels is now the expectation for HCPs and
commercial teams, but it requires consent in many countries.
Balancing the needs of HCPs with your organization’s
access to them is crucial. It’s important to place customers’
preferences in the center of your engagement with them.
Customers want to feel empowered to opt-in or opt-out of
communications easily, and pharma companies want to
send HCPs relevant and personalized content. The goal is to
strike the right balance. Here’s what you need to know about
consent and why it’s an essential part of your omnichannel
communication strategy.
Defining consent
Simply put, consent is a legally binding agreement between
two parties, such as pharma companies and HCPs. Although
regulations vary across different markets, some standard
legal consent requirements include:
- Delivering digital marketing,
- Maintaining and processing customer personal data within your organization, and
- Tracking customer engagement with your digital content.
BALANCING THE HCP EXPERIENCE AND THE ORGANIZATION’S ENGAGEMENT NEEDS
Managing consent complexity
FOUR KEY ENABLERS
Managing consent becomes more complicated as you
develop your omnichannel strategies and increase the number
of channels where you engage with HCPs. Regulations vary
across markets, such as GDPR in the European Union and
LGPD in Brazil, and globally are likely to change over time
and may even become more stringent. Meanwhile, different
functions within pharma companies have other priorities
when engaging with HCP customers, increasing complexity
further.
Therefore, standardization and alignment across functions
are critical for establishing a solid foundation in consent.
It’s essential to have the right technology in place that will
ensure customer-facing teams understand HCPs’ most
up-to-date consent preferences. Here are four key enablers
of a robust consent management framework:
1. Consent and preference structure
It’s essential to agree on your consent and preference
structure and determine which elements of your omnichannel
strategy require consent. For example, consents might
include storing and processing data, sending promotional
or non-promotional digital communications, and tracking
your customers’ data so that you can personalize your
communications. Additionally, you may want to offer your
customers the ability to control their preferences. For
example, you could determine which channels you plan to use
with your customers and the preferences you want to offer
them. Finally, you could provide options for your customers
Managing consent complexity
to reduce or manage the frequency of communications
with you. Whatever you choose to include in your consent
and preferences, you must ensure your organization can
meaningfully follow them.
2. Process and technology
It’s important to have a clear view of the processes you have
for customers to opt-in, manage their preferences, and opt-out
if they no longer want to receive communications. Veeva CRM
has a consent capture module that can help with rep-customer
engagement and collection and management of consent.
3. People and incentives
The core groups involved in capturing and maintaining your
consents, particularly across sales and marketing, should
clearly understand what consents and preferences are,
why they’re important, and they should feel incentivized to
gather these consents.
4. Governance and list management
Once you define your consent framework, you need to work
with the right people across your organization, whether at
a global, regional, or local level, to determine the structure,
ensure that teams adhere to it, and make changes and
updates as needed. You should clarify any local legal
requirements with the local and central legal teams to ensure
you comply with the consent structure.
Building your consent acquisition strategy
Once you have a clear consent management foundation,
you can build your consent acquisition strategy on top of it.
Starting with the HCPs that you have a good relationship with,
you want to protect that consent and ensure that you provide
them with the content and the engagement they want so they
will want to remain engaged with you.
From there, you can expand beyond those existing customers
to broader customers and consent types. There are
opportunities to provide consent and convert customers with
every customer touchpoint.
It’s also critically important to track where you may be losing
consent so you can improve your engagement and win back
consent. By providing exciting, relevant, personalized content
that appeals to your customers, you’re making it easy for
them to give you their consent.
As you engage with your customers, there are many
opportunities to capture consent. You should make the most
of face-to-face and digital touchpoints such as webinar
sign-ups, HCP portals, consent capture sites, third party,
outbound, and any other touchpoints that work for you and
your customers.
As you define and implement your consent framework, you
need to make four decisions:
1. WHAT are the activities that require consent? Be clear
about your omnichannel strategy, what consents you need,
the preferences you want to offer, and how you will allow
your customers to manage them.
2. WHO needs to be engaged when you define this approach
and roll it out globally, regionally, and on a local level?
Make sure you consider everyone who’s going to be
engaged, including sales, marketing, medical, legal and
regulatory, and regional and local partners. Once you have
agreed on your approach as an organization,
3. HOW will you roll out the framework and ensure your
teams’ compliance? Ensuring compliance is essential
and challenging as rules, regulations, and business needs
change.
4. WHAT help do sales and marketing people need, as they
are at the forefront of collecting and managing consents
and preferences?
After you’ve checked off these essential to-do’s, you’ll be
ready to move forward with a communication strategy built
on consent. It comes back to striking the right balance in
developing communications that work for all parties—HCPs
and commercial teams alike.
BUILDING YOUR CONSENT STRATEGY
Key Takeaways
- Make consents and preferences meaningful for your
customers: Ensure the consents and the preferences
you gather are aligned with the omnichannel strategy
you have planned and that the engagement works for
your customers. - Put in place strong governance: Establish your
consent strategy underpinned by regulatory and legal
requirements. You must have strong governance to
help you define your consent structure and ensure
you can implement it and update it well. - Focus on HCP experience: Enable an excellent
experience for your HCPs. Understand their journey
and make it simple for them to feel in control and
empowered. - Keep it simple: Focus on providing personalized,
relevant content that will engage your customers.
Annie Geraghty
Senior Business Consultant
annie.geraghty@veeva.com
Zoe Dixon
Business Consultant
zoe.dixon@veeva.com
* Source: Reinventing Relevance: New Models for Pharma Engagement with Healthcare Providers in a COVID-19 World — Accenture Healthcare Provider Survey May 2020