The Power of the Long Game Using Modular Content In Omnichannel

For Kevin Rose, executive director of content excellence at Boehringer Ingelheim, omnichannel engagement and modular content go hand-in-hand and can bring great efficiencies. “But the industry is seeing that’s not the real value proposition.”

Both strategies are proving to be resource-savers and speed-to-market initiatives, but he encourages approaching them as a way to develop long-term, deeply personal relationships with healthcare professionals (HCPs). “The goal of every message is meaningful customer engagement. When you refocus the spotlight on the customer, you’ll get tremendous insights — perhaps the kind that could change brand strategy.” However, you must plan and create every piece of content with that accuracy in mind.

Are you all-in on modular content for omnichannel engagement or assessing teams’ readiness for change? Learn from Rose’s experiences, shared during a discussion with Pooja Lal, Veeva’s vice president of commercial content strategy. Here are the highlights.

Pooja Lal: Is modular content an enabler or a disruptor?
Kevin Rose: The industry’s vision is to create ‘n = 1’ personalization that will enhance any interaction with the customer over time. It’s not about disruption or a single point in time but occurs over the long haul.

Many companies have products in multiple therapeutic areas and want to meet the needs of HCPs and patients. The way to do that is through exceptional, impactful customer experiences. For me, modular is an enabler to do so through an orchestrated omnichannel approach.

PL: Where should companies start with modular content?
KR: Don’t expect success overnight. Almost immediately, though, modular content will enable scalability: You could potentially review and approve a dozen content modules and create hundreds of email variants to leverage across multiple segments in your HCP world. That’s the value, and again, it goes back to personalization — making sure you have the customer insights to serve the best content in the channel customers prefer.

PL: What are the ingredients for success?
KR: To succeed, you need a couple of things in place. First, you need a highly motivated brand and marketing team that recognizes and believes that delivering a personalized experience to a specific segment will yield improved engagement. Once you have that commitment and passion, almost everything else takes care of itself.

Second, you must do concept reviews, simulations, or a playbook about your goal and why. Build your content matrix to show which content goes to what segment in what wave of interaction. It’s not easy, so you have to plan: What’s your content strategy? What are your personas or segments? What’s the customer journey? What messaging will you serve up in waves one and two?

PL: What’s the most significant change for most in adopting a modular approach?
KR: For decades, we’ve been in a world where people have seen composite assets. Especially in review and approval, stakeholders want to see content in its final form. You’re putting that notion aside and telling teams: ‘First, we’ll show you a lot of claims, and then we want you to approve the text — but don’t worry about its prominence and placement. Next, we’ll embed images in a content module that’s channel agnostic. Don’t be nervous, just approve things as they are.’ It’s a big change!

PL: Where does change management come in?
KR: To change hearts and minds around modular content, carve out time for hands-on training. We didn’t do eight-hour immersion training but presented it more like Ted Talks with bite-size information teams could consume and come back for. Initially, we covered principles of modular content and terminology, such as content loading, templating, claims, components, etc.

It’s best to tailor training to each stakeholder. For example, reviewers want to know what controls you have in place. How are you going to avoid an unintended consequence? It’s important to take them on that journey. You may want to do your initial bank of claims live to field their questions. Remember, you’ll always have reviewer churn, so invest in training that new member. Once the first team is onboarded and trained, they can be your advocates and help in a ‘train the trainers’ program across the teams.

PL: What modular content KPIs did you start with?
KR: With the maturity of Boehringer’s platforms, email worked as a place to start. Home office email is an excellent place to experiment because you get quick engagement metrics: clicks, opens, or not.

Many KPIs across the industry are either business-specific (speed to market, cycle time) or operational. The business metrics are easily measured; you can see results a week after deployment. Did customers open the email and click through to the content, and how long did it take them to click through? It’s much the same as driving traffic to a website.

Subsequently, if you want to align that data with prescriptions for ROI, that’s great. But it’s hard to do. With prescription data, you could have a one- to two-month lag time, and you can’t make decisions based on one month of data.

To me, improved engagement is an improved experience that builds a long-term relationship with a customer.

PL: With the benefit of experience, what would you do differently?
KR: In reflecting on my experience and talking with colleagues, you must consider the initial investment in time. Crawl, walk, then run. You will get faster. Professional persistence and patience are necessary.

If you haven’t done it before, I would not recommend launching a time-bound modular content campaign, such as one tied to a conference or webcast. Ensure you have a backup plan to tap additional resources experienced in modular content in an emergency.

Finally, when you’re starting, don’t overdo your combinations of content modules. Some teams will want to try 40 different headlines, for example, but that’s a lot to ask of reviewers. If the purpose is A/B testing, start with five or 10 headlines.

Read agencies’ perspectives on what goes into creating effective content.