As per one research, marketing automation technology is expected to grow at a 14% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. To put things in perspective, global marketing automation spend will reach $25.1 billion by 2023 from $11.4 billion in 2017.
Corporates are embracing Marketing Automation (MA) worldwide as efforts are laid on getting more efficient. Popular misconception has been to think of MA as a tool to send mass mailers or generate leads. But MA goes above and beyond that. It is a part of the customer relationship management software (CRMS) that focuses on the definition, scheduling, segmentation and tracking of marketing campaigns.
An effective MA system is supposed to understand a consumer’s journey and help him make a decision with relevant content. MA analyses consumer’s behavior and content consumption across various platforms such as social clicks, page views amongst others. This gives a clear understanding to the brands about what a consumer wants and when.
When it comes to healthcare professionals, time is the most valuable asset. Pharma companies and MRs often struggle to overcome this challenge. Lack of time also results in healthcare professionals not being too open to new ideas and products from pharma companies. Consumer expectations have also changed basis their exposure to the digital world. While traditional marketing ways took companies this far, now they also realize the importance of marketing automation to tackle this difficult roadblock.
MA allows companies to engage healthcare professionals with relevant content at all steps of the journey. MA helps templatize and personalize the content to keep the interest of the consumers alive. This also ensures a steady flow of information that goes out from the brand’s side to its consumers. There have been studies to prove that passive communication from brands in terms of content and information dissemination works better than one-to-one interaction these days.
Well-structured email campaigns with content created or curated from respectable publications and resources, sits well with the end consumer, i.e doctors. Lack of time means they are also relying on brands for highly informative industry, product and disease related content. Now if a brand creates this emailer and sends it in spurts to them has a more likely chance of getting a positive interaction. Not to say that with MA, these campaigns are also measurable. Brands can see how many emails were actually opened, clicked and driven down the conversion funnel.
MA holds huge opportunities for pharma companies and they can no longer ignore it.
