The Right Moment

Written by -Harpreet Singh

Several research studies suggest that doctors are busiest on Mondays and Fridays; hence, the best time and day to send them any marketing emails would be between Tuesdays and Thursdays during office hours. While I agree with the larger point, the correct answer is much more nuanced. For instance, I usually start my day at 10 am and end by 11 pm. If you talk to my co-founder, Ashish, he will be up at 6 am PST, all suited up to drive the meetings. Where I am going with this is that even though we are in the same business, our preferences of work timings, going through emails, and talking to our team members could vary hugely.

When we investigate the engagement data of pharma companies we work with, we find similar things. HCPs have diverse preferences for days and times to open emails and engage with banner ads and social media posts. Getting on top of this can significantly impact the engagement rates. It is just not enough to have a well-designed omnichannel strategy if the messages are not delivered at the right moment when the physicians are most receptive and responsive to them. While we can refer to the easy benchmark studies and adopt some standard days and times, we can also drive better results if we personalize this aspect.

How do you Determine the Right Moment?

Determining the right moment is a challenging feat. It requires a deep understanding of the customer journey, customer segments, channel preferences, and the external factors that may influence the behaviors. Let’s go through the steps in detail.

Map the Customer Journey:
Create the individual customer journeys of your target physicians and tag the order of historical touchpoints. See if any particular sequences are leading to better engagement rates than others.
Segment the Customers:
Group the physicians based on their preferences of time and days of engaging with your content across different channels. You may see that engagement rates change considerably across channels as well. Social media might be the preferred channel during the morning hours compared to emails.
Layer in the External Factors:
Holiday season, key medical conferences, sporting events, and other factors could impact the general preferences of the physicians. You may not get good engagement if our outreach time overlaps with these events.
Set up Guardrails:
Understand the negative consequences of over-communication. Set up guardrails such as a maximum number of touchpoints per week and the number of touchpoints by channel.
Establish a Feedback Loop:
The time preferences are not set in stone but are ever-evolving. Creating a feedback mechanism that can continuously update the HCP preferences and behavior is essential to making the most out of your omnichannel strategy.

By embracing personalized timing, you move away from generic schedules and deliver valuable messages at “the right moment” for your HCPs. This helps unlock the true potential of your omnichannel marketing by driving improved outcomes.

Want to learn how you can incorporate “the right moments” into your omnichannel workflow? Let’s talk.

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