Omnichannel marketing has gained critical importance across pharmaceutical commercial operations, but measuring the efficacy of omnichannel implementation is both complex and important when demonstrating value to key stakeholders like the head office. It is challenging for implementation teams to gather enough relevant data to develop meaningful metrics. Most pharma companies have developed their own proprietary omnichannel measurement frameworks yet still find it challenging to devise an ideal approach. In most cases, measurement metrics are either too generic or not valuable for key stakeholder profiles when reviewing operational or investment-related performance. This article describes a role-driven omnichannel measurement approach and the key metrics most suitable for each stakeholder group.
A role-based measurement approach helps stakeholders review the implementation goals most important to each profile and evaluate effectiveness across key omnichannel parameters: channel, content, partner, and platform.
Pharma companies can consider three key roles for omnichannel measurement:
Companies may use different titles, and job descriptions may vary, but there are broad commonalities that guide the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) across these roles. For brand marketers, omnichannel helps identify incremental cross-channel insights to formulate suggestions that can enhance each customer interaction. At the same time, a delivery profile can leverage omnichannel to decide the right set of actions for their targets. And execution teams will be able to improve their teams’ outcomes at both a strategic and tactical level.
Setting effective omnichannel KPIs involves deciding which categories are the most impactful for measuring success across each essential role type:
Role 1 - Brand Marketer:
Brand marketers aim to change customer behavior to drive each brand’s success. Therefore, they see metrics for customers like physicians, patients, and payers as the most important omnichannel program impact measurements. There are four key customer pillars—experience, engagement, influence, and satisfaction—on which brand marketers can measure omnichannel effectiveness.
Figure 1: Omnichannel Measurement – Customer Pillars
Pillar 1: Customer Experience – Leverage cross-channel insights
Stand-alone sales and marketing campaigns cannot leverage insights and triggers across channels, making it impossible to develop and deploy cross-channel suggestions. An ideal omnichannel experience should make it possible to execute cross-channel actions through Customer 360 insights and utilize Customer Engagement(1,2) Scores for a common measure of channel impact.
Key metrics include:
Pillar 2: Customer Engagement – Target personal preferences
A veritable treasure trove of target customer attribute and behavior data is hidden across datasets, but traditional data storage makes it impossible to incorporate customers’ personal preferences in a meaningful way. This limits the impact of omnichannel engagement for patients and healthcare providers (HCPs).
Key metrics include:
Pillar 3: Customer Influence – Consistent communication
For omnichannel marketing to be effective, each customer’s content preference should be known and communicated consistently across channels. This requires the ability to measure communication equity(1) (share of customer preference measured through performance and engagement) across each channel touchpoint to deliver consistent content messaging.
Key metrics include:
Pillar 4: Customer Satisfaction – Impact of omnichannel response
A customer’s overall satisfaction with omnichannel interactions relies on a company’s ability to deliver the most appropriate interaction at the right touchpoint. The response across relevant touchpoints can dramatically increase an HCP’s satisfaction and experience.
Key metrics include:
Role 2 - Delivery:
Omnichannel implementation profiles are key to any omnichannel program's development, adoption, and deployment. The following are key measurement categories across sales, marketing, and service implementation teams:
Sales Operations Profile: Measures performance of sales delivery goals across activity, channel, and geographic metrics:
Marketing Operations Profile: Measures performance of key marketing delivery across campaign, channel, and content metrics:
Service Operations Profile: Measures performance of key service delivery goals across case, channel, and support metrics:
Role 3 - Operations Lead:
Varied operations teams manage omnichannel implementations across multiple in-house or industry tools and platforms. The following are their key omnichannel measurement categories:
Campaign Effectiveness: Measures the effectiveness of omnichannel campaigns. Examples include:
Journey Deployment: Measures the extent of omnichannel journey deployments. Examples include:
Program ROI: Measures return on omnichannel deployment. Examples include:
While executing omnichannel measurement, pharma companies must assess their efforts promptly to ensure relevant impact. Today, we lack a holistic approach to measuring the overall effectiveness of omnichannel campaigns across each stakeholder’s specific needs and goals. A role-driven measurement approach ensures robust analytics and reporting for any omnichannel initiative. To measure omnichannel success, it is imperative that implementation platforms provide agile measurement capabilities to support a role-driven view of investment to outcomes.