cullmanndesign blog

Last week, Tasigna, a Novartis product, received a letter from DDMAC for including a “share” button on their website. The letter stated that the utility “fails to communicate any risk information”. For those who may not know, a “share” button is a small widget that allows you to link to the site that it has been hosted on, with one or two clicks, to your favorite social networking service (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc).

The issue with this tool (in order to make use of it) for the pharmaceutical industry, or any other highly regulated industry, is two-fold: 1.) There is a character limit placed on the title and description that is shown to other users using the framework provide by Facebook and 2.) That to be assured that this information is included in a social network post, it must be included in the metadata of the branded page (thus mitigating the natural search engine opportunity afforded by the use of metadata).

Controlling social media

The Facebook share widget, and almost all other widgets that are similar, use images found on the webpage they are linking to, any metadata (content coded into the page to help search engines) and the page title (again, content coded into the webpage for search engines) to create the presentation on the host service. Facebook is one service that provides these features. Just like search engine results that are shown to users when they make a web search, the amount of data that can be shown is limited. This is precisely the issue that the FDA has with the “Share” feature.

To add an additional complication, users can also make changes to the metadata before publishing it a part of their social network posting. Although there are many ways to do this using third-party solutions, the easy with which this can be done exacerbates the situation for brand managers and regulatory officials.

The “sharing” features of social media websites are a valuable tool for marketers and extend the reach of brand messaging. It makes use of peer-to-peer recommendations and allows easy communication of ideas and findings between professionals and patients alike. The relevance of social media for the Healthcare Professional can be debated, but regardless of your opinion, the ease of use and subtle differences between social media tools like this and search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are indistinguishable.

Then what does this mean for SEO/SEM?

Recently, the requirements for presenting “important safety information” and warnings has become very important. Suggested parameters range from the vague “presentation above the fold”, to a persistent sidebar presentation,like Tasigna demonstrates, to a complete “opt-in” splash screen before beginning to display content. Regardless of your position, many of these parameters are moot when taking into account the growth of alternative consumption devices like mobile phones, iPads, and dedicated readers. The user experience is not nearly as controllable as regulatory groups would ideally be comfortable with.

I suspect that if regulatory boards and staff where more aware of how search engines worked and behaved that metadata too, would become equally as scrutinized. The limited amount of space allotted by search engines for description and the need to describe to doctors and consumers the offerings on a webpage may quickly come to odds. A danger exists in the sunsetting of branded pharmaceutical websites and the growth of less-accurate non-branded websites and third-party control of the search space for indication categories.

Is this preventable?

The facts around social media tools are that there is little anyone, brand managers, agencies or legal boards, can do to stop someone from linking to a pharmaceutical web property and manipulate the properties of a given post. What companies can do is pay attention to the attributes that these applications and services use. Do you know what the metadata on your brand’s websites says? Have you seen what it may look like if you link to it from Facebook or LinkedIn? That is the best place to start. You should include this in the discussion you have with your agency, peers and legal boards.

Educating yourself and those responsible for approving your web properties is more important than ever. The presentation of the DDMAC letter shows how the FDA is educating itself and taking a position. Marketers will need to be equally, if not more educated, in order to avoid the conditions which Tasigna must address.

What can be done?

If you are responsible or contribute to a brand that may require a black box warning or similar safety notification requirements, there are currently some limited actions that can be taken to make use of social media sharing tools:

• Check your metadata. Can you provide a description of your content and your required legal disclosure in 420 characters or less (you likely don’t work in pharmaceutical marketing!)? At the time of posting, that is the current maximum character count for Facebook’s status area. Anything additional will be truncated.
• Does your brand have a dedicated Healthcare Professional section? Although consumer facing communication is harshly regulated, the jury is still out on making a use-case for “sharing” tools to be a peer-to-peer vehicle with slightly more liberal policies for social marketing requirements.
• Do you have an unbranded channel? This would be an ideal opportunity for using Facebook, Twitter or any other social media channel as a driver and awareness vehicle.
• Talk to your medical legal review board. Nothing can aid your cause more than knowing your company’s policies and what your board’s opinions and policies are for the use of social media and how that may apply to a particular indication or brand.

NOTE: The opinions expressed in this and all of my posts are my own and are not those of my employer or its parent company.

In the past 2 years, there has been a tremendous push to move messaging and advertising to social media. Whether FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, every market has it’s niche and ad agencies have gotten proficient at targeting groups within these networks. While social media marketing was maturing, there was (and still is) a trend in dismissing e-mail marketing. With relatively low click-through rates, competition with SPAM, difficulty in delivering branding elements in many e-mail clients, it had become easy to cast off for the more attractive and exciting new arrival: social media.

Verification

Despite a dip in popularity, e-Mail is still a force to be reckoned with for communicating with customers. Regardless of audience, e-Mail is still one of the few ways outside of a closed-wall eco-system like Apple or FaceBook, that a marketer has to “verify” identity or ownership of credentials. One field of any online transaction of information is ALWAYS e-mail. A savvy marketer will verify the e-mail address with a call-to-action confirmation as quickly as possible to confirm that the email can reliably be associated with a particular identity. Next to credit card information, this is a very easy and convenient way to apply a small amount of accountability to an online user. The process of having users “opt-in” and define the terms that they would like to be communicated with is important and based on metrics, e-Mail is still the most popular method for online CRM and brand-building communications.

Call To Action & Response

E-Mail offers users an expected behavior that is comfortable for them. A well-designed e-mail program will have a clear “From” identifier, visible before even opening the e-Mail, a subject line declaring the main intent of the message and the message (usually with several call-to-actions). User are familiar and typically follow a pattern of behavior if you structure your e-Mails with consistent design and language. This is where e-Mail excels: While social media channels are still working towards how to handle unique customer response and moving users from the gated sanctuary of a particular social network, e-Mail delivers a personalized medium with the ability for a unique call-to-action. All of this can be done addressing the users as an individual, tailoring content and offering an end-to-end dialogue. E-Mail’s ubiquitous nature allows this to be done across any platform or device (including mobile).

Reach & Audience

One of first and still the most common method of communication on the internet, e-Mail offers the widest audience. A majority of web users claim more than one active e-Mail address1, many having several. There is also a wave of adoption for new audiences. AARP has recently released data showing that seniors are the fasting growing group of adopters2 of e-Mail. Those in emerging markets overseas also represent a growing population of e-Mail users. There is a simplicity and approachability that makes it attractive to new web users and bullet-proof to web veterans. There are several complications when dealing with e-Mail as well. e-Mail is a communication channel protected in the US by federal law. The manner in which you engage your customers (or recipients) must adhere to the US CAN-SPAM Act. Although it’s a simple criteria to adhere to, not observing the standards set by this policy will likely land you in your reader’s junk-mail file.

Privacy (sort of)

Although E-Mail is far from a secure medium, it does offer several advantages over social media, SMS and several other hot advertising mediums. A marketer and e-Mail recipient can both expect that the contents of an e-Mail message will not be seen by dozens of their friends, other customers or competitors. Additionally, this same channel can be acted upon with an expectation that the action will be equally as private. This may seem like a small nuance, but if you are someone buying a present for a loved one, accessing banking information or even making a mundane request from the post-office, you can expect that the exchange is limited to the addressed parties.

Equally important, a user can respond via e-mail without a character limitation, or concern that there will be additional charges on their bill for the communication. These are both issues facing SMS marketing and communication. Although immediate, it is a concern to those not familiar with texting and it’s protocols.

Cheering The Underdog

I am a believer in e-Mail marketing. I don’t think it is a silver bullet or the only solution for marketers, but rather, a tortoise in the proverbial race with the hair. Currently, the role of the hair is played by social media and SMS marketing. I think both of these have a place. I also believe there are many cases where social media marketing is a run-away winner. The power of e-Mail marketing is in it’s familiarity and direct nature. It offers strong ROI and is easy to measure both success and failure. For the average person, e-Mail is approaching 15 years old. Even if you’re not measuring your time in “internet years”, it has come into it’s maturity.

Before you pass-off your next opportunity to pitch an e-Mail marketing plan to a client, ask your self about the message and audience. The solution may be easier and more traditional than you may have thought.

You want more?
Check out MailChimp and CampaignMonitor for great tools to launch your campaign. If you want to learn more about who is opening and how frequently messages are read, check out MailerMailer’s metrics report from 2009.

Think Vitamin, an online resource for new media designers has posted a fantastic video explaining foundation concepts for designers getting started with designing and building html e-mails.

I get questions from a lot of Designers and Art Directors who have questions about how to address e-mail marketing. It’s a tricky craft with a ton of e-mail clients, too many devices and the challenge of SPAM filtering. From layout to some basic coding, the Think Vitamin tutorial covers a lot of ground.

The video tutorial is a sampling from their new offering membership.thinkvitamin.com, a competing product to long-time video tutorial group lynda.com. Both are great places to learn about any skills you may be new to or rusty with.

Are you an early adopter? Trendspotting blog features a link to a new AdAge report outlining and recommending how to market to early adopters”. Much like the Seth Godin concept of capturing the “sneezers” of a group (the portion of any social network who identify, adopt and evangelize new things) this research paper classifies the early adopters and their flock into categories and allows readers to outline opportunities and tactics to have a dialogue these groups. The report is titled “Shiny New Things: What Digital Adopters Want, How to Reach Them and Why Every Marketer Should Pay Attention” and is available as a free PDF.