In an age of increasingly intrusive media, e-mail remains one of the most efficient tools for businesses to communicate, educate and extend their offerings to their audiences. While its impact is not just limited to the healthcare industry in particular, it is clear that the ability of an enterprise to deliver email content customized to the buying behavior and unique preferences of its customers can significantly boost revenue through increased average order size and frequency. In fact, effective and scalable email campaigns have transformed businesses by offering greater visibility into response rates for various brand offers.
A recent email survey showed that not only do targeted email communications drive buying choices for most customers, but also fosters a positive brand image among the target group. In fact, consumers are growing more accustomed to offers from companies they trust and seem to appreciate the relationship.
Ask any B2B healthcare marketer to describe business buying and every single one of them will provide a reasonably consistent description of a process that involves multiple people across multiple stages over time:
The critical questions here are:
a. How does one inject scalability into this process?
b. Is it possible to increase market share without increasing the size or expectations of the sales team?
c. Is it possible to reach smaller accounts that can easily be justified with the minimal cost associated with email communication?
d. Knowing The Customer Better
Knowing the Customer
In fact, the latest research about business buying suggests that while 50% of the B2B customer spend consists of repeat orders from existing vendors, the other half comprises buyers going after new vendors for products/services they have already purchased from someone or for completely new “blank slate” purchases. In addition, as shown in this figure from MarketingSherpa, B2B marketers report that nearly 70% of business purchases take more than two months to convert from a lead to a sale. Of course, it is vital to know which of these is ready to buy today vs. 2 months from now.
Consequently, rather than have a ‘prospect’ tell us when they are ready to buy, it is more feasible to analyze behavior and use the knowledge to determine buying patterns and preferences. In such a case, a well planned Email and Web Analytics campaign can help achieve these objectives and more.
The Need for Intelligent Insights
While healthcare marketers realize that business buying is a process rather than being a single event, the problem lies in the fact that most of them have no insight of the impact of their online marketing programs on anything other than the last event before a conversion or purchase. This is consistent with research from Microsoft’s Atlas Institute which found 93-95% of audience engagements with online advertising get no credit when advertisers review campaign performance. B2B marketers in the healthcare industry are often trapped by their inability to see how various online marketing campaigns impact different stages of the buying process.
The Good News
The good news is that with the evolution of web analytics as a science, there is an emergence of tools that are enabling marketers to understand and plan campaigns better. Multi-Touch Attribution with Google Analytics from Endai not only helps enterprises understand the sources their conversions arrive from, but also evaluates the impact of social media on the business and helps you build an engagement index for your visitors.
Learn more about Multi-Touch Attribution