eDetailer Playbooks

eDetailers do not stand alone in the customer experience - their content is likely available in more than one channel. In addition, when the rep is responsible for several products, the eDetailer contains multiple brands, messages and assets. So we want to achieve some level of consistency in the branding and the navigation as well as integration into other channels and also products within the same channel.

There are many moving parts in developing an eDetailer and it can be resource-intensive. The result is often a cumbersome and inflexible eDetailer, trying to cater to multiple scenarios. The original objective around the customer experience can be lost. The more complicated the content, the longer the production, review and testing time, and a less-than-impressive adoption rate by reps. 5-10 slides will be reused over and over, and others that you invested in will remain unused.

So how do we achieve consistency and quality?

One way is to create an eDetailer Playbook – a combination style guide, technical guide and deployment guide. An example of the table of contents could look something like this:

1. Planning your eDetailer

Developing an integrated multichannel customer experience
Value of an eDetailer
Cross-functional team roles
Agency selection
Review process
KPIs and tracking

2. Style Guide

Content design and Branding
Navigation and wireframe
Compliance
Integration within a portfolio eDetailer

3. Technical Guide

Technical specifications for deployment in CRM
Agency training
Analytics and Reporting

4. Deployment

Timing
End-user training

Benefits of a Playbook

According to our partner, Anthill Agency, a playbook can:

Promote best in class digital sales tools creation;
Provide a solid process from strategy to deployment;
Create visually consistent materials across markets to maximize brand recognition and message ;
Leverage the same functionalities and navigation logic to ensure maximum sales force effectiveness ;
Leverage CRM and possible partner solutions’ built-in functionalities and features  
Allow for aggregated data gathering to maximize insights; and
Decrease costs by using templates as a solid foundation to build upon.

Evolving the eDetailer

In order to tackle the challenge of access to HCPs, eDetailing strategies are evolving.

A pharma rep continues to face waiting times to get in to see a target HCP. However, if we broaden our perspective of content creation to further enhance the customer experience, digital technologies can be leveraged to ensure that the messages are delivered via preferred channels, including the pharma rep channel using face-to-face calls, virtual calls or emails.

We know that HCPs are self-serving relevant content anywhere anytime on mobile devices. This means that in addition to the face to face calls with HCPs we now have a multi-channel opportunity to create brand awareness, to educate, and to facilitate the adoption of our products and services. In fact, the face-to-face call can change shape and add more value by integrating with and feeding into the other channels. Because channels are not mutually exclusive, eDetailing works best when the rep channel is integrated into other digital marketing activities and vice versa.

The rep can leverage data from other activities, or drive traffic to other channels to answer questions. In order to do so, the eDetailer needs both flexibility and integration; flexibility allows the rep to select the most relevant content for that interaction, and integration allows this channel interaction to add value to interactions across channels. This added complexity makes a playbook even more important.