Digital marketing, specifically through email, is an essential tool for any B2B healthcare marketing strategy. With the recent prioritization of digital-first healthcare communications, getting your products in front of the right healthcare professionals (HCPs) largely depends on you having a robust, high-quality email list.
When sourcing your HCP email list, make sure to know exactly who your campaign is targeting and how best to connect to that audience. The goal here is not to reach the largest number of healthcare professionals, but those right for your marketing strategy.
You could scour websites for free or inexpensive physician lists from email service providers, but these often offer lower-quality contacts, fail to drive engagement, and can generally be detrimental to your overall strategy. To reach your intended audience and communicate most effectively on your emailing platform, it’s best to use a data service provider or specialized company that deals in providing access to targeted and verified physician lists.
While there’s no shortage of email lists out there claiming to target the right healthcare professionals—from physicians and pharmacists to nurses and counselors—the truth is it can be a challenge to find premium, clean lists that will help your campaign. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be!
Here are the top factors you should consider to find the best physician email list for your HCP digital marketing campaign.
Healthcare Audience Targeting
Healthcare audience targeting is crucial for identifying optimal contacts for your campaigns—helping ensure you're reaching the most relevant and engaged audience.
Healthcare is a diverse and complex industry with various specialties, roles, and interests. Precisely defining your target audience, utilizing lists with optimal contacts that align with your campaign goals, and personalized content that resonates with their specific needs and preferences helps improve prescribing rates and brand perception.
This also optimizes your resources and budget. Rather than casting a wide net and contacting irrelevant or uninterested professionals, you’re maximizing impactful opportunities.
How Clean Is Your Email List?
List cleanliness means maintaining active, engaged email addresses and talking to people who are listening. Otherwise, you’re throwing your money away.
To determine the cleanliness of a list, ask your provider the following questions:
- How were the emails sourced? Does each physician on this list know that their email address is included? And are these addresses active and up to date?
- Is the list opt-in or double opt-in? While opt-in lists are better than spam lists (featuring email addresses taken without permission), double opt-in is the gold standard for marketers even more so. Opt-ins by and large fall into what's called the graymail category, which means that members opted in but don’t really want to receive emails. (For example: If a company offers 10 percent off in exchange for your email, you’ll likely think: “Eh, might as well.,” even if you have no intention of actually reading any of the information you’re sent. That’s graymail.) Double opt-in, on the other hand, not only requires users to sign up, but to confirm that they intended to enroll (usually by clicking a link in an email after the initial signup). This guarantees that members of those included on your email list actively want to receive emails from you. This is accomplished by requiring them to sign up, and then, confirm they did indeed enroll, and want to receive communications.
Assessing their cleanliness also helps you determine whether it was compiled in an ethical manner. You don’t want to spam anyone or send unwelcome emails, which could not only hurt your specific campaign, but also your overall business and reputation.
Verify that your email contacts have been collected through legitimate means, such as opt-ins from physicians who have agreed to receive marketing communications. Reputable providers should have stringent data verification processes to maintain high-quality lists.
Keeping them clean will also ensure that they are valid and fruitful for your digital campaigns for longer.
Sender Reputation
Sender reputation can make or break your is a critical aspect of email marketing campaigns.that can significantly impact the success of your campaigns. It refers to the perception and trustworthiness that email service providers (ESPs) and internet service providers (ISPs) have about your deployment practices and quality of your emails..
By maintaining an accurate, and up-to-date list with contacts that have been legitimately collected—ideally with double opt-in—features contacts that will almost certainly improve your delivery rate and sender reputation, which can result in higher opens, click-throughs, and ultimately, increased prescribing and enhanced brand awareness. However, if a significant portion of your emails goes to spam folders or gets bounced back, your sender reputation could be negatively affected—and even leave you blacklisted—and your messages won't be seen by your target physicians.
To ensure positive sender reputation, regularly clean your email list, remove inactive or unengaged subscribers, avoid using spam trigger words, and comply with anti-spam regulations. Prioritizing these measures when selecting a physician email list provider will maximize your chances of reaching the right audience and achieving your campaign goals.
Cost
When developing your digital marketing strategy, it’s important to take stock of your budget to know what you can realistically invest in your HCP contact list.
Email lists costs can vary widely based on a number of factors, and depending on where you’re looking, you can find rates ranging from pennies to more than $3 per contact.
You can find inexpensive or even free lower-quality physician email lists, but these are often ineffective in reaching your marketing goals. Having access to authenticated and up-to-date email contacts will offer the greatest return on investment (ROI) for your overall digital marketing campaign.
With a robust, first-rate list, you will have better overall delivery rates and lower bounce rates, ensuring your messages will reach their intended audience and you’re not wasting time, money, and resources on invalid or unengaged email addresses.
Support From the List Provider
Much of the guesswork associated with developing an email campaign can be eliminated when you work with a trustworthy healthcare marketing partner who makes it their mission to maintain superior email lists.
There are plenty of healthcare marketing companies that compile lists, but to deliver a successful campaign to the right HCPs and pharmacies, you need to be sure you find a company that provides a greater level of support.
Reliable and responsive support ensures any issues or questions related to the email list can be promptly addressed and resolved. A provider with excellent customer support can guide you through the process of selecting the most suitable list for your digital marketing campaigns—taking into account your specific needs and objectives. In case of any data discrepancies or concerns, a responsive support team can quickly verify and rectify the problems, ensuring your emails reach the right physicians.
If you encounter technical challenges or require assistance with segmentation or customization, a knowledgeable support team can also offer valuable insights and best practices to optimize your campaigns. Reliable support establishes trust and confidence in the provider's services, giving you peace of mind knowing that you have a partner to rely on throughout your marketing journey.
Segmentation
It isn’t enough to simply target your preferred HCP audience. The best lists will be segmented according to the most useful and relevant information for your campaigns.
Segmentation refers to how your contacts are broken down by specific categories and traits. Having access to a large amount of double opt-in emails is all well and good, but not every healthcare professional is going to be interested in the same communications.
For example: a physical therapist will not be interested in a prescription medication meant to help fight migraines; an ophthalmologist does not want to read about cutting-edge equipment for physical therapy offices serving people with knee injuries.
This means that you want your lists to be well segmented, so you know you’re sending the right message to the right people. Doing this effectively is a matter of identifying how much information is provided about each contact. If a list simply includes names and email addresses without any other indication that they represent the audience you are trying to reach, it's likely not high quality.
Different medical specialties have unique challenges, needs, and interests. When you target a specific specialty, you can craft personalized content that directly addresses the pain points and interests of the physicians in that field. This level of relevance makes your messages more compelling, and increases the likelihood of physicians paying attention to your communications.
Looking for tips on crafting the strongest emails for your marketing campaigns?
Download our free “Email Guidelines and Best Practice Suggestions” ebook.
PDQ Specializes in Maximizing High-Quality, Curated HCP Mailing Lists
So, where can you find doctor email lists?
PDQ Communications provides access to the most robust and extensive email lists in the industry, encompassing all healthcare specialties including physicians, nurses, NPs, PAs, pharmacists, and many more.
Not only is our database large enough to achieve extensive reach within hundreds of specialties, our team also works tirelessly to ensure recipients are well segmented and positioned for the greatest engagement.
