How can optichannel engagement drive return on investment across the product life cycle?
pharmafile | October 3, 2025 | Feature | Business Services, Consultancy |Â Â Corporate, PharmaForceIQ, Pharmacy, chief strategy officer, optichannel engagementÂ
HCPs and patients are demanding personalised, streamlined experiences. Hemal Somaiya, Chief Strategy Officer, PharmaForceIQ, discusses how optichannel engagement offers a precision-based alternative to traditional engagement models.
Why do we need to evolve from traditional engagement models?
Traditional engagement models no longer meet the expectations of audiences, especially in today’s fragmented media landscape. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) today want information which is tailored to their preferred platforms, working patterns, patient mix and specialty. At the same time, patients are increasingly demanding the same personalised experiences they get from tech and consumer brands in their healthcare.
Marketers are also having to meet increasing consumer expectations while working within tighter budgets. When combined with channel fragmentation and the potential for information overload, the ‘spray and pray’ approach of omnichannel (which was intended to connect all channels) now fails to deliver deep or meaningful engagement – and the industry is taking note.
In a 2024 survey, nearly eight in ten pharma leaders said omnichannel strategies had little or no impact on customer engagement. Up to two in three new product launches in the US are still missing projected revenue targets, and it’s only getting harder to engage audiences, especially HCPs when 68% report feeling overwhelmed by how much information they have to keep up with.
How is optichannel different to omnichannel?
Unlike omnichannel, which focuses on connecting across all channels, optichannel offers truly personalised engagement. It is a precision-based strategy which uses real-world data (RWD) to enable real-time optimisation and flexibility from planning through execution and measurement.
Optichannel harnesses RWD to reveal the specific channel, vendor, format and message type that will resonate best with a specific audience, based on their individual preferences. This hyper-personalised approach maximises campaign effectiveness and delivers cost savings and measurable return on investment (ROI)across the product life cycle. It also relies on dynamic RWD to identify the right moments for relevant engagement and to optimise iteratively based on campaign performance.
How does optichannel drive efficiency?
Optichannel campaigns drive efficiency because the focus is always on high quality engagement which leads to more impactful customer experiences.
By integrating granular customer behaviour and preference insights, as well as platform and clinical data, optichannel achieves precise campaign targeting that reduces irrelevant communications and enhances the impact of each interaction. Live data feeds also allow marketers to rapidly identify what is working – and what it not – enabling agile optimisation.
Machine learning (ML) powers continual iteration and rapid improvement as performance data is combined with insights into consumer behaviour, preferences and health activities. RWD informs, ML predicts the optimal channels and actions and smart integrations enable execution at the right moments via the right touchpoints.
The result is an iterative process that shifts the industry from static campaign planning to a highly efficient, agile and results-driven approach.
Can optichannel strategies deliver cost savings and boost results?
Companies using optichannel approaches have increased HCP engagement while saving 20-30% or more on media compared to traditional campaigns. It is all about spending less to do more.
Optichannel campaign optimisations can be made in real time to maximise spend. By leveraging real-world signals to be more precise, optichannel avoids wasting budgets on irrelevant or inappropriate platforms. This narrower channel mix also makes it easier to track investments and pivot effectively as conditions shift.
For example, a recent campaign relied on a large data set that helped predict where investments could be most impactful for a specific audience. The campaign used complex trigger rules to help the first-to-market brand team align with sales and engage in the right moments before second-line treatment decisions. The result? More than triple the expected revenue in year one compared to analyst forecasts.
How does optichannel optimise engagement across the product life cycle?
Optichannel strategies bridge both personal and non-personal marketing from the early stages of pre-launch planning right through to brand growth, enabling cross-functional coordination and balancing touchpoint quality and frequency.
Ahead of product launch, RWD helps identify the patients and HCPs who can most effectively be reached with disease education messaging. This can even be done without an International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code – a crucial benefit in therapeutic areas like rare disease with small, specialist target audiences.
Optichannel drives medical affairs programmes to audiences on the platforms they are most likely to engage with. This helps establish unmet needs, extend reach and personalise learning experiences. Prior to launch, marketing teams can deploy awareness campaigns to prime the market and gather further audience insights.
At launch, as commercial teams take the lead, data-triggered branded media can engage HCPs more effectively on their go-to channels, dramatically boosting results compared to ‘always-on’ campaigns.
For example, a brand team launching a niche cancer treatment deployed targeted content via endemic display and custom media with top-preference publishers. The campaign also included emails, electronic health records and sales rep visits based on real-time data on audience interests and behaviors. RWD also enabled ongoing optimisations throughout the campaign. The result was engagement with 40% of target providers in year one and 1.9 times the industry standard for monthly Rx share during launch.
Can you share any other examples of optichannel in practice?
A campaign to launch a new rare oncology therapy presented several challenges common to the rare disease space.
Firstly, multiple real-world data sets were needed to identify patients due to the lack of a single ICD code. Secondly, a small patient pool meant trying to reach a small number of highly specialized providers. Thirdly, this was for a second-line intervention with a highly variable treatment window.
Shifting from traditional media planning to optichannel enabled a paradigm shift to proactive and rapid targeting. Initially, claims data was used to identify key moments for HCPs treating relevant patients. This was augmented with behavioral-driven triggers – like HCPs who engaged with disease education – to identify a broader base of relevant providers and deliver education over time.
Within 12 months of approval, 60% of unique new prescribers were tracked back to the campaign. Importantly, about 30% were driven solely via digital. Supporting a small field force was transformative for a small company with limited resources.
Does optichannel have value for established brands?
Absolutely. Optichannel strategies are a cost-effective way to sustain growth, support label extensions and defend market share. For example, a mature brand was trying to avoid plateauing and losing market share in a highly competitive indication. Shifting from an ‘always-on’ model to a trigger-based optichannel approach cut media spend by 35% year-over-year while at the same time growing engagement and increasing market share by 3%.
What would you say to anyone considering adopting optichannel strategies?
Audience expectations are changing and we need to change with them to meet the challenges of modern pharma marketing. By adopting data-driven strategies, we can create more efficient, cost-effective and impactful campaigns which deliver substantial ROI.
Optichannel can transform outreach from a reactive, broad and costly approach to a proactive model which leverages RWD to reach every customer with highly personalised content at the exact moment of opportunity when it matters most.
By ensuring campaigns are not only useful, but also respectful of HCPs’ and patients’ time, we can develop more meaningful and impactful interactions.
