8 Questions to Ask Your Life Sciences Audience Data Partner
As marketers continue to shift their focus to finding the ideal audience regardless of platform, the quality and precision of the audience data powering campaigns are becoming more and more critical to success. Access to anonymized and aggregated HIPAA-compliant patient and health care professional (HCP) information means you will connect with the right patient or HCP regardless of where they are in the cross-channel universe.
With that in mind, here are the questions to ask when you are considering having Medicx manage your campaign or are working with another audience partner who uses a different audience targeting data source. They will help you gauge the data quality, precision, privacy, and efficiency of the investment you plan to make. The time you spend on this research will pay dividends for many campaigns to come.
1) What Is Data’s Role in Your Business Model?
When data is your core business, patient privacy (HIPAA) and data hygiene are top priorities.
The Medicx Micro-Neighborhood® Product Solution: Since our founding in 2006, the highest quality and the most granular Micro-Neighborhood® audience data built from real-world data has been at the core of our business, driving our ever-growing product and solutions portfolio. Today, Medicx Media’s leading-edge real-world audience signals give our clients access to over 90% of all dispensed prescription claims and the largest source of medical claims originating from physician offices and clinics across the US. Additionally, we profile nearly 35MM+ hyper-local areas representing the entire US, enabling Medicx to target with both reach and scale at the most granular level available today. And, we do this while maintaining patient privacy and HIPAA compliance. The result for life science advertisers is an unprecedented ability to locate and engage hyper-local areas with the highest patient prevalence and healthcare professional audiences across multiple platforms and channels. The ultimate result is a more efficient way of spending marketing budgets, superior audience quality, and Rx sales lift.
2) Are the Data and Audiences You Use for Targeted Advertising HIPAA-Compliant?
Considering the sensitivity of any patient data, regardless of whether the data are used to build propensity (look-alike) models, 3-digit zip aggregations or hyper-local areas, compliance with HIPAA and other privacy laws is always a major consideration. Some audience data partners rely on their source data providers to ensure the data are HIPAA-compliant before delivery to them. Are your data partners going the required extra mile to ensure their data processes are also HIPAA-compliant before they put it to use for you?
Medicx Solution: Medicx sets the standard for best practices in maintaining patient privacy and HIPAA compliance in several ways. First, we utilize third-party experts to assess our data and related data security procedures for HIPAA compliance. This process is known as a Risk Re-identification Determination Assessment (RRID) and is conducted through expert determination. RRIDs are performed and documented by third-party statisticians experienced in conducting HIPAA-related privacy analyses. This extremely rigorous process ensures that a knowledgeable expert statistician confirms there is little to no risk (statistically significant) of re-identifying individuals through our data and related processes. Ask us if you want more details.
Once an RRID has been completed, Medicx then applies a “privacy by design” best practices method for every single audience and segment we build to ensure we remain compliant with the required conditions set forth in the RRID. Completing these expert assessments every eighteen months ensures that Medicx patient audience data are appropriately de-identified, aggregated, defensible, and compliant with all existing state and federal laws.
Lastly, we manage our data in a closed, controlled environment. This means it will never be offered in any commercial marketplace or DMP outside of Medicx control. The source patient audience data never leave the Medicx environment. Access to the data is limited to company personnel who have undergone extensive HIPAA and data security training. The data are also kept pure and never integrated or co-mingled with any other third-party data, which could create a risk of re-identification. Meeting all these conditions is the only HIPAA-compliant way to leverage patient data at a level that is granular enough to create high precision hyper-local areas deployed in our proprietary and patented Micro-Neighborhood® targeting process.
3) Are You on Top of the Changes in Privacy Legislation?
With new California privacy legislation going into effect in 2020, and several other states working to follow their lead, your audience data partners need to monitor and proactively manage their regulatory and ethical obligations.
Medicx Solution: Medicx makes consumer privacy its top priority, and has a proven track record of managing our legal and ethical requirements. We are staffed with a full-time head of privacy, compliance and data governance, and have very experienced legal counsel in the space. We have maintained our HIPAA certification (RRID) for more than a decade while offering our patented Micro-Neighborhood® targeting solution, the most efficient, privacy-safe way to reach your patients safely.
4) How Do You Handle Your Opt-in Process?
Your partner should take permission just as seriously as they take privacy. And while a single opt-in meets CAN-SPAM requirements, strengthening the process to include additional steps further safeguards the consumer and helps drive better campaign performance.
Medicx Solution: Many of the Medicx campaigns use anonymized data that contain no PII (de-identified), and therefore do not require opt-in. Others are permission-based marketing campaigns that leverage self-identified data. For these campaigns, Medicx uses the Extra Mile Opt-In, which consists of dual affirmative expressed opt-in, and thorough ongoing data hygiene, to ensure that our data are both properly permissioned and highly fresh and effective. Medicx leverages its extensive self-identified signals from a database of 313 million consumer opt-ins with 275+ lifestyle overlays. Medicx also utilizes 60+ opt-in health surveys that capture information on patient diagnoses, Rx and OTC treatments and procedures, disease severity, symptoms, and side effects along with other valuable information.
5) What Is Your Audience Build Methodology?
It is common for some audience data partners to use modeled or look-alike data to build their audience segments. But by design, modeled data results in inefficient advertising dollar allocations by serving large quantities of ads to the wrong viewer often resulting in poor audience quality and poor ROIs.
Medicx Solution: Medicx campaigns focus on the most efficient use of advertising dollars. Every Medicx audience segment is designed to address a specific brand’s marketing objective. Using our advanced analytical approach and expertise in systematically identifying relevant de-identified aggregated groups of patients and HCPs within our offline real-world databases, we define a bespoke set of audience segments; we map each to a specific brand objective. Because of the granularity of our data and our Micro-Neighborhood® targeting platform, we also have the unique ability to identify audience segments that address specific points on the diagnosis and treatment journey. And finally, our skilled use of medical ICD codes, procedure CPT codes, and prescription NDC and USC treatment codes to define the condition and/or co-morbidity of interest helps us drive high audience quality and superior campaign outcomes.
6) Do You Offer Help with Audience Strategy and Execution?
Sure, it’s good to deliver high quality, customized audience segments. But without a solid activation plan and strong support from your partner, are you set up for success?
Medicx Solution: Medicx is the only managed service partner that can plan, execute, and optimize multichannel and cross-device HIPAA-compliant addressable marketing and media solutions. Our expert audience and campaign strategists, client partners and account management team are available to support our clients at every step in the campaign process.
7) How Do You Handle Campaign Measurement?
The best partners will work with you to design a campaign measurement approach to accomplish two goals: 1) support your brand KPIs and 2) feed into a cycle of improvement as you move from one campaign to the next.
Medicx Solution: Because Medicx begins the process of each campaign by gaining a deep understanding of your brand objectives, we also work with you to develop a campaign measurement strategy based on the right KPIs. Although many marketers like to focus on digital engagement metrics, such as viewability and CTR, we believe the best success metric for audience targeting is offline audience quality because it ensures your message is reaching the right patients. We also have the ability to measure incremental conversions or new patient starts, which can ultimately translate into an ROI.
8) Are You Involved With the Industry?
The best data partners stay ahead of new regulations and technology and actively work to move the industry forward.
Medicx Solution: Medicx is 100% committed to the best practices in data management and security, privacy, and HIPAA. We demonstrate this with our time-tested and HIPAA-compliant products with regular third-party risk re-identification determination assessments. We also work closely with leading industry organizations that are evangelizing these all-important self-regulatory principles and guidelines through our participation in the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), whose participating associations include: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), 4A’s, The American Advertising Federation (AAF), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and BBB National Programs, Inc. In addition, Medicx is a member of the Digital Health Coalition (DHC), Association of National Advertisers/Direct Marketing Institute (ANA/DMI), and the Association of Medical Media (AMM).
Let us show you how Medicx Micro-Neighborhood® targeting can increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and audience quality of your next campaign. Contact us today.