Many pharmaceutical companies do not care about data protection
The majority of pharmaceutical companies rigorously disregard data protection when it comes to direct customer dialogue. This is the result of a recent study by the management consultancy absolit. Although 90 percent of the companies studied offer a newsletter service, the mailings show considerable deficiencies in terms of legal security and quality.
The study by absolit shows gaps in the data protection of pharmaceutical companies. Especially the handling of customer data by pharmaceutical companies is alarming. 66 percent of the corporations demand more data from their customers than allowed when registering for the newsletter. This value is 23 percentage points above the average of all industries.
For the survey, 166 companies in the healthcare industry were examined with regard to the quality of their e-mail and newsletter marketing on the basis of more than 40 individual criteria. Mail-order pharmacies leave health insurers and pharmaceutical companies far behind. Subscribers are all too often left in the dark when it comes to the use of this data: Almost 40 percent of the companies do not indicate how and to what extent the personal information is used when subscribing to the newsletter, explains the expert.
No legally compliant imprint
Even though the so-called welcome e-mail should be an integral part of every e-mail marketing repertoire after a registration, in 36 percent of the cases this possibility for contacting is dispensed with. On the other hand, the companies that send a welcome email are very open about the labelling obligation. Accordingly, 80 percent of the companies do not have a complete and thus legally secure imprint, 40 percent even do without it completely. Thus, the companies risk expensive warnings and their reputation.
Although many companies in the healthcare sector actively engage in email marketing, the quality of it often leaves much to be desired. While mail-order pharmacies shine with a user-friendly registration process and good emails, pharmaceutical companies are among the laggards. This is mainly due to address acquisition: For half of these companies, you have to actively search for the newsletter registration on the website.
With an average of 42 percent, address acquisition is actually the industry's strength. With this value, it can easily compete with banks or energy suppliers and is even just behind the mail order business.
However, it is alarming that almost 30 percent of the companies surveyed are still waiting more than three months after successfully acquiring customers' addresses before sending out their newsletters.
Further details on the study can be found at www.pharmastudie.de
