28b Veeva Insights - Episode 1: Veeva CRM Approved Email

This video provides an in-depth exploration of Veeva CRM Approved Email (VAE), a critical tool within the Veeva CRM platform designed to empower pharmaceutical brand teams and field specialists. The presenter, James Harper, founder of twentyeightb, introduces VAE as an essential component for leveraging multi-channel marketing efforts and enhancing customer engagement. The primary objective of the episode is to guide users through the functionalities of VAE, particularly focusing on its use within the CRM for iPad application (formerly iRep), to send compliant, approved, and personalized content to healthcare professionals and contacts.

The discussion highlights VAE's integral role within the broader Veeva ecosystem, emphasizing its seamless integration with other CRM and CLM tools such as Veeva Engage and Veeva Vault documents. A key advantage presented is the robust analytics capability, where VAE usage data, including send and open rates, feeds directly back into the CRM system. These analytics are crucial for motivating field teams, increasing platform adoption, measuring and enhancing sales effectiveness, and providing valuable market insights back to brand or medical teams. The video details various practical applications for VAE, such as following up on calls, sharing educational materials, distributing budget impact models, and inviting customers to webinars or remote detail sessions.

The core of the episode walks viewers through the classic VAE user interface on the CRM for iPad. This includes selecting a target customer, accessing the "send email" action, and navigating the highly granular control system that ensures only appropriate and approved content is available for specific customers. The process involves selecting an email template, which forms the base structure with greetings, disclaimers, and corporate branding. Users then have the ability to personalize the email by adding "fragments"—small, approved content elements. The video demonstrates how personalization can be managed through drop-down lists and free-text fields, with built-in controls like blacklisting words and mandating field completion to maintain compliance. A notable feature is the automated referencing system, which intelligently renumbers references even when fragments are reordered, ensuring accuracy. The episode concludes with a demonstration of previewing the email and the "slide-to-send" mechanism, a thoughtful design choice to prevent accidental dispatches.

Key Takeaways:

• Compliant Personalized Communication: Veeva Approved Email (VAE) enables pharmaceutical field teams to send highly personalized email content to customers and contacts while strictly adhering to regulatory and brand compliance standards.
• Integrated Veeva Ecosystem: VAE is an integral part of the Veeva platform, seamlessly integrating with other critical tools like Veeva CRM, CLM (Content Lifecycle Management), Veeva Engage, and Veeva Vault documents, ensuring a unified multi-channel marketing approach.
• Actionable Analytics for Performance: Usage analytics, including send and open rates, are automatically fed back into the CRM system, providing detailed insights that can be used to motivate field teams, increase platform usage, enhance sales and customer engagement effectiveness, and generate market insights for brand and medical teams.
• Diverse Use Cases: VAE supports a wide range of commercial operations, including post-call follow-ups, sharing educational materials, distributing budget impact models, and sending invitations to educational meetings, webinars, or remote detailing sessions.
• Granular Content Control: The platform offers a highly granular level of control over email templates and content fragments, ensuring that only content appropriate and approved for specific users and target customers is available for distribution.
• Robust Personalization Features: Users can personalize emails through various mechanisms, including drop-down lists and free-text fields, with built-in compliance features such as blacklisting specific words or terms and mandating field completion before an email can be sent.
• Automated Referencing System: A clever feature of VAE is its automated referencing system, which automatically renumbers references within an email even when content fragments are reordered, maintaining accuracy and compliance without manual intervention.
• Intuitive User Interface: The video demonstrates a straightforward user interface within the CRM for iPad app, guiding users through selecting customers, choosing templates, adding and reordering content fragments, and previewing the final email.
• "Slide-to-Send" Mechanism: To prevent accidental email dispatches, VAE incorporates a "slide-to-send" icon, requiring a deliberate user action to confirm sending, enhancing user control and reducing errors.
• Strategic Multi-channel Enabler: VAE is positioned as an essential tool for field specialists to link up and fully utilize the suite of multi-channel marketing tools and materials available to them, bridging the gap between in-person interactions and digital engagement.
• Future Enhancements: The series promises to cover advanced functionalities in subsequent episodes, such as launching VAE directly from within a detail aid and leveraging Veeva CRM MyInsights dashboards to inform and enhance a user's effectiveness in the field.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• Veeva CRM
• Veeva Approved Email (VAE)
• CRM for iPad (previously known as iRep)
• Veeva CLM (Content Lifecycle Management)
• Veeva Engage
• Veeva Vault documents
• Veeva CRM MyInsights (mentioned as a topic for future episodes)

Key Concepts:

• Veeva Approved Email (VAE): A core module within Veeva CRM designed to enable pharmaceutical field teams to send pre-approved, compliant, and personalized email communications to healthcare professionals and other contacts. It ensures all outbound email content adheres to regulatory guidelines and brand messaging.
• Email Template: The foundational structure of an email within VAE, which typically includes standard greetings, corporate logos, disclaimers, and sign-offs. These templates provide a consistent and compliant framework for all communications.
• Fragments: Modular, pre-approved content blocks that users can select and insert into an email template. Fragments allow for dynamic personalization and ensure that even customized emails remain compliant with pre-defined messaging and regulatory requirements.
• Automated Referencing System: A sophisticated feature of VAE that automatically manages and renumbers references within an email as fragments are added, removed, or reordered. This ensures that all scientific and medical claims are accurately sourced and compliant, even with dynamic content changes.
• Multi-channel Marketing: A strategic approach that integrates various communication channels (e.g., email, in-person visits, webinars, digital content) to engage customers effectively. VAE is presented as a key tool for connecting these channels within the pharmaceutical commercial strategy.