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Picture this...

Tom arrives home from work, parks his car in his driveway, and walks to his mailbox. It’s cold out, so he hustles. He reaches inside, pulls out the day’s deliveries, and then hurries inside the h

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

ouse.

After greeting his family, he begins to sort through the mail. Tom’s a busy guy and doesn’t like clutter, so he doesn’t need much of a reason to throw mail in the trash. In fact, without realizing it, Tom

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

has developed an effective system for doing just that:

1. Sort through the mail once.

2. Throw away anything that’s not immediately important or worth keeping.

3. Sort through the mail again.

4. Begin opening

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

whatever is left, in order of importance.

Like many working Americans, Tom is "time-starved." He can never find enough hours in the day to do the things he wants to do. So why waste time on something like the m

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

ail?

The Need for Stopping Power
In direct mail marketing, this scenario represents one of your greatest challenges -- stopping power. Your postcards have to overcome great odds to stop people long e

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

nough that they (A) read your message, (B) understand your message, and if all goes well, (C) respond to your message.

But it all starts with getting the reader to stop.

Without stopping power, your message wil

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

l be ignored, your offer will be missed, and your postcard will earn a one-way ticket to the nearest trashcan. So in order to maximize the return on your direct mail marketing investment, you need to crank up the

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

stopping power of your postcards.

Here are three ways to do just that.

Stopping Power Ingredient #1 -- Relevance
Relevance means your offer should match your audience. This is a two-part concept.

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

First, you must know exactly who your audience is and what they want or need. Then you must communicate with them in a way that capitalizes on that knowledge.

Direct mail marketing gives you the ability to segme

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

nt your list and tailor your message, more so than with most marketing channels. Today’s database technology makes it easy to create a highly targeted mailing list for your postcard marketing campaigns. With such

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

specificity at your fingertips, there’s no reason not to crank up the relevance of your message.

Stopping Power Ingredient #2 -- Singularity
One idea per postcard -- that should be your messaging go

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

al. One product, one service, one event, one idea, one objective. The further you go beyond that, the more you dilute your message.

The best marketing postcards are the ones that readers "get" right away. This c

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

omes from having a singular focus, a singular idea, and a singular objective. (It also helps when the postcard is well written, but that’s another article.)

There’s not much room on a marketing postcard, so you

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

can’t fill it with multiple topics. That’s the job of a website, brochure or booklet -- not a postcard. Put too much information into such a confined space, and it will seem intimidating and unapproachable to man

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

y readers.

Remember Tom and his ruthless screening process? Give him too much to think about at one time, and out you go!

Stopping Power Ingredient #3 -- Simplicity
Here’s a good formula for keepin

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

g postcards simple and clean, while at the same time delivering a strong enough message to evoke a response:

Create a billboard side and a message side. The billboard side is the purest form of stopping power. I

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

t’s light on copy but heavy on message. It includes a killer headline; relevant, eye-popping graphics; and something that gives the postcard immediate value.

The message side picks up where the billboard side le

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

aves off. It delivers on the promise and tells the reader what to do next. It also offers some kind of reward for the reader to take that action.

Conclusion
Tom has finished screening his mail. In th

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

e trashcan, you’ll find a handful of marketing pieces that lacked relevance, singularity and simplicity. Held onto the refrigerator with magnets, you’ll find the marketing pieces that had all of these ingredients

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

-- and these are the champions of stopping power.

* You may republish this article on your website as long as the byline, author's note and hyperlink are left intact. Please include the article in its entirety.

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Digg It - Direct Mail Marketing With Postcards: Got Stopping Power?

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