Newsletters for doctors and pharmacists: what gets read
Doctors and pharmacists receive a lot of promo and read little of it. A newsletter gets read when it helps at work tomorrow, respects the reader's profession and is designed as a series with an idea rather than a set of advertising emails. The tone depends on the audience: with urologists you can play, with cardiologists, only facts.
Four principles of a newsletter people read
- One message, one idea you can apply. A study review, an algorithm for talking to a patient, a symptom checklist, not a list of a drug's benefits.
- A creative frame for the series. A story people want to follow from issue to issue.
- The product inside a clinical situation, not in a separate ad block.
- Every claim with a source. For a doctor, material without references to studies is advertising.
Creative frames from our projects
| Newsletter | Audience | Idea |
|---|---|---|
| For Ramadan | pharmacists and doctors in Kyrgyzstan | WhatsApp holiday cards, but instead of a greeting, tips on diet during the fast and the story of the Nuriev family |
| Gut health conference | pharmacists in Kyrgyzstan | each letter is a “session” of a scientific conference: talks, round tables, cases |
| “Men's Health in Space” | urologists in Moldova, in Romanian | each decade of a man's life is a new planet that needs a urologist's care |
| “Evidence-Based Cardiology in Your Pocket” | cardiologists and internists in Moldova | no play: short reviews of RCTs and meta-analyses |
| “Pharmacist the Superhero” | pharmacists in Moldova, Viber | the pharmacist is the first guardian of health, not a “salesperson in a white coat” |
The Ramadan newsletter accompanied sales growth of 200% for three brands compared with the previous Ramadan. The next newsletter, in conference format, held the attention of an already engaged audience without a pause.
Issue structure
- A question headline from practice: “When does a cough call for a referral to a doctor?”
- A short answer in the first paragraph.
- Data or an algorithm: a table, a diagram, a checklist.
- How to say it to the patient: ready-made phrases.
- The product's place in this situation.
- Sources.
Channels
Email works for long reviews and for doctors in clinics. Messengers (Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram) are for pharmacists: they need a short format they can read between customers. A closed section of a website gives a sense of a professional club; that is how the doctors' section of “Pain Navigator” is built.