A Marketing Agency No Longer Needs Developers to Build Quality Pharma Content  

Take a dash of fast, compliant content delivery. Add an ounce of storytelling that educates and sells. And sprinkle it with integrations with major publishing platforms. 

Sounds like a secret sauce for successful approved email (AE) and e-Detailer production? Our client, a medical and healthcare marketing agency, works this magic daily. In this heavily regulated industry, they’ve found a way to be both fast and effective. And that’s no small feat.  

Yet, pharma marketers know there’s really no other choice, if they want to reach healthcare providers (HCPs) before competitors and deliver compliant content without fear of constant rework. 

Viseven played a key role in making this content delivery transformation happen. Let’s see the client’s before: 

Challenges 

The client felt constant pressure from pharma brands that expected fast delivery but with zero mistakes that could trigger MLR revision. Any error could lead to delays and MLR ping-pong game that would stretch both timelines and budgets. 

What made it especially tough for the agency to deliver the result pharma companies were hoping for? 

Most creative or medical teams were not developers 

Creating HTML-based AEs and coded e-Detailers requires a solid development team. But that can blow your budget before lunch, not to mention the back-and-forth with developers for every update.  

Even small tweaks can take a day of developers’ work. Or more. Every platform (Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail) renders HTML differently, so each email has a high likelihood of looking off if a developer fails to take this into account.  

So, agency stakeholders had to weigh their options: Bring developers in-house? Outsource the work? Or find a no-code/low-code platform they could manage with their current team. 

Lack of alignment between teams 

One of the biggest challenges agencies face when partnering with large pharma companies is communication. As Yuval Noah Harari points out in his bestseller Sapiens, small teams (under 150 people) can flourish without strict cooperation processes.  

But once teams grow larger, they “can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about” one another, meaning coordination breaks down without structure.  

In this case, the client had to work with multiple brands and teams, both internal and external. That made it clear they needed a solution to support effective, transparent communication and collaboration across the marketing agency, pharma companies’ marketers, brand managers, and MLR crew. 

Complicated systems made the issue palpable 

Approved emails (AEs) and e-Detailers must go through Veeva or Salesforce Marketing Cloud for different reasons: compliance, publishing, or integration with field force tools. But these systems are complex, and not everyone on the creative team, especially new team members, knows exactly how to upload content correctly.  

When the system rejected a file, the agency’s team had to figure out what went wrong, fix the issue, and if lucky enough, upload successfully the next time. 

Solution: eWizard Content Authoring Platform 

Why did the client turn to us? Here’s a quick peek at their decision-making process: 

No/Low Code Platform 

The client was a marketing agency with no experience in building a tech team. Hiring in-house developers felt expensive and, frankly, unnecessary, as it would pull their focus away from what they do best: marketing.  

On top of that, their workload fluctuated. During slow periods, developers would sit on the bench (not great for morale or the budget). And during busy seasons, the team would get stretched thin like a balloon filled to its limits. 

Outsourcing is a common choice for such agencies and, we must say, a practical one. You hire a dedicated team, assign someone to manage the relationship with the vendor, and don’t have to worry about cultural fit.  

Still, you are reliant on the developers (their timing and their costs). And if the team isn’t up to par, it often takes months to notice. Not a great place to be. 

The agency opted for another way and chose eWizard, a content experience platform for pharma and life sciences. This is a no/low code platform, meaning you don’t need to be a developer to create and publish AE and e-Detailers. Yet, if you are a developer, you’ll have extended functionality to create something more complex. 

Shared space for effective cooperation 

Even if you don’t have developers in your communication chats, you still need a shared platform to collaborate with your marketing teams and clients. Without it, you risk creating dreaded data silos.  

“Information got lost somewhere between email threads, Dropbox folders, and spreadsheets. Which content was MLR-approved? Which version was the latest? No one really knew,” said the agency founder.  

eWizard became the go-to solution for clear, transparent team communication. Everyone, from content creators to designers, could see comments, edits, and feedback, which helped avoid misinterpretations and delays. It was also an effective way to give content a real shot at passing the compliance test on the first try. 

Integrations with major market players 

One of the key factors in the decision was eWizard’s broad set of integrations with platforms like Veeva, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Experience Manager, Creatio CRM, and more.  

This made it easy for the client to approve and publish content across channels, while also connecting to tools used by medical reps, like CRM systems, to present interactive pharma presentations and track engagement data. 

Constant customer support 

We didn’t leave the client to handle pharma e-Detailing and AE creation challenges on their own. While eWizard is user-friendly, it’s still a complex platform that takes some time and guidance to get used to.  

Our team helped set up the system to align with the client’s specific business and content needs. As a result, they focused on the solutions they would actually use in their work with life sciences brands. 

Results 

“We’ve never seen content production move this smoothly. Our creators appreciated the speed and clarity, and our clients loved how easy it was to review everything and leave feedback directly in context,” said the agency founder. 

• The medical and healthcare marketing agency reduced AE and e-Detailer production time from days to hours.  

• With development work off their table, the team could focus on crafting more impactful messaging. They had more time for brainstorming and running A/B/N tests, which led to higher HCP engagement.  

• Revision requests from MLR teams dropped thanks to the reuse of pre-approved modules and transparent workflows in eWizard.  

• The eWizard platform strengthened collaboration between the agency and its life sciences clients, leading to improved satisfaction across the board.