A conversation with Theo Ahadome, Head of Commercial, Unite

Unite is a health insights platform that lets patients gather their complete medical history across 19,000+ U.S. health systems. We empower patients to take control of their data by delivering personalized recommendations that improve health outcomes. We also work with pharma to act on real-time insights that improve disease understanding and drive treatment selection.

We're an early-stage startup with a lean business development setup, but we strongly believe in the need to establish a marketing footprint for the long-term success of the company. We've got multiple successful products in-market and are constantly looking for ways to push these success stories out to new potential customers.

We chose Athena because of its exclusive focus on pharma and the fact that the solution is built specifically around the needs of our target market. The ability to draw on your past experience in pharma demand generation, along with access to up-to-date insights on what's working in the space, gave us confidence that we could fast-track our own progress.

I'd say there are three main use cases at the moment. The first is for identifying new drugs coming to market or recently launched brands that are a good fit for our solution. We have a big focus on oncology and rare disease, so the ability to identify high-priority drugs coming through in these areas is really valuable. Additionally, brands with a testing requirement (for instance) are a really good fit as our solution drives increased patient conversion for these brands. We use the Athena filters to identify these high-priority brands and contacts working on them.

We're also using the solution to build out brand-specific campaigns. Recently, we used the Athena filters to build a list of oncology brands with a testing requirement, and with IV infusions, as they're a good fit for us too. Once we identify the brands, it's super easy to use the filtering in the Athena BDA database to build out a list of contacts working on those brands for highly personalized outreach. It's also great that we get prompted when contacts associated with these high-priority brands change roles. This gives us a list of super high-priority contacts each month to focus our efforts on.

Lastly, we use the tool for broader outreach efforts, to share white papers or other thought leadership pieces. For instance, recently we wanted to share some PR around a specific oncology indication and used the Athena database to build a list of over 500 stakeholders working in this area. As I think we'll dive into, these have been less successful, but conversations with leading health tech companies have reinforced our belief that these types of brand awareness campaigns can play a key role in our long-term success, so we're committed to getting them right.

The most immediate example that comes to mind is a live RFP we're currently involved in. It's for a chronic disease brand in Phase 3, from a company we hadn't come across before. You flagged it in the May pipeline blockbuster prompts and highlighted that it's projected to exceed $1B in peak sales. We initially ran a campaign around the brand without much success, but as it turned out, a digital marketing lead from the company was attending a conference where we were speaking. We reached out ahead of the event, and things really took off from there. Having visibility into new brands coming through meant she didn't slip through the cracks and instead became a high-priority target for that conference.

As I mentioned earlier, brands with a testing requirement or IV infusions are particularly strong targets for us. We recently ran a series of campaigns using these specific filters, which led to three high-quality meetings—with Roche, Takeda, and Astellas. Each meeting was with VP-level stakeholders, and two of them progressed to the proposal stage. This kind of targeted filtering has been incredibly valuable, because when we can get in front of the right people at the right brands, we know we have a strong chance of converting. Without these pre-built filters, we simply wouldn't have the capacity to run campaigns at this level of personalization, as our team doesn't have the resources to manually go that deep.

One final point which is not necessarily a "success," but a real value-add, has been our ability to stay close to the pulse of pharma demand generation. Gaining insight into what is and isn't working for other companies selling into pharma has been really valuable. While we're still trying to solve this puzzle, the guidance we've received on different email outreach tools has been useful as we continue testing and refining our approach. We've also made strong use of the Athena BDA network, which, thanks to your work with companies in this space, has become a great resource for sharing insights and connecting with potential collaborators.

100% the biggest challenge we're continuing to face is email deliverability. We've done lots of work together to try and remedy this, but at the moment, it's still a big issue. We've run some highly successful campaigns, but in other cases, we've had big duds where we're pretty confident our emails just didn't get through. As a small team, this has made things more difficult, as we rely on manual efforts to engage stakeholders. These manual efforts have produced better results but are also much more time intensive.

Given the size of our team, it can be difficult to fully act on all the prompts and data available through the platform. While the insights are valuable, we sometimes struggle to find the time and capacity to action the leads. In an ideal world, we'd have either more internal resource dedicated to business development or access to an execution arm within Athena that could help us activate the data more efficiently. Another option we've considered is an AI-driven SDR to handle parts of the outreach process, freeing us up to focus on higher-level strategy and relationship building. Any solution that could help bridge that gap between data and execution would make a big difference for a team of our size.

The more targeted, the better. Use the Key Drug Database and contact database filters to hone in on your high-priority contacts and reach out to them 1:1 or as part of a small, targeted campaign. If you're going to go down the larger campaign route, make sure you've got the right email infrastructure set up and be ready to invest time into email deliverability testing.

Also, make the most of the Athena BDA network. It's been one of the more unexpected but valuable aspects of working with the platform. We're now connected with several other Athena clients, which has opened the door to exchanging ideas, sharing learnings, and maybe even collaborating in the future. These peer connections have been great. We were able to find a great medical copywriter through the network, and we're now exploring a partnership with an agency that was recommended by Athena. It's a great way to accelerate progress by learning from others who are navigating similar challenges and opportunities in the pharma space.