WoW Woman in FemTech I Carrie Vollmer, VP of Marketing and Customer Experience at Pelvital
Carrie Vollmer is VP of Marketing and Customer Experience at Pelvital, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
She has more than 20 years of B2B and DTC healthcare marketing experience as a head of marketing, functional leader and senior strategist in both large and small MedTech companies. Her innovative work in consumer marketing has been honoured by distinguished industry associations, including the International Association of Business Communicators with a Gold Quill Award for outstanding electronic and digital communications and Medical Marketing and Media (MM&M) for best use of digital promotions and direct marketing to consumers.
Formed by a team of physicians and medical device professionals, Pelvital develops and sells Flyte, a device that treats female pelvic floor dysfunction caused by weakened pelvic floor muscles using proprietary mechanotherapy technology. The technology is first being used to treat stress urinary incontinence (SUI) in women. It was originally developed by Norwegian physicians from the University of the Arctic in Tromso, Norway, and engineers from Ergotest, a Norwegian company specializing in training systems and protocols for professional athletes. Clinical validation was conducted by the University of the Arctic and replicated by the University of Minnesota in a randomized multi-center study. The technology is backed by 14 patents, two successful clinical studies, FDA Clearance, and is currently being sold in the US.
Carrie, tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
I am a healthcare marketing and business strategist specializing in brand, customer experience, digital marketing and communications strategy. I started my career as a creative, was a marketing strategist and went on to lead digital marketing teams as everything was booming with the introduction of the iPhone, the rise of apps and social media. I led the corporate web team at St. Jude Medical, a medical device company that has since been acquired by Abbott, where I partnered with IT to lead a global digital strategy for the organization. I took a brief break from the industry but missed it and three years ago, I had the opportunity to return to MedTech.
I joined Pelvital, an early-stage medical technology company that was founded in 2016 with a novel, non-prescription, home-use treatment for female stress urinary incontinence. This was very compelling to me, because I have a passion for women’s health and there is such a huge unmet need. I previously worked in women’s health, marketing surgical products for incontinence. I was impressed with Pelvital’s non-surgical solution and the clinical data. I saw a chance to have a positive impact to help commercialize a conservative treatment for the millions of women who just cope with the condition.
I worked to establish the marketing foundation, including the product brand (Flyte), the ecommerce platform, our customer experience and go-to-market strategy. We received our FDA clearance for Flyte last year, and after a limited market release, we’re in the market, selling Flyte direct to consumer and in partnership with clinicians.
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
I started my MedTech marketing career more than 20 years ago at Medtronic. I received some of the best training available at Medtronic and built on my previous experience in the health insurance industry, so the transition was smooth. It was exciting and challenging. Digital marketing was rapidly growing and we had all of these new tools to reach clinicians and consumers. Marketing medical devices direct to consumers —especially implantable devices — was still novel at that time, but my company supported innovative ways to reach consumers. They sent us to Silicon Valley for some training and we consulted with some bright minds in the industry. I developed strategies that combined both digital and DTC. It was a time of growth and innovation that was foundational to my career. Of course, digital transformation continues and with that, there is challenge and opportunity!
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in?
I’ve been in this industry for two decades and each role I’ve had has prepared me for my work today at Pelvital. For example, in recent years I’ve worked in companies that have adopted Agile methodologies. The principles I learned in Agile training have served me well in my small organization, where one of our biggest challenges is the pace and the need to be nimble, which is just part of working at a start-up or any tech company.
I love a great marketing challenge too. In women’s health and femtech, there is work to do to break down barriers. There is still some stigma associated with certain medical conditions or parts of the body. We need to inspire women to treat conditions like incontinence and not just accept it as inevitable or normal.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
As the founding marketing lead at Pelvital, I’ve had the opportunity to create a product brand, marketing and customer experience strategy from scratch. There’s something thrilling about the blank page – putting ideas on paper during pre-commercialization and figuring out how to build the programs and services with the resources you have. Now the work is in the market and it’s helping women. It’s extremely rewarding to be part of the small-but-mighty team that brought this to market. I also think about my work at Medtronic where I had the opportunity to co-create a really innovative consumer brand marketing program to launch a Parkinson’s disease therapy in the US. Not only did it really connect and help people with Parkinson’s – the most important result -- but it drove strong business results and was recognized as best-in-class. I feel very grateful to be in this rewarding industry.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
I’m working on expanding our connections with consumers — awareness of our product, new partnerships, and building upon our services, such as our Ask a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist service, which helps women get expert answers to questions about bladder leaks, pelvic floor or our product. We’re completing our first year in the market and just wrapped up some qualitative market research, so we are working with those learnings as well as the data from our customer experience platform. Of course, modern marketing is all about creating the best experience and continuous testing, learning, and optimization
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
It’s a vital movement. Let’s face it — there is still a lot of conscious and unconscious bias out there. Too often, women and their contributions in the work world have been marginalized and undervalued, which is just bad business. And there are a lot of unmet needs in women’s health and consumer products in general. We need women as co-creators -- that means supporting women in product development, leadership and entrepreneurship. It means helping women get into the industry as well as helping women at all stages of careers so they can live up to their potential and help advance the industry. Women are uniquely suited to identify unmet needs in women’s health/wellness and create solutions that really resonate with female consumers.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
We’ve seen a focus on women’s reproductive health with companies targeting fertility, pregnancy, and menstruation. Looking forward, we will continue to see a widening net with more focus on solutions for menopause as well as chronic diseases that impact women. These are large markets that are ripe for more investment. Telehealth solutions will also continue to expand exponentially to meet the needs of busy women who require easier access to care and provide relief for a healthcare system that is strained.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
Get to know your audience and your potential customers on a deep level. Start talking with them early and often. Really listen to what they are telling you. Put them at the centre of your strategy. To do this, you need to prioritize market research, the customer experience, and the data strategy.
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
I don’t have to look far. We have a number of amazing women in MedTech here in Minnesota’s Medical Alley, and I’m inspired by the entrepreneurs who are pioneering new companies and new products. To name a few: Lee Jones who is a serial med-tech entrepreneur and CEO and co-founder of Rebiotix, part of Ferring, which is developing a new category of drugs that leverage the human microbiome to treat disease. Tammy Lee of Xena Technologies, who is also a serial entrepreneur. She launched her Opal Cool wearable cooling therapeutic products during the pandemic. And Angie Zavoral Conley, founder and CEO of Abilitech Medical, develops wearable assistive devices that helps people who have neuromuscular weakness in their upper arms.
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.