While everyone stresses the importance of social media to market your dental practice (or for that matter – any other small business), don’t underestimate the value of email marketing. Many dental marketers still consider email to be one of the simplest and most effective methods of communicating.
There are many benefits to utilizing the email marketing. These range from staying top-of-mind with your current patients, to nurturing new patient leads based on the pages they visit, or the materials they download from your site, all helping to increase your brand recognition.
Send a newsletter but don’t forget customer personas
Keep your patients in the loop about what’s happening at your office and the dental world in general. These updates can range from new technology and procedures, profiles about new team members, to announcing awards or acknowledgments.
Keep in mind that your message needs to be relevant to the reader’s needs. With today’s technology you have the power to easily customize a patient’s newsletter. While some elements of the newsletter can be common, other articles can be completely custom based on the patient’s buying persona. For example, an article about the “Tell-tale signs you child needs braces” can be automatically inserted in newsletters being mailed to patients with pre-teenage kids. Reactivation messages can be included in newsletters to patients that you haven’t seen in a while. Even create special promotional offers to prospective patients through sponsorship emails who’ve opted in to receive promotional emails from third parties.
These types of emails will lead to improved patient loyalty and deeper relationships.
The email subject line is key to getting it opened
When writing an email, it is common practice to summarize what your message is in a couple of words for your subject line. The subject line is crucial because it’s the hook for your target audience. If you can engage your patient with your subject line you have a much better chance of getting the message opened. To get them interested, you can pose a simple question such as, “Having toothaches at night?” or talk about a solution “Fix your smile in no time!”.
The subject line for the Elements Dental email below was “Matthew, a special holiday offer for you …” which immediately captures the attention of the recipient with special pricing.
Use promotions to get positive reviews
It’s no secret that patient reviews are pivotal for success in your practice. The amount of stars you see for your office on Google+ is whats makes a difference when a potential patient chooses to book an appointment between you and your competitors. Therefore, you must to do everything you can to encourage people to write positive comments about their experiences and that’s where promotions come into play.
Notice how Empress Walk Dental sends two emails to their patients. The first one asks them to fill out a brief questionnaire. If the feedback is negative, a customer care representative will call them to address their concerns. If the feedback is positive, they’re sent another email with an incentive to write a review on Google+. These sorts of promotions pay huge dividends for boosting your online presence and reputation.
Email marketing is more cost effective than many marketing tactics. Email marketing has an average click-through rate between 3% and 5% (of total recipients), whereas the average click-through rate from a tweet or Facebook post is less than .05%.
Looking to improve the return on your dental marketing? Contact us for a free, no obligation, brand review.
BARIS OZMORALI
Social Media Marketing Coordinator
Mystique Brand Communications
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