In this blog we talk about email marketing for your healthcare practice or your wellness practice. Email marketing helps to serve a lot of different purposes. And so, we’ll talk about what those purposes are for your practice, as well as the different types of emails that we recommend making sure that you are sending out.
First and foremost, email marketing helps you to increase the ROI from your digital marketing efforts.
Increase ROI of Healthcare Digital Marketing
How does it do this? Well, the first thing that it does is it keeps you top of mind with the folks on your email list. Sometimes your email list might be comprised of past patients, or it might be comprised of somebody who just downloaded a resource from your website, or even somebody who just requested a consultation with your practice.
By receiving emails in their inbox at set frequencies, whether it’s daily, monthly, weekly, you are able to stay top of mind with them. When they think of your specialty, you immediately are the person that they think of. Just because you keep on popping up in their inbox.
Additionally, email marketing helps you to build trust with your patients and with your email list.
Build Trust with Prospects Online
Now you’re able to build trust because whenever you send out an email, you are sharing valuable and educational information with your email list. So the more you share this valuable and educational material, the more they will learn to trust what you have to say.
Put a Face to the Name with Email Marketing
Lastly, email marketing helps you to really get your email list knowing your physicians or your specialist. And so, by including things like videos or pictures of your staff and of your physicians, you are able to get them to know who you are as an office and who your specialists really are. So these are really important for making sure that you are increasing the ROI of your digital marketing efforts.
Types of Email Marketing to Include in Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategy
Now, what types of emails do we send out? So there are a few different types of emails, and the two most important ones that we’re going to talk about today are the automated emails that somebody would receive right when they request a consultation or right when they download a resource from your website and ongoing email newsletters.
Automated Emails Immediately After A Prospect Joins Your List
How many times have you had that happen where somebody fills out the form, you give them a call, and they have no idea what you’re calling about?
The reason why we want to send them something immediately is that online people are busy, they might click to download something on their phone or even click for a consultation, and then they forget about it.
We see this sometimes, especially when we’re running ads on Facebook, where somebody will fill out a form, and then after 30 minutes or an hour, they might forget that they filled out the form or not recognize your call when you call them to schedule that actual appointment.
By sending a follow-up email, especially one that includes a short message from your specialist, it helps them to remember who you are and to put a face to the name, so that they actually have a lasting relationship connection with your practice. So we definitely recommend any time you collect name and email address, to then send out a email immediately. Now, you can set this up through your contact management system, and through your medical record system that sometimes those have the capability to do this, or if you utilize something like MailChimp or Salesforce, that is an option there as well.
Integrating Email Newsletters into Healthcare Marketing
The next thing that you will be wanting to have the emails for is your newsletter. We recommend sending out a newsletter at least monthly, though a lot of our clients do send them out weekly. These newsletters are great places to share educational information with the folks on your email list. We recommend including videos of your physicians or your specialist, as well as tips, and even sometimes recipes, or exercises that your email list can do at home to help with the things that your specialty is around as well.
I bring up orthopedic surgeons quite a bit, but you could have knee exercises or stretching exercises included in that email list, to help people share it with their friends and family who might be going through the same thing. Or, for a pediatrics office, potentially, you have something in there that is geared towards healthy snacks for children at different age groups or different milestones, as well as some STEM toys or projects that they could be doing at home with their parents. The parent can share this content with their friends and family if they find it educational and share-worthy.
We highly recommend having this email marketing be a large part of your digital marketing strategy, so that once you collect the names and email addresses of individuals and they have opted into your email marketing, they not only receive an immediate email to remind them who you are and put a face to the name, but then they also receive these ongoing email communications so that you stay top of mind and they learn to know, like, and trust you.
If you have any questions about how to utilize email marketing for your wellness center, please head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com and request a consultation. We can’t wait to talk with you in more detail about how you can increase the ROI of your own digital marketing campaigns. And if you like this video, be sure to click that subscribe button or follow us on Podbean or iTunes.
Also published on Medium.
