What is one of the most effective and trusted forms of marketing for doctor’s offices? To answer that question, let’s take a look at which types of marketing consumers actually use.
Which marketing channel do you think reaches an astonishing 90 percent of U.S. adults and 74 percent of U.S. teenagers? The answer, according to a recent study by Adestra that quoted U.S. Census Bureau Statistics, is email! In fact, email surpassed online usage of favorites like text messaging, social media, online shopping and entertainment streaming according to 2016 Census Bureau statistics.
With so many Americans actively using email, it makes sense that doctor’s offices like yours need to get their message directly in people’s hands through medical email marketing. But why exactly is email marketing for doctors effective? In this blog, we’ll examine five reasons why we at Crystal Clear believe that medical email marketing is vital. We have over 20 years in the marketing industry, serving aesthetics and wellness practices, doctors, plastic surgeons, medical spas, dentists, and more, we’re basing this list on what we’ve seen email marketing for doctors do so well for real clients – just like you!
Medical email marketing establishes connections
Even in today’s digital age, the old adage still holds true that people do business with people they like. When doctors like you send an email message to existing and potential clients, it should accomplish far more than telling then your office hours – it should offer a window into the personalities and the strengths of the professionals behind your sign.
Email marketing does this most effectively when you provide your readers with valuable content. Let’s face it, your patients are busy, and they have to wade through quite a few emails on a daily basis. Fortunately, there’s something about seeing an email from your doctor’s office that makes them almost unconsciously click it and open it. It’s because you probably already have established a solid level of trust with your patients.
Now, the role of effective medical email marketing is to take that level of trust to the next level.
You do so by not wasting your patients’ time. The information that you have to tell this is pertinent and valuable – after all, this is about their health! You could be giving them a few fast facts that they need to know about summer skin care, valuable advice on how to keep their children healthy during flu season or letting them know that you have a special offer next week that they will want to look into. The fact that you are sharing it with them helps increase their trust in you as a professional.
Your emails don’t have to stop at the strictly professional level. It’s okay – even desirable – to reveal some snippets of the personality that makes you and your office unique. Does the local college basketball team come into your office for preseason check-ups? Snap a picture of them and include it in your next email. Does your entire staff suit up in their favorite football jerseys during the playoffs? Snap a picture and tell your patients who you are cheering for! Did your office manager bring their new puppy in for a visit? Snap a picture and tell patients to share it with their children. These seemingly simple icebreakers help patients see you as not just a professional – but a person they can trust.
Medical email marketing is economical
One of the unfortunate realities of business life that you can trust is that advertising and marketing cost money. One of the most pleasant realities of marketing life, on the other hand, is that effective email marketing doesn’t have to cost a fortune.
There are several email marketing platforms you can use on your own that offer either free or inexpensive monthly plans, depending on your number of contacts and emails sent per cycle. With easy-to-use templates and intuitive design features, these platforms make it simple for you or a trusted employee to create professional emails that reach your intended audience. Many of these platforms also offer tracking features that can tell you exactly who has opened your emails and even who has clicked through to any hyperlinks you included. This makes it simple to send a follow-up email to those who might have an interest in a particular event, activity or special that you are promoting.
While these programs make it easier for you to handle email marketing for doctors internally, we at Crystal Clear Digital Marketing are advocates of doctor’s offices like yours turning their email marketing over to professionals like us. Why? Because the most effective email marketing campaigns require the one thing that you have the least amount of – time! To be done well, emails should be sent at regular intervals, so professionals help you stay on track. They also should be designed so that appropriate and varied follow up emails are directed to potential clients who either opened the original message, clicked a link, or didn’t open it all. That requires a level of attention that your busy employees can better use elsewhere in your practice.
Medical email marketing meshes with other marketing
Speaking of using things elsewhere, that’s one of the key reasons why we love email marketing – it blends so well with all of your other existing marketing efforts – and those that you have yet to imagine.
- Need content for your social email channels? Share your email marketing!
- Want to follow up with a list of potential clients you met at a health fair? Send them your email marketing!
- Have a referral program that you want to encourage clients to use to help grow your practice? Promote it through email marketing!
- Have you launched a landing page that you are promoting through other channels to increase your leads? Follow up with those who respond via email marketing!
The ways in which you can integrate email marketing – whether that’s a direct response from a website, landing page, social media inquiry or more – as well it’s potential to link into and promote existing and new campaigns make it a natural extension of any of your marketing programs.
Medical email marketing is mobile
How do many folks view your marketing campaigns these days? The obvious answer might be right in your hands as you are reading this blog – on their cell phones or other mobile devices. The beauty of medical email marketing is that it can reach potential clients where they want to be reached – on those mobile devices.
Unlike a traditional print ad that requires a reader to stay in one place, pick up a magazine, turn to the exact page where your ad is, and then pay enough attention to it to absorb the material, email marketing goes with them wherever they are. Whether that’s at work, watching a child’s sporting event, in the car, or even as they are waiting for their next appointment.
What’s more, if you or your email marketing company has designed your emails to be responsive (as we do for all of our clients), your message will look its best no matter which platform readers are viewing it on. Which definitely presents a more professional view of your practice than say, seeing your face on the stained direct mail postcard that your patient’s child is using for a coaster.
Medical email marketing is effective
No matter what your reasons are for choosing a particular method of marketing, the bottom line should be your actual bottom line. By that, we mean that you should be choosing marketing methods based on which are the most effective at getting your message across and then converting views into action.
You probably already measure most other items in your practice (such as new equipment and customer tracking software) by looking at ROI, so it makes sense that you should be doing the same with your marketing methods.
And when you look at ROI, email marketing isn’t just at the head of the class; it’s in a class by itself. A recent study by Campaign Monitor found that for an astonishing ten years in a row, email marketing is the channel that has provided its clients with the highest ROI – most recently generating $38 for every $1 spent. That far exceeded the return provided by affiliate marketing, paid search, video, social, radio, and television.
Perhaps one reason for email marketing’s effectiveness is its immediacy. When a potential client sees your email and is intrigued by what they see, all they have to do to learn more is click a link to call or email. In an age of instant gratification and consumers’ increasingly busy schedules, that’s a reaction that your office needs to capitalize on.
Email marketing for doctors’ office is just an email (or an old-fashioned phone call) away.
No matter which reason – or reasons – for using email marketing for doctors’ offices appeals to you, we can help you achieve the results you desire. Are you ready to bring your practice into the 21st century with email marketing for doctors’ offices? Contact Crystal Clear Digital Marketing today!
