A great article that first appeared in Dentistry. Written by Chris Baker from Corona Dental Marketing.
As a practice, one of your most valuable resources is your existing patient database. The most cost-effective way to communicate with this base is via email – this is why you need to be doing it. Here are my top 10 tips on using email to the benefit of your practice, and a few things to avoid.
Top 10 email marketing tips
- Spend a little time working out what might appeal to your patients and what you would like to promote
- We have found that a mix of practice news, treatment education, promotions and dentistry in the news (for example the sugar tax) works best
- Don’t just sell, sell, sell. Consider these emails as an informative newsletter and write accordingly
- ‘Storyboard’ four to six emails in terms of treatments, practice news, promotions and so on – fail to plan, plan to fail!
- Consider your subject lines very carefully. Most campaigns will prosper or fail depending upon the quality of these. What would make you open it?
- Export all your data into an Excel spreadsheet, having first removed data on all patients aged under 18
- Use third-party email marketing software such as Mailchimp or Dotmailer. These will provide large amounts of useful statistics such as open rates, what was clicked upon and so on
- Keep the stories short and sweet. If they are longer, host them on your website and include a link to them in the email
- Ensure that you have plenty of clickable content in the emails – this means you can measure what those who opened the email wanted to read
- Review your reports regularly so that you can tailor future emails to what your audience has expressed a preference for.
Things to avoid
- Don’t try and include everything in the first email
- Don’t send emails on Mondays – most people are busy and open rates are generally lower
- If you have nothing to say, don’t send it! Hold fire and send out an email next month when you do.
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