The defining element that brings all these patients together?
A lack of brand loyalty. Their situation might even be called brand confusion.
Rather than building a solid patient-doctor relationship, more patients are looking at their medical provider as “here today, gone tomorrow.”
To counteract this and drive growth, you need a way to:
- Build up the relationship “brick by brick” between patient encounters
- Add value that equips patients to move forward on their health goals
- Ensure patients are utilizing the services that will protect their health
Digital marketing has the answers. When it comes to meeting the marketing goals of medical practices, however, one method stands above the rest: Email marketing.
Email Marketing Fights Patient Turnover Like Nothing Else
In a complete digital marketing strategy, blogging is a big part of driving visitors to your site for the first time. In medical practices, however, the formula is sometimes reversed.
Most practices can’t compete with the content generation engine of a decades-old site like WebMD. On the other hand, you have a ready audience in your existing customers and local market.
They have already accepted your practice as a source of expertise. Email marketing shows them they can count on you and introduces them to the many ways to get more from your brand.
Although your patients don’t have to sign up for marketing emails, it’s easy to convince them to do so, especially early on in the relationship.
After that, you have the chance to communicate directly to them on a weekly basis. Soon, they will know and trust your messages.
Here’s how you can use that power to maximize value for your patients and your practice:
1. Let Them Know About Seasonal Health Alerts
Many different health concerns pop up throughout the year, like flu season and allergy season. Patients may be grappling with these problems, but they don’t always seek preventive care that can help them.
A reminder at the right time makes them much more likely to set an appointment. Then, they can see the difference that visiting you makes in their lives.
2. Remind Them About Available Services
Many medical practices are expanding their service roster. For example, a lot of smaller practices have used classes related to health and wellness to create additional income or raise usage of other services.
It’s very likely your current patients only know about a tiny fraction of what you can do. Email marketing gives them the information and allows them to sign up quickly, too.
3. Provide Tailored Health And Wellness Advice
Larger practices with more health data to crunch are finding innovative ways to tailor services to patients.
From an email perspective, a great way to do this is through a series of short videos. Users recall much more content from videos than from text.
Plus, video strengthens the personal relationship between patients and care providers – even when providers are too busy to chat.
4. Make It Easier To Answer Questions And Schedule Appointments
A well-designed email makes it easy to schedule appointments in just a few clicks. It can also serve as a convenient gateway to all the information your practice has to offer.
You can link subscribers to your most popular FAQs or directly to an AI-based chat bot. Bots learn over time and answer non-emergency health questions in natural language.
5. Solicit Feedback To Improve Future Experiences
Patients might feel uncomfortable speaking up about how they feel when talking to a doctor. In some cases, it can take a few days for them to reflect on their experiences and figure out precisely what they wish they’d said.
Email marketing is the perfect way to tap into feedback from those “in-between” moments. Patients can end up telling you things they would otherwise forget or bottle up.
6. Give Them A Heads Up About Their Health Goals
Dentists, eye doctors, and general practitioners can all find themselves sliding down patients’ priority lists for a number of reasons.
An email reminder with a personal touch is the best way to remind them about the importance of looking after their well-being.
Automated email can let patients know about prescriptions they’ll soon need to refill or follow-ups they should schedule this month.
Compelling, Customized Emails For Your Patients
Emails you send should have at least one goal from the six above, and some will have several. But remember: How you say something is as important as what you say.
That goes double for email marketing!
For a message to inspire action, it also has to do these things right:
- Arrive on a consistent schedule and promise clear value each time
- Speak directly to each individual recipient’s interests and needs
- Provide a smooth experience on mobile, especially smartphones
- Connect your subscribers to worthwhile information and features
With years of experience in digital marketing for medical practices, the team at New York Ave makes it easy for you. We will work with you to develop effective, automated email campaigns.
Over time, those campaigns provide valuable analytics data that allow us to fine-tune all of your marketing efforts to make them even better.
While email stands at the core of your retention efforts, cutting edge social media, video, and content marketing will draw new patients to you.
To find out more or get started, schedule a friendly chat with New York Ave.
