With all of the various digital marketing offerings available now, many dental practices overlook how effective email marketing can be. It’s a good way to build relationships with both new and current patients, driving more traffic to your office. Informative newsletters, prompts to leave a review, and special deals that only come to email subscribers are all great uses for email marketing.
Identify Your Target Audience
The first step of any successful marketing plan is determining your target audience. What are your current patients like, and what services or needs do they most want to be met? What is the kind of patient that you want to see more of? Which services that you offer do you want to focus on the most? These are the questions you need to ask yourself.
Determine the common thread throughout the answers to those questions to decide who to target. Email marketing doesn’t have to target only one singular audience, either. If you want to focus on dental implant and cosmetic dentistry cases, those audiences may diverge a bit. You can create separate email lists, one for each type of patient you want to attract.
Create Quality, Personalized Content
The last thing you want to do is send your email list spammy content that they’ll put in the trash. Anything you’re sending them should be high-quality, valuable content that they’ll actually appreciate. You don’t want your emails to be lumped in with annoying ads and flyers from various shops and stores. If they flag you as spam and unsubscribe, the last memory they’ll have of your practice is a bad one. They may not want to come back to the office.
Little personalizations can bring a lot to your emails. Make sure it carries something that sets the tone of your practice. Don’t be too formal. Email communication should have an approachable vibe. Use visuals to catch the eye of your patients. Be open and friendly, and encourage them to have a dialogue with you and your practice.
One of the best things to keep patients coming back is birthday emails. It’s a good way to show patient appreciation and to make them feel like your practice values them. Whether it’s a coupon or just warm wishes, it gives patients a good impression of you and your office.
Consider a Patient Reactivation Campaign
Email marketing can be a great way to bring back some former patients. They know what your services are like and about your practice, so they’re more likely to respond to a push to be brought back into the fold. Email is great for personalizing things to each individual. Try to determine the reason why you lost these patients.
Common reasons patients leave include getting a good deal from another dentist or the dentist having a unique service that they were looking for. Can you offer more competitive prices for the same quality of service? Is there new technology you can bring into your practice that’ll attract new patients? Email also allows you to poll past and current patients to see where you can improve.
Start a Marketing Partnership With Dental Revenue
Dental Revenue is a full-service marketing agency that provides email marketing and other services. Call us or schedule a demo online to learn more.