Emails have become an integral part of not just digital marketing, but marketing strategy overall. If you’re thinking about the marketing strategy for your dental practice, it’s time you gave email some thought. Email is both an effective marketing tool and a powerful way to reach your patients.
Why You Should Use Email in Your Marketing Strategy
Email is as relevant as ever. It has one of the highest returns on investment compared to other marketing techniques and the number of active email accounts is growing every day. Even when compared to social media, email is a dominant force with 58% of people checking their email before their social media in the morning.
Emails are not just a useful marketing tool, but a great way to build relationships with your patients. Regular emails allow you to keep in touch with your patients and increase patient retention. Messages sent through email reach your patients better too, as 85% of email messages actually reach your customers. Current results from email marketing are almost as promising as future projections. Unlike many other platforms, the power of email is only expected to grow. 76% of marketers are seeing active growth in their number of email subscribers and 73% of millennials prefer to be contacted by email when the message is coming from a business.
How to Get Patients to Open Your Emails
Email can be an effective marketing tool, but you do have to use it correctly. In order to get the best return from your email marketing, there are a few guidelines to follow regardless of what the message of the email is.
Subject Lines
Before your patients even open your email, the subject line is what they see. Subject lines are what convince patients to actually open your email and read your message. You should always write subject lines that create interest and convince your patients to read more. Some of the most effective methods for writing subject lines include:
- Statistics or numbers
- Exclusive offers or discounts
- Real-life case studies, results, advise, or endorsements
- Emojis
When used correctly, these techniques can boost email opens by up to 206%.
Personalization
Personalization is one of the easiest ways to improve your email marketing metrics. After all, everyone loves hearing the sound of their own name. It’s easy to create personalized emails with most email software, just make sure your email database also includes your patient’s first and last names. Including patient’s names in email communication is definitely worth the extra step, with personalized emails having six times higher transaction rates.
Call to Action
Every email you send to your patients should be as short as possible and easy to understand. This means your emails should have one main message or call to action. Why are you sending the email and what steps do you want your patients to take? That is the call to action. All aspects of the email from the subject line to the body of the email should be focused on this one call to action. There should also be one link prompting your patients to take that action. Whatever the call to action is, a concise and focused email will increase the number of patients who take the next step.
Unsubscribe
Including an unsubscribe button in your emails is not only standard practice but the law in many countries. The unsubscribe button should be easy for your patients to find in order to comply with these laws and to avoid being marked as spam. For more information about email regulations, you can read about CASL legislation in Canada and CAN-SPAM in the United States.
How to Choose & Use Your Email Software Properly
If you’re thinking about email marketing, choosing an email software is the place to start. The right fit for you and your practice will depend on the patient management software you use and whether the email software in question allows you to import your patient database easily. Some of the top email software options to choose from include:
Using email software not only simplifies the email process, but it also allows you to track analytics more easily.
Analytics
Reviewing analytics is essential to any marketing campaign. Analytics let you know what is working well and what isn’t working well for you and your patients. Going over the numbers from your analytics is the best way to measure return on investment and to decide how to best spend your marketing budget. Standard metrics for email marketing and the averages for the dental and medical industry include:
A/B testing
A/B testing is an essential component of reviewing your analytics. It’s the most effective way to measure what techniques get the best results. Essentially, A/B testing is creating two different emails with one difference between them and measuring which performed better. For example, you could try including images in one email and text only in the other to see which email has a better click-through rate. Using A/B testing is a sure way to see what preferences your patients have, allowing you to tailor your emails to them.
Still not sure where to start with your email marketing? We’re here to help! Our digital marketing experts have years of experience and we’re ready to create the perfect email strategy for your practice. Book a call with us and find out what email marketing can do for you.
