Email marketing is the “old reliable” of digital marketing tactics. Pay-per-click advertising and its accompany remarketing programs are terrific. So is social media advertising and the use of video. But even with our inboxes flooded, the tried and true approach of getting an email address and using it still produces results. If you do email marketing for doctors, there are a few key principles you can follow to have success.
Marketing professionals put “awareness” in the earliest stages of the sales funnel and consequently, it’s not one of the more marquee aspects of online promotion. There’s a certain intangible quality to it—you’re trying to make sure people know who you are and see how many take the next step to become a measurable website visitor.
But awareness is especially important for medical offices, particularly specialists. How many people have gone a year or more without going to the dentist? How many people’s back pain could have been alleviated if they would have thought to go to a chiropractor just a little bit sooner? Your email marketing campaign can hit those targets.
What if your email had a subject line like, “When was the last time you saw your dentist?” Or if the content of the email related the story of someone who felt nagging back pain, addressed it immediately and now is living comfortably?
Your email campaigns might not arrive at the exact moment the reader is feeling this way. But the next time their tooth feels overly cold or hot, they might now remember that they haven’t been to your office for 2 years. Or when there’s a pull in their lower back, they’ll know that it’s justifiable to take some time off work to set an appointment with you.
When you understand that you’re building awareness, you realize you’re playing a long game and other marketing decisions fall into place behind that. You know you don’t have to blast people with email every week. Even once a month is fine—sort of like a digital tap on the shoulder that says, “Remember me?”
You aren’t mass marketing and selling a low-cost product that has to be closed right there when the person opens their email. As a medical office, you’re in the relationship business and your campaigns can be structured accordingly.
Most email marketing platforms have excellent segmentation options that make your job even easier. You can customize different emails to people based on everything from age to how long it’s been since their last office visit, to whether or not your patients have young children. Each person will get their awareness triggered by something a little different and segmentation allows you to hit them all.