Start a Successful Patient Email Marketing Campaign

For any healthcare provider who wants to grow their practice, practice marketing is key.

In this day and age, when many medical practices struggle to stay profitable, creative marketing strategies that require only a shoestring budget are becoming more popular. After-all, not all medical practices have the resources for a dedicated marketing team or consultant.

So what low-budget marketing strategy will give you most bang for your buck?

Email marketing.

In today’s world where everyone is increasingly connected and attached to their devices, email marketing is a great way to reach out to patients to encourage them to come in for flu shots, advertise a new service you’re offering, remind them about an upcoming appointment, or even announce your new telemedicine program.

And the great news is, email marketing doesn’t require all that much time or money.

Did you know HCMS can provide email blasts (mass email announcements) to your patients?

Many of our clients use this to :

• Notify patients that it’s time for their flu or other vaccinations
• Keep your patients engaged
• Send educational topics
• Announce special eventsNotify patients regarding Holidays and office closings
• Explain new services available
• Increase patient activity, leading to more revenue
• Schedule a monthly email blast
• We are happy to work with your practice any time you have the need.  We charge a flat rate/physician /email blast. We use a special, professional service to send out your email blasts.
• We ask for 48 hours notice prior to the date you would like the email blast to be sent out, as well as content to be distributed to your patients. We will prepare a draft with graphics/photos and send to you for approval prior to the blast.

As always, please let us know if you need additional support or service.

So, ready to get started? Here’s a quick walkthrough of how to set-up a patient email campaign.

Clean-up your patient email list.

Depending on how regularly you request patients’ email addresses, your patient email list might need a bit of clean-up for your marketing campaign. Export your email list from your EHR or practice management software and scan for any obvious errors or duplicates. Track how many patients you actually have email addresses for. From there, you may want to put a few simple tactics in place to collect and update more of your patients’ email addresses.

Assign a point person.

Your patient email marketing campaign is more likely to go smoothly if you have one person in charge. The lead staff member should be the assigned expert on using the email platform, scheduling out everything, and handling responses to any patients who reply to the email messages.

Create an email marketing schedule.

Decide how many emails you’ll be sending out for the marketing campaign. What’s your goal? Are you trying to get patients to sign-up for something? Are you starting a monthly newsletter? Are you sending out seasonal marketing emails?

Decide on the frequency and maybe even drill down to a certain day of the week and time. For instance, provide a campaign schedule that stretches over one year, with several emails in the first month, monthly emails afterwards, and then a 6 month and 1 year message.

Write out your emails.

Now it’s time to actually write those emails! Whatever your marketing goal is, remember to keep your emails short and to the point. Use bullet points and headings to break up your text.

Choose a catchy subject line that will stand out in a patient’s email inbox. Pick a clean, attractive design template from your email platform. Make sure your from address says your name, or your practice’s name, so that patient’s will immediately recognize the sender.

Of course, you also need to make sure you’re abiding by HIPAA. You may want to include a disclaimer in your email signature warning patients not to share any personal health information via email.

Create your email campaign.

Now that you have your schedule planned and your email copy ready, we can help you load into our professional email marketing software and send it out with a 48 hours notice.

Contact HCMS today https://hcmsnapa.com/contact-us/

Call us at (707) 255-8825