Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach your patients because it is sent directly to them, meaning it is “owned” space. Once your practice has collected an email address, you have direct access to communicate with them. These top email marketing tips for dentists will help you craft engaging emails that will build relationships with your patients.
A Great Subject Line Is Hard to Beat
While your email’s content needs to be high-quality, your subject line is the most important. This short piece needs to be engaging enough to get people to click, while also revealing information about what’s inside. Utilize the preview text to provide additional information as well.
Consider your dental practice’s tone and patient base. If you have primarily an older clientele, focus on straightforward subject lines with your personality added in. If you’re targeting millennial patients, tie in pop-culture references and inject your sense of humor. It takes a great subject line for millennials to open emails, so make sure it’s a good one!
Set a Consistent Schedule
A consistent schedule is essential to email marketing. If you send too many, people will begin to unsubscribe, however, you may miss out on a lead if you’re posting too infrequently. We recommend one to two emails a month. This balances the time needed to create each email with the value of reaching your patients’ inboxes regularly.
Use a mix of oral health tips, practice updates, and specials to create a value-packed email your patients will open every time.
Create Different Lists
In order to serve every person on your list with the best content for them, create different lists. This is easily done in your email marketing platform. (E.g., Mailchimp or Constant Contact.) We recommend creating these lists:
- “Current Patient” list contains all active patients.
- “Inactive Patient” list for those who haven’t visited in 12-18 months.
- “Social Media” list for those who signed up via Facebook or Instagram.
- “Website” list for those who signed up via a form on your website.
Customize the list to meet your practice’s needs, and send customized emails to each. This doesn’t need to be an entirely new email, but it should reflect the type of patient or prospect on the list.
For example, an email to Inactive Patients could include the same oral health tips as the Current Patient list receives, but with an added message about scheduling a visit.
Add an Opt-In Checkbox to Registration Forms
Patients need to opt-in to receive emails, so make sure there’s an option on registration forms. (If there isn’t already.) It’s as simple as “Check here if you’d like to receive occasional email updates.” Or, you can choose to use an opt-out where patients need to check the box if they don’t want updates.
Regardless of method, it’s important to get their permission so you stay within CAN-SPAM guidelines.
When done well, email marketing can help increase patient retention, build value, and encourage inactive patients to schedule an appointment. These top email marketing tips for dentists will help you build a strong email marketing campaign which can then help grow your practice.