Whether a hospital providing traditional care or a clinic specializing in complementary therapies, healthcare thrives on patient trust. Healthcare email marketing can help you to keep in touch with patients, build long-lasting relationships, and stay top-of-mind. Email marketing is also one of the most cost-effective marketing channels available today.
However, there are far too many healthcare professionals out there who still don't use email marketing for their healthcare practice. And while health practitioners have to be sure to remain HIPAA compliant, there's no reason not to use email marketing as part of your healthcare practice.
If you're an owner or a marketer of a hospital, doctor's office, wellness, or healthcare center, use this guide to help you get started with email marketing and adopt industry-specific strategies to engage your patients and grow your practice.
How To Get Started With Healthcare Email Marketing?
The following five steps can help you get started with healthcare email marketing.
Choose An Email Marketing Provider
The first step toward building an email marketing strategy is finding a provider that works best for your business. Many email marketing tools like Hubspot, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Klaviyo have different features and pricing structures. To find the best one for your business, consider these factors:
Your marketing goals
Key features you need
Size of your audience or contact list
Overall marketing budget
Establish Your Goals
As you begin to set up your email marketing provider and build your new campaign, consider the overall goals of your email marketing and digital marketing efforts. Set benchmarks to measure your campaign's success. Consider the email marketing campaigns that are targeted and purposeful. Continue reading this guide, which will show different email marketing strategies for the healthcare services industry.
Build Your Email Contact List
To have an effective email marketing strategy, you must have a solid email contact list. An excellent way to build a solid email list is to feature an email newsletter sign-up section on your website. You can also create an opt-in form for your patients. Remember that effective email marketing starts with customers opting in to receive messages. If you send emails to customers who haven't opted in, you'll end up in the spam folder.
Source: Avada
Plan and Execute Your First Campaign Strategy
As with planning your overall goals, set up your first campaign with goals and benchmarks to determine its overall success. The primary purpose of each campaign should be to feed into your overall marketing goals. Consider these essential aspects to better plan your overall email marketing efforts, such as:
Email template designs and fonts that fit your brand
Subject lines
Open rates
Conversion rates
Target audience
Copywriting
Call to action
Timing of sent emails
Optimize for mobile users
Test and Refine
You'll never truly reach perfection when it comes to the process of email marketing. It's constantly changing, and your approach to your email marketing strategy should do the same. As you create more campaigns, track other aspects of your emails, such as:
Deliverability rate
Open rate
Click-through rates
Conversion rate
Unsubscribes
Bounced emails
Keep measuring these benchmarks as you optimize subject lines, overall design and message frequency. You can fine-tune these aspects to create an efficient program as you get better at email marketing.
Healthcare Email Marketing Campaign Strategies
As owners or marketers, we all got a lot on our plates. Automating some of your email communications can help you get the correct information to the right people at the right time and take a couple of things off of your to-do list.
There are several types of email marketing communications that you could automate when you launch your healthcare email marketing strategy.
Welcome Email Strategy
When new to your practice, your contacts are the most highly engaged with you, so take advantage of that high level of engagement and send them a short series of welcome emails. Here's an example of a welcome email.
Source: Constant Contact
Appointment Confirmation Email Strategy
If you don't confirm your patients' appointments, chances are they won't show up. Here's a straightforward appointment confirmation email for patients to ensure their booking and share a medical history form with them.
Source: Automizy
Reactivation Email Strategy
Reengage patients who haven't booked an appointment in a while. Here's an example of a reactivation email.
Source: Pacific54
Request a Referral Strategy
Request referrals from your clients/patients and offer an incentive for those that do. Here's an example.
Source: Constant Contact
Email Newsletter Strategy
Share the latest health or local community news and your commentary or advice to build patient relationships and drive email sharing. Here's an example of an email newsletter.
Source: Avada
Conclusion
When conducting email marketing for healthcare, there are certain things to keep in mind:
Provide a comfortable experience for your patients
Deliver necessary information to patients
Automate critical communications like appointment emails
Always remain HIPPA compliant
Getting started with email marketing can be difficult, but it's also not impossible. You'll need an expert set of eyes, hands, and humans to help you get established in your sector to meet these rigorous demands. Contact MMortal Marketing to help you get started with your healthcare email marketing strategy.