It may be tough as a dentist to maintain the constant stream of patients you need to remain profitable.
Some patients prioritize their dental health, while others go years between visits and only visit when something goes wrong. This implies you’ll need to put in some effort to keep them interested. Email marketing can help with that.
Email marketing that is effective can help you attract new consumers while also encouraging existing patients to invest in their dental health and keep regular appointments. This post goes through why email marketing is so essential for dentists and the five different types of emails you’ll need in your email campaign. The first step to getting started on your email marketing campaign is determining what type of business you’re running, which we’ll go through next.
Let’s begin with a brief overview of why email marketing is so advantageous for small businesses like yours.
The return on investment for email marketing is tremendous and increasing. According to data, the ROI for email marketing is $40 for every $1 spent, which greatly outweighs any other form of marketing.
Furthermore, there is little initial expenditure. Email campaigns creation and transmission are inexpensive, so even a relatively modest marketing budget may have a significant impact.
Your email list may be used to bring in new patients and keep current ones engaged. It can be used to inform your subscribers about new services and provide tailored discounts to patients who haven’t visited for a while. The average lifetime value of a single patient is $12,000–15,000, so each one you keep helps your bottom line significantly.
After a visit, sending a follow-up email offers patients the chance to provide comments. Taking action on their suggestions shows that you care about them and value their business, which improves your connection.
You can also ask for a client testimonial as part of the email. This adds to your dental website or Google Reviews social proof, which is important for attracting new patients. 87 percent of customers read online reviews while looking for local services. Positive comments validate your service, distinguish you from the competition, and enhance your reputation.
Now you know why email marketing is so important for your company, let’s go through the five types of emails you should think about when developing your marketing strategy.
The welcome email, perhaps more than any other email you’ll ever send your subscribers, establishes the tone of your relationship and allows you to introduce your brand to them.
Let’s face it: A dental newsletter is going to be a hard sell. But if you really want people to sign up for your service, it pays (literally) to be persistent. Dental newsletters are 4x more likely than other email communications to get recipients to open them, so this is the message to send in order for them to take action. It may also entail signing up for a dental practice, obtaining educational materials on your services, or making an appointment.
To increase the chance of prospective patients booking their first appointment, it’s worth adding a promotional offer in your welcome email. A welcome email that contains a special offer boosts revenue by 30% per email compared to those that don’t include one.
They can also use their welcome email to share health-related news. The health publication assures its subscribers that they’ll be receiving helpful material on health issues, as it does in this example with a promotional email.
You can use this email to announce new goods and services in your practice. For example, if you’re launching a cutting-edge technique for teeth whitening, create an email that explains the service, who it’s best for, and what benefits it provides.
You may also include a limited-time offer in the email, such as a 20% off for the first 100 patients or a complimentary at-home maintenance product. This is fantastic since time-limited discounts create urgency and act as a purchase trigger.
As a bonus, this sort of email serves as a gentle nudge to encourage subscribers to interact with you. For example, after seeing your new product or service email, several clients may realize they’re behind in their regular scheduled appointments and book a routine check-up, even if they aren’t interested in teeth whitening.
Educational and how-to emails serve two main aims: to develop credibility and offer value. As a result, sending customized material via email helps your subscribers see you as more than just a dentist.
You demonstrate knowledge if you provide how-to instructions. It indicates that readers can trust you for expert advice on dental care, so you may serve as a one-stop shop if they have queries or issues that need to be addressed in terms of their dental health.
Reminder emails may seem unmarketable, but they’re critical. Appointment reminders will encourage client responsibility, resulting in a reduction in no-shows for dentists like you. They also assist you in avoiding missing out on the opportunity to book another customer if patients learn that they won’t be able to make an appointment.
If you don’t charge a no-show fee, these missed appointments can have a damaging impact on your bottom line.
You may also use appointment reminder emails to promote supplementary services. For instance, you could encourage patients to schedule a scale and polish when their check-up is scheduled. You may also utilize a reminder email to encourage patients to book their next checkup, ensuring that you have a constant supply of revenue.
If you need to re-engage inactive patients, give loyal ones a reward, or match a competitor’s offer, targeted promotional emails are your friend.
Promotional emails may be tailored to a certain group of your email list, with a one-time discount on their dental checkup or holiday offers like as a Black Friday or New Year’s sale.
Boosting engagement and enticing people to take action is critical in the email marketing world. In fact, promotional emails influenced the purchasing decisions of 68 percent of millennials.
Let’s assume that you’re convinced that dental email marketing is the best way to go for your business. How should you get started? Continue reading to discover more.
Using a professional email marketing solution allows you to devote your time and energy to your patients. Setting up an email marketing campaign is simple, but there are several factors to consider, including design, substance, scheduling, and management.
What are the most important characteristics to search for when choosing an email marketing software?
Pro tip: It’s important to choose an email marketing service with all of these capabilities that makes it simple to get started and obtain results quickly.
Your first line of action is to figure out what you can offer your audience in return for their email (or “a valuable freebie”). You may create something similar to a smile guide, the top five dental blunders you’re making, or providing an exceptional discount.
The most crucial aspect, though, is that your freebie be an offer they can’t refuse. To create this sort of offer, dig into your dental practice’s history and find a bothersome problem that patients commonly discuss. Then craft a freebie to assist them address that issue.
If after completing the task, you’ve decided to ask for their email address, this freebie becomes what you’ll use to request it. It might be a blog post, an ebook, a video, or anything else that works best for you.
You must first make a form once you’ve completed your valuable freebie. In essence, this form is what you’ll use to invite your audience to provide their email addresses in exchange for your freebie.
You can generate three distinct types of newsletter signup forms:
A popup form
This version, as the name implies, appears as a pop-up over your website’s content while people are reading specific pages on your site.
A full page form
Flodesk’s full-page form is ideal for you if you don’t have a website yet and aren’t planning on having one soon. If you don’t want to build a website, Flodesk’s complete page form is ideal since it publishes directly to the internet without requiring any code to be pasted in. Simply copy and paste the
An inline form
An inline form may be displayed almost anywhere on your site. Once you’ve created it, you’ll have a code that you can use to position the form however you like on your site.
How do you get started collecting addresses and building your email list? Let’s have a look at some alternatives:
Simply ensure that you include a checkbox to obtain their consent to join your email marketing list.
It’s time to start sending your emails now that you’ve built up a mailing list and developed an audience eager to receive them.
The welcome email, according to our research, should be the first one you send because 74% of subscribers anticipate getting a welcome letter as soon as they join an email list. Your welcome email should also serve as the beginning of your automation procedure; it should be the first in a sequence of automated emails that your subscribers receive after signing up. You don’t want to have to track sign-ups and manually send an email every time someone new joins up.
Flodesk Workflows make it simple to send automated emails based on particular triggers such as sign-ups or new service launches that a specific audience segment is interested in. Watch What Are Workflows and When to Use Them in Your Email Marketing to learn more about how to utilize Workflows.
Automation also allows you to get savvy about when you send emails. According to research, the ideal time to send emails is Tuesday morning, so scheduling campaigns to be delivered at that time is a wise idea.
If you’ve just imported an existing subscriber list into your new platform, you may send a reminder email or targeted promotional email to those clients who haven’t visited in a while.
Knowing where you want your email marketing campaigns to go is also essential when it comes to monitoring important metrics.
Dental practices are time-consuming to manage, so you must be strategic about your marketing strategy. You want to put your resources where they provide the most return and have a good understanding of the numbers is required to do so.
If your email marketing platform provider offers built-in analytics so you can learn more about how your campaign is performing, be sure to check them on a regular basis so that you may influence your decision-making. Learn more about how to employ Analytics to make better decisions by reading Understanding Your Email & Workflow Analytics.
The three key things you should be tracking with analytics are:
The data that you collect from your email marketing efforts can provide valuable information about whether or not they are working for your dental practice.
When you’re just getting started with email marketing, you’ll undoubtedly have a lot of questions. The following are two of the most frequently asked queries:
Email marketing may help you develop your dental practice. You may utilize a variety of strategies to attract and keep patients, but email marketing is hard to beat in terms of value for money.
You can also develop your reputation as a service provider by delivering high-value, relevant information in the form of emails. Many people find going to the dentist stressful, and creating a trustworthy relationship is an important first step toward having a long-term customer.
The two most important elements of a great email are value and customization.
Value: Create and send emails that are only valuable to your audience. Keep things in control; email marketing is not about flooding your subscribers with irrelevant data in an unorganized manner. More than half of Americans consider receiving too many marketing emails, so you need to be aware of how many times you’re sending them.
Personalization: Making them aware of goods and services that may be ideal or tailored for them increases the likelihood that they will engage with you. Plus, providing targeted promotional deals can be the push they need to make an appointment or try a different service.
Email marketing initiatives can help you develop your dentistry practice whether you want to convert potential patients into loyal clients or encourage current customers to try a new product or service.
The right email marketing solution takes care of the heavy lifting for you, allowing you to generate unique material, schedule it automatically, and evaluate outcomes.