Email marketing is far from dead, and with the tools available at our disposal, it's easier than ever to get an email marketing campaign up and running for your healthcare practice.
Use the data at your disposal
Most medical practices because they've done business for years have amassed a huge amount of data. Data that you've gotten permission to utilize. At Social Medical please note that we don't by any means endorse the unethical usage of patient information, however, the usage of your patient's email addresses in no way constitutes a HIPAA violation or patient privacy violation, and in fact can be utilized to help your patients in the future.
Before you do anything, you need to qualify your list, qualifying your list can be done very easily. Simply shoot an email to all of your email contacts and ask them for permission to send them content regarding updates on your practice. This is just one more step that you can take to ensure that when you send content out there, it isn't marked as spam. Ending up in someone's spam folder is one of the worst things that can happen to an email address. Email clients are very sophisticated and can pick up spam email addresses. This will result that you ending up in junk mail and your emails not being seen. So first and foremost, qualify your list.
Segment your email list
As a medical practice, you likely treat a wide variety of conditions. If you are a medical practice that focuses on one single type, then make sure you segment even further. The benefit of segmenting your email list is that it provides you the ability to send niche content to every single list that is highly beneficial to the reader.
Segmenting your email list will do three things for you.
It will increase the open rates of your emails as future patients will feel that the content is hyper-relevant to them and make them more likely to take you up on a call to action.
Increase the chances of your email being shared as the person resonate more with the content.
Give you insight into what that audience wants to hear more about so you can create more specific content.
Create different emails for people at different stages of the buying cycle.
You wanna make sure that you are reaching people at different stages of their journey. If you have a website or landing page that captures email addresses, you wanna make sure that you're talking to people at the top of the funnel. If you don't know what a funnel is, visualize a physical funnel coming down with most of your audience sitting at the top.
People at the top of the funnel are usually just interested in finding out more about your service or the related topic that you are an authority on. Whereas people at the bottom are more interested in actually taking you up on those services. By segmenting your list, you can make sure you give appropriate communication at different levels of interest, and also ensures that you're sending the right content to the right people.
Over-deliver valuable content
Our email inboxes get exceptionally busy. So for you to gain attention and make sure you make a meaningful impact, ensure you are always delivering exceptional value. Always be asking the question, what's in it for me? A medical business coach once taught me that the "what's in it for me" methodology is what was at the root of his success as a practice owner. Always coming from a perspective of trying to find out what value you can give your audience will ensure that you win using email marketing. So what are some ideas that you can implement today to make sure that you're always ending up being read?
Niche content
Yes, I'll say it again. Make sure you're providing applicable niche content to that particular email segmented list. Number two,
Entertaining content.
If you are a talented writer, make sure you write exceptionally good content. If you're great in front of the camera, make sure you have a YouTube channel and you can link videos in the email directly to your YouTube channel. If you're great on social media and you can put out awesome posts, make sure you put into your email what posts you've recently put out that could be of value to that person or if you have a resource that you wanna give out, make sure that your resource helps them solve a problem today. This way, subconsciously, they'll relate your email to making sure that they can solve a problem, and they're always going to read it.
Newsletters.
Now you might be thinking to yourself, c'mon? A Newsletter, that's so 2003, but with the improvement of technology over the last decade, newsletters have become a world of their own. Email clients have become more responsive, allowing for more rich content to be added and multimedia to be included in newsletters. Many email software providers like Active Campaign, AWeber, ConvertKit, and MailChimp, provide beautiful templates that can be utilized to create a very engaging newsletter. Take the time to be unique and give your perspective on matters that you are an expert in. Give people insights into your clinic and how you do things.
Let them understand you and your personality, your unique brand. By doing so, a newsletter becomes so much more than just information. It becomes a way for your audience to get to find out what's going on with their favorite practitioner. Relatability needs to be at the core of everything you do.
Remember, you're talking to people, and as people, we wanna create connections with others. So don't be afraid to share your personality.
Call to action.
Now, earlier I mentioned the funnel, and at the bottom of the funnel, you find people are ready to utilize your services. Be sure not to neglect this very important stage of the funnel.
Yes, give value, give value, give value, but as Gary Vaynerchuk put in his book, "Jab, Jab, Jab, right hook", make sure you also ask for the sell. Let people know how they can contact you and how they can utilize your services. We would recommend the ratio of four value emails to one call-to-action email, four emails where you're delivering value on their various pain points, and a fifth email informing your audience that if they need help you are available and qualified to assist.
This is where you brag about your practice and your services. Show them how many people you have helped before by adding testimonials Give people insights into how you provide your services and why you are equipped to do so. Show up regularly and consistently and you will win using email marketing.
Consistency is key. You cannot be sending out one email every six months. There has to be a sense where you are front of mind with your client so that when the problem crops up, you are the first one they think about. Email marketing provides you unique platform where you are in control of the audience. You are not reliant on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok to provide you with an audience to speak to.
These email addresses have been given to you and given to you in confidence. Unless somebody unsubscribes, you have a right to talk to them, but always make sure you have their buy-in first.
If you would like to speak to us at Social medical about how to implement this for your practice, feel free to book a strategy call with us free of charge using the "Book now" link below or send us a mail at hello@socialmedicalpro.com.
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