As a dental practice owner, one of your responsibilities is to effectively market your practice to increase revenue. When looking for marketing strategies and patient engagement ideas with a high return on investment, email marketing for dentists can be a key to opening revenue channels. When done right, it can be more than effective. It can be a powerful strategy to successfully grow your practice.
Benefits of Email Marketing for Dentists
Dental practice email marketing is a cost-effective way to:
- Foster your dental reputation
- Build patient relationships
- Drive website traffic
Your Reputation
As a healthcare provider, it is vital to establish your credentials and foster a reputation of trust. Email marketing for dentists can develop your reputation in the dental field with both current and new patients. You can build trustworthiness and credibility by showcasing your knowledge and care for your patients’ oral health.
Your Patient Relationships
Email marketing for dentists builds relationships with new and current patients in a personalized way. These relationships are the foundation of your practice. Email marketing is a channel for consistent communication that nurtures those relationships.
Your Website Traffic
Increased traffic to your website equates to increased traffic to your office. Dental SEO is important for driving your website traffic and improving your search ranking. By linking emails to make appointments, gain information, or submit a review, email marketing becomes another strategy that boosts traffic to your site.
Without A High Price Tag
All of these benefits are achieved in a cost-effective way with email marketing for dentists. It is possible to send thousands of emails a month and pay only a few cents for each. Targeted email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach new patients while also maintaining and re-activating existing patients. As a marketing tool, the return on investment is impressive when done right.
Email Marketing for Dentists – Getting Started
If you are new to email marketing, it can feel intimidating. Understanding a few basics can help you launch a compelling campaign and grow your revenue.
Identify Your Marketing Goal
By identifying a marketing goal for your practice, you can tailor your email marketing campaign to meet those goals. Define your goals and set up the steps in your campaign to reach them.
Goals include:
- Increasing dental appointments and office visits
- Boosting website traffic
- Upping your number of reviews
- Improving referral rates
Identify Your Target Audience
By identifying your target audience, you can tailor your message to fit who you are sending it to. What you say and how you say it needs to fit who you are saying it to. Reaching the right audience is key to ensuring maximum impact from your efforts.
Build a List
Building a dentist email list with an email marketing service helps you reach beyond your current patients and expand your reach. If you are new to email marketing for dentists, using dental email marketing templates gives you a structure to frame and personalize your message. It is often easier to start with a template and branch out from there.
Send Quality Content
The purpose of emails is to directly communicate with your patients outside of your office. The content of that communication is a priority.
The content needs to capture attention to:
- Communicate your unique brand
- Connect to a call to action
- Lead to making an appointment
- Prompt referrals and reviews
Content can take several different forms depending on your messaging and intent. You can reach your patients with:
- Dental newsletters
- Reminders and confirmations
- Offers and announcements
- Patient reactivation campaigns
- “How was your visit” requests
Newsletters
Sending a monthly, quarterly, or annual dental newsletter for patients is a consistent way to connect with your patients and find your way into their inbox without a direct appeal. The content will serve as an appeal without feeling like one.
Sending a newsletter does not mean writing lengthy text, which can feel overwhelming and time consuming. Neither you nor your patients have time for that. Value is found in something short, sweet, and appealing. Make it visual. Give it an angle that draws attention and tells your story. Keep it focused, engaging, and message driven.
You can include:
- Tips and insights about oral health concerns and good habits.
- Celebrations for holidays, birthdays, or staff anniversaries.
- Highlights on new staff members.
- Requests for referrals or online reviews.
- Appeals to share on social media channels.
- Stories on community sponsorships or support.
- Education on seasonal oral health concerns (Halloween candy or sports mouthguards)
Reminders and Confirmations
Sending your patients an email confirmation request requiring a simple click is a straight-forward way to stay connected. It can be sent with automated software but is easily seen as a courtesy. It shows that you respect your patients’ time. It builds a ready response to email communication, which improves viewing rates for future emails.
Offers and Announcements
This is fairly straight-forward. It creates a connection by informing recipients of:
- Promotions available when booking an appointment
- New services or procedures
- New dental associates or other team members
The email should include a link to your website to book an appointment, request information, or make a referral.
Patient Reactivation Campaigns
Email marketing for dentists is effective in reaching inactive patients and improving your retention rates. Create a patient reactivation campaign that welcomes patients back to your office. It can offer an incentive to return and inform them of new procedures or care available.
How Was Your Visit
By sending emails after a patient visit that asks for patient reviews, you can leverage your list to get hundreds of five-star reviews. These reviews drive your Internet rankings and your website traffic. These emails can be easily sent via automated software. Reviews are an asset to your digital marketing efforts. Email marketing for dentists is an effective way to enhance this asset.
Dental Email Marketing Best Practices
Stay on Brand
One rule to follow with email marketing for dentists is to ensure that what you are sending your patients through your email campaign aligns with your brand. The emails should communicate the dental care your practice offers. Stay on message. Stay with who you are.
Personalize It
Through a marketing email, a dentist has the opportunity to connect with patients beyond the chair. Personalizing your emails helps build a relationship with your patients, which is how you build loyalty and trust. It is that loyalty and trust that books appointments, generates five-star reviews, and triggers referrals. Adding an appointment reminder or patient payment solutions makes your communications useful to the oral health of your patients and the lives they are living.
Make It Mobile
When was the last time you checked your email on your smartphone? Chances are, sometime in the last few hours. Your patients, current and future, did too. If your email campaign is not optimized for mobile viewing, then you are frustrating your patients, not engaging with them. It’s essential to make it mobile friendly.
Avoid Spam
Avoiding spam emails is vital. Do not overwhelm the patients on your dental email list with too many emails. It leads to unsubscribing. Be thoughtful. The goal is to end up in your patients’ inboxes, not in their spam. It’s like sending your marketing campaign into a blackhole. By utilizing email marketing software with opt-out features you can avoid the blackhole.
Catch the Scrolling Eye
Even when your emails do land in your patients’ inboxes, it doesn’t always ensure that they will be opened. How many unopened emails are in your inbox? No doubt a lot. The trick is to be the subject line that catches the eye scrolling through email. Make it compelling. Make it effective. Make it a must open.
Track It
It’s hard to know the effectiveness of your dental practice email marketing campaign if you do not track it. Utilizing marketing analytics such as Google Analytics helps identify areas of success or improvement. You can track what subject lines work best or what call to action yields the best results. Key metrics help you refine, tweak, or reimagine your efforts.
Consistency Is Key
Through your dentist email campaign, you are building a relationship with your patients. Lasting relationships need consistency. If you send a monthly newsletter in March and then don’t get around to the next one until September, then you are not sending monthly newsletters. Sporadic is forgettable. Show reliability. Commit to consistency.
Email Vs. Social Media: Know the Difference
Social media marketing and email marketing are not the same. The results through these channels differ. Email marketing for dentists offers a more personalized approach than social media. This nurtures loyalty. Email marketing is not a replacement for social media. They are different channels. You still need to post regularly on social media as well. It is important to do both.
A Powerful Marketing Strategy
Email marketing for dentists fosters brand awareness and patient connections. It generates referrals, reviews, and website traffic. If done right, it can be a powerful strategy for your marketing toolbox. One that converts an email recipient into a patient. That conversion is what drives revenue and grows your practice.
