Marketing via email has been around for as long as their has been email systems but most healthcare professionals don’t know how to take advantage of it.
What is it exactly, and how does one go about starting it?
Email marketing is the process of:
Building a List of Emails
Collecting emails from prospective or interested consumers in your community is more important than ever. Most consumers don’t spend money right away. They want to become familiar with a product, service or company before they choose to invest time or money with them. They willingly give their email to companies if they’re offered something of value such as information, “how-to’s”, or news, etc. Having their email gives you a chance to build a relationship with them leading to activation into your practice.
Regularly sending emails out to that list.
What do you send? It can take a little work crafting up emails that don’t sound like advertisements. People don’t want to be advertised to anymore, they want to be communicated with. Sharing quick self-help tips, news, and occasional promotions is a good start.
Quick tip: Setting up “Autoresponders” can reduce the burden of having to constantly create emails to send to your list. Many email marketing services have this feature. Once you set it up, every new email collected will automatically trigger a set of emails over a period of time. Some good email marketing services are Aweber, Mailchimp, and GetResponse. We have a special step-by-step video tutorial on how to do this in our member’s area.
Activating them into your practice.
It’s nice and dandy to collect emails and send them messages every once in awhile but it’s another thing to convert them into paying patients. There’s a skill to this obviously. We can’t go over all the details here but keep in mind that your main objective is to increase new patients. Don’t forget that. One quick tip is to not give too much information in your emails. Generating curiosity is the main ingredient to conversion. Learn more in our member’s area.
Now it may sound easy but if it’s not done correctly you will most probably struggle.