In this day and age of popular social platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram it is easy to question the role of email marketing as a way of generating leads for dental practice brands.
However, a recent survey from Salesforce.com found that 73 percent of marketers believer email marketing is crucial to their business marketing strategy.
Few other stats that build the case for email marketing;
The above stats definitely prove that email marketing can still pack quite a punch if used correctly. Here are a few considerations for dental practice brands that want to make a success of their email marketing strategy.
Plan your Content
The importance of dental content that is rich in value and quality cannot be underplayed at any stage of digital marketing. Email marketing for dental brands is no different. However, as with any kind of digital strategy, having a content plan for your email marketing is crucial to success. Keeping in mind your ideal patient, plan your content to highlight not only the positives of your services and products/offers, but also to highlight how it can address a challenge for fulfill a need for the patient.
The parent of a toddler will have different concerns about oral health compared to the concerns of say a boomer or millennial patient. Identify what content will appeal to the different patient demographics and plan your content accordingly. Good idea for interesting content include educational articles on oral health, regular industry updates, and/or emails with special offers/discounts that are customized based on patient preferences. Also make sure you send out newsletters on a regular schedule, so that your patients know when to expect an email for your dental practice.
Customize Your Email Message
Personalized marketing is the norm today. Your patients expect customized marketing at every stage of interaction with your dental brand. Again, email marketing is no different in this respect as well. If you want to hit the mark with your prospects, then customize your messages based on patient preferences and expectations.
The best way to understand your patients is by asking them. This is where patient feedback can prove to be crucial. Ask your patients what they expect from your dental brand. What kind of information they would like to get their hands on, the kind of services/products and offers they would be interested in, and or their concerns regarding oral health. Once you have this kind of understanding, it becomes easier to plan for the kind of messages you will need to plan for and send in your emails.
The Small Screen is Exploding
Mobile optimization is already a Google ranking factor. And the reason why Google gives importance to mobile is simple, everyone is on the mobile! Optimizing your email marketing for consumption over mobile devices not only makes better business sense, but more importantly it can boost your open and click-through rate and reduce the number of patients who opt out of your email marketing. When planning for the mobile, keep in mind that responsive design and a simple layout that does not include mobile-unfriendly elements such as Adobe Flash is the best.