The dreaded GDPR made email marketing seem like it was going to be an absolute nightmare, but now we are out the other side with nice clean opted-in lists, here are some ideas for some email campaigns for your dental practice.
1. Offers
I don’t mean that you need to bombard your readers with offers every week; that could actually do more damage than good! To start with, I suggest planning out 12 months’ worth of quarterly email campaigns. That means you’ll have four emails planned and you could make one or more a promotional email. Ensure you have a schedule and stick to it, sporadic emails won’t make loyal readers and if you let your patients know the frequency of your updates when they opt-in there will be no surprises for them.
If you’re going to do some targeted offers for a certain demographic, most email platforms will allow you to segment your list into any information you’ve given them (age, gender, location). If you are planning on sending out a promotion you could use this function to test your audience and see which demographics are more responsive to your offers.
Finally if you’re going to do promotional emails, measure your results. Ensure you’re tracking how many of your new patient leads are coming from your email campaigns so you can adjust your message to get the best results.
2. New services, staff or practice news
You don’t need to update your patients every time a new person joins the practice or it’s someone’s birthday, however, if you start offering a new service or have a price update – an email campaign is a good way to communicate this with your old and new patients.
Include useful information in the footer of each of your emails, such as a price list download and links for how to get in touch with the practice. This means your emails always have useful information for your patients.
Think about email campaigns you’ve received from your favourite companies and think about how you could mirror them with your practice. I recommend not spending hours crafting email content that only your email subscribers will see. Think about how your email campaigns integrate with all of your other channels – that way you just need an image and a caption with a link to the content on your website to put together your campaign.
3. Internal newsletter
You don’t need to only use your email campaigns to communicate with your patients. Use a simple template and send out regular updates to people who work at the practice (maybe even suppliers if relevant) – this is a great way to get your whole team on the same page.
If you have part-time associates, nurses and reception staff who rarely work together, an email campaign will help you communicate all of the happenings in the practice and let everyone know what to be aware of over the next few months. Never again do you need to worry about your reception staff not being aware of the whitening offer you’ve launched!
Whatever you do, make sure your email campaigns are on brand and are part of a blended dental marketing strategy, considering all channels for your lead generation.
If you have any questions about how you can use email marketing in your dental practice please get in touch on 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.
