All of us should be emailing our patients. Well, perhaps not material fit for a privacy portal, but you should be emailing your patients about practice news and information about their health.
Here’s why.
Your patients want to hear from you. News of the office, new developments in the staff, new EMR system or diagnostic gizmo…they want to know.
Emails containing links to your latest patient education article are very valuable and can be automated.
Collecting Email Addresses
You should be collecting email addresses of existing patients. This can be done manually when they sign in or check out. Just start a list. If you have a website, you should have a subscription
opt-in” form which asks readers for their email address.
If you don’t have a website, still collect emails in the office. You don’t need a website to start send out electronic newsletters.
Why Email?
You already have a trusted relationship with your existing patients. Educating them and keeping them up to date is the easiest way to transform them as ambassadors of your practice. The better informed they are about who you are and what you do, the more likely, and effectively, they’ll talk about your practice through word of mouth.
The same email newsletter should be sent to prospective patients as well. Your patient education news creates value and news of the practice demonstrates transparency of your business and how you practice.
Use your email to engage with your existing patients and your contacts.
Opt-In and Ask Permission
Regardless of how you collect email addresses, it is important to ask permission. If collecting in the office simply, try something like, “Would you like to receive our newsletter?”
Subscription opt-in forms are managed by an email service provider (ESP) such as Mailchimp or aWeber. They automatically send a follow up email to verifiy that the sender wants to share their email address with you.
This all assures the Internet that you are not sending out spam and that you have legitimately collected email addresses from interested individcuals.
Get Sending
The easiest scenario is to start producing articles on your website. With each publication, an email will be sent to your subscriber list and you are done!
By the way, for most of us, this can be done very for free.
All the best!
Randy
With one click you can update your website and your social media platforms. Automating the process will streamline the process and make updating your entire digital presence easy…and fun!
Your content (the articles your write, posts, videos, etc.) is the most important part of your digital marketing campaign. It is not only vital for any one interested in healthcare and medical Internet marketing, but for everyone who uses a website as a marketing tool.
The quality of your content is critical to your digital marketing plan. Quality content will attract readers. Well optimized (SEO) content will allow the search engines to rank your website.
Readers naturally search for an authority. Authorities have the most credibility. Your goal is to become a medical authority….online. You are already an authority at work!