Email Archives - Medical Marketing Enterprises, L.L.C.

Use Email Address List to Grow Your Practice

April 6, 2017 by Randall Wong, M.D.

Your email address list, comprised of your patients’ addresses and those who follow your website, is a list of your biggest fans. Communicate regularly to build trust and your practice. Here’s how.

Email Address List

You should be collecting the email addresses of your patients in the office. Remember that you must specifically ask for permission to use their email address to send a newsletter. This process is called an “opt in” and can be achieved in several ways;

Integrate to your new patient form
Ask existing patients at checkout
Use “opt in” subscription form on website

Email Service Provider

An email service provider receives email addresses directly from your opt in subscription form on your web site. Email addresses collected manually can be easily uploaded to your growing list.

The email service provider (ESP) automates several tasks for you;

Stores your list
Sorts your contacts (if you want)
Receives RSS feed from your website
Delivers email (containing link to new website post)

Popular email service providers are MailChimp and aWeber. While MailChimp is free (initially), aWeber has a few more bells and whistles for more sophisticated email marketing tactics.

News, News and More

With every new post, an RSS feed, an electronic notification, is sent to the ESP. The RSS contains all the information about your new post and you can choose how much or how little of the article to include in the email.

I recommend including the title of the article and the excerpt. The excerpt is a short summary about the article, written in a way to invite the patient to click and read the entire article, but on your website.

Remember that this address list is comprised of your biggest fans – both patients and web site followers.

Every once in a while, in addition to writing health education articles, email your followers about news of the office, including news of the staff. Your new electronic medical system, new office, big birthdays or employment landmarks of the staff are all worthy of sharing with your list.

In general, patients love their doctors. The more information they have about the office, their doctor and staff, the more likely they are to tell others….and grow your practice.

If you have an email newsletter, what kinds of information do you share?

Email Your Patients Regularly…to grow your practice

December 1, 2016 by Randall Wong, M.D.

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

Easy Steps to Following a Website

June 15, 2012 by Randall Wong, M.D.

Allowing your readers to follow news and events of your medical practice is easy and automatic. Using RSS feeds and even social media is easily done and the process is completely automatic.

“Following” allows your readers to keep up to date without manually visiting your website. “Following” is automatic.

On the other hand, allowing your readers to follow your website is easy to do with RSS/Email and social media….if you are ready.

RSS and Email

These are the most common ways to follow a website.

RSS (really simple syndication) is a very easy, and anonymous, way to receive information about a new post on a website. Your readers subscribe by clicking on the RSS Icon . This is usually now located in the upper right portion of a webpage.

Every time new content is published, the new article is sent, via the RSS feed to your “reader”, also known as an “accumulator.” Your “reader” (for example, Google Reader) then collects all the RSS feeds from various sites and keeps them in one place!

Most websites (and your medical site should, too) also allow subscription or “opt in” via email. By rendering their email address, patients can receive updates via email. Simple.

Social Media Icons

Choose a social media platform easy for you to use and convenient for you.

By convenient, I mean easy for you to use and is something you’ll use often. If using a social media platform, such as FaceBook, Twitter or LinkedIn is a drudgery, then don’t choose this as an option to follow a site.

Stick with RSS and/or email instead.

Remember social media platforms are great ways to follow a website and should not be expected to replicate all the information found on that website. Social media simply draws attention to a website.

Social media platforms each appeal to its own demographic (for instance, YouTube and Pinterest may appeal to visual learners). Twitter users (microbloggers) enjoy short and direct messages.

What Can You Do?

As a reader, don’t stress over the plethora of social media available. Choose one or two offered by that website. Very few webmasters are able to keep more than a few platforms up to date anyway.

As a webmaster/owner/practice administrator, don’t stress that you even have to use social media. Make sure that you provide an “opt-in” and RSS. Only add social media when you are ready.

RSS feeds are generated automatically from your WordPress CMS (content management system). You may link the feed to either Feedburner.com (free) or aWeber.com to email your subscriber list.

When you are ready, consider adding social media. Choose one at a time. Remember;

You do not have to participate in every SM platform (it’s impossible).
Participating in too many can be a mistake (you fail to keep them current)
Placing too many icons on your website may look impressive, but probably says you don’t know what you are doing!

To Your Growth And Success!