There are so many priorities demanding your attention when it comes to running a dental practice. You obviously won’t get anywhere without acquiring and maintaining the right equipment and technology. Then you must begin hiring and training a unified team. And there’s also the constant need to attract patients, deliver exceptional service, and improve retention.
The good news is that email marketing for dentists can help lighten the load when it comes to the objectives related to your patients. This powerful marketing channel makes it easier than ever to find new patients who could be a match for your practice. And with customized communication delivered with dental email marketing, you can boost patient experience and retention.
Just as the right dental tools make all the difference for you and your team, it’s imperative that your dental practice email marketing is supported by the right platform and tools. Done right, it can reduce your daily workload while also taking your business to new heights.
Let’s look at the ways that email marketing helps your practice. From cost savings to appointment scheduling, the best dental email examples will get these benefits rolling in as soon as you send them out.
Many people only think of their dentist when they’re dealing with a toothache. For your practice to thrive, you’ll need to proactively reach your target audience with emails that establish brand recognition. Some recipients might act quickly on these messages and schedule an appointment, while others will save your brand in the back of their minds and reach out when the need arises.
Your messages must contain value to strengthen engagement with current and future patients. Perhaps you share a newsletter loaded with practical oral hygiene tips. Or you send out post-appointment follow-up emails that educate patients on how to extend the benefits of their recent treatments.
While email marketing shouldn’t be the only marketing channel used by your practice, you’ll save substantial money by using it as a key component. Why? Because display ads, outdoor advertising, and most other types of marketing have much lower ROI than email marketing, which delivers a $36 return on average for every dollar spent. That’s not a typo. Businesses that use email marketing get a whopping $36 back for their meager investment of a dollar!
Some of the secrets to this impressive cost-efficiency are ease of content creation, affordable platform support for the sending and tracking of emails, and the time-saving benefits of automation. Regardless of your budget, you can’t afford not to be using marketing emails.
Just as sure as the sun will always rise every morning, no-shows will always be a challenge for dentists. But email marketing mitigates this issue by allowing you to connect with patients through a primary communication channel and educate them on the best ways to book an appointment. Once scheduled, you then send timely reminders through email. With the connectivity of email within most calendars and other reminder tools, patients can easily add the appointment to their calendar, greatly improving the odds that they’ll show up.
These appointment-focused emails also boost your credibility in the eyes of patients because your organizational prowess will be front and center. You can strengthen the impact by including social proof, such as reviews and testimonials, within your dental email marketing templates to highlight your high levels of patient satisfaction.
Build stronger relationships with your patients, and loyalty is sure to follow. Dental practice email marketing is a key ingredient, allowing you to share valuable resources, customized follow-ups, birthday surprises, and special promotions that can build an emotional connection with those receiving your messages.
Your email efforts are also crucial for re-engaging patients who haven’t visited your practice in a long time. Rather than make tedious phone calls to them, you can set up a drip campaign to establish meaningful touchpoints with these people and help bring them back for future treatments.
Okay, we’ve established that email marketing and dentistry can be ideal matches. But what form do these messages usually take? Here are some essential varieties of messages that might be part of your next campaign.
Welcome emails: First impressions can last a lifetime, so don’t miss this opportunity to introduce new contacts to your brand personality. Maybe you share a special promotional offer or include an instructional video. These welcome emails tend to get higher open rates than other campaigns, so put extra effort into making the reader feel valued. The positive momentum gained here can lead to years of engagement with your practice.
Appointment reminders: These bread-and-butter emails have long helped dental practices reduce no-shows. But you can do more with them than just remind patients about their scheduled appointments. Perhaps you include upsell information about additional services they might want to add to their visit. Or you could offer a gift card in exchange for the patient reviewing your practice online or referring a friend to your practice.
Product/service updates: Timeliness is always an important aspect of email marketing, which is why it can be so effective to let your audience know about new offerings. You could build excitement and a sense of value with a teaser message that provides an exclusive discount for those who receive your emails. Not only will many patients be glad to get this exclusive offer, but they’ll be more likely to stay subscribed so they can score similar discounts in the future.
Educational resources: Showcase your expertise by sharing resources that can teach your contacts something new. Maybe it’s some practical tips for dealing with a toothache or ways to improve your daily flossing. These messages help to establish credibility and demonstrate your commitment to improving patients’ health.
What other emails can you think of? You might want to send targeted messages to unengaged patients who haven’t visited your practice in over a year. Or you could send out a reminder email to those who require certain procedures but have yet to schedule an appointment.
The point is that email marketing will always be as versatile as you need it to be.
While every campaign is unique, and practices will use distinct tactics based on their patients, location, and business goals, there are some universal steps you should take while creating your email marketing for dentistry.
What do you most want to achieve with your email marketing campaign? This is a crucial question because strategies constantly evolve over time, and you’ll need a north star to guide your team in the right direction.
Make sure that your goals are all measurable. For example, if you’re trying to drive revenue growth, how much of an increase will be considered a success? And how will you track your practice’s progress?
You simply can’t write an effective email until you understand the people who will be reading it. The best marketing addresses specific pain points and provides relevant solutions, meaning you can’t just blast generic messages out to your entire list. Instead, divide your contact list into segments of people who share similar characteristics such as age, location, economic status, dental preferences, or visit history.
For each campaign, you can identify which segments are your target audience and then tailor the messaging for maximum impact. This increased level of relevance decreases unsubscribes, and, more importantly, boosts engagement so that it can have a big impact on your bottom line.
Now that you know who you’ll be contacting and what you’ll be trying to achieve with those messages, it’s time to step out of your marketer role and put yourself in the patient chair for a moment. What will they want from these messages? What will provide value to them and drive engagement?
Start by crafting subject lines that highlight the value right out of the gate. Then look for ways to incorporate dynamic content into each message. Rather than presenting readers with large paragraphs of words, consider videos, infographics, and other elements that bring life to your designs.
Your ongoing task will be refining your campaigns to provide the best experience for patients and to also better serve your business goals. Using A/B testing allows you to systematically improve the subject lines, headlines, body copy, visual elements, and calls to action within each message.
Be sure to use an email platform that can track all the important metrics. Without data, you’ll be operating on hunches and assumptions.
Whether you’re planning your first-ever email campaign or are a veteran marketer, it’s imperative that you have the right technology on your side. Twilio SendGrid is an ideal match for dental practices, with a wide range of email tools and an industry-best deliverability rate of 99%.
You can tap into the power of Twilio SendGrid by creating a free account today. There’s no credit card required and you can immediately start benefiting from our practice-friendly resources.
