How Healthcare Email Marketing Gives Medicine a Personal Touch

It's no secret that healthcare is a vital industry. In the United States alone, healthcare spending accounts for nearly 19.7 of GDP and is expected to markedly increase. With so much money on the line, competition is fierce in the healthcare industry.

One way to set your healthcare organization apart from the competition is through effective email marketing. Email marketing can give your patients a personal touch and help you stay in touch with them even after they've left your care. In this article, we'll cover some of the ways healthcare email marketing can benefit your organization and provide a few tips on how to get started. Let's go!

How Email Humanizes Healthcare

Healthcare is an industry that is often seen as cold and impersonal. Patients are often treated like a number, and it can be easy to forget that behind every case file is a real person with real emotions.

Email marketing can help you humanize your healthcare organization and make patients feel like more than just a file number. By sending regular updates and news about your organization, you can keep patients engaged and show them that you care about their continued well-being.

In addition, email marketing can be used to cultivate relationships with patients after they've left your care. By keeping in touch and providing helpful resources, you can turn one-time patients into lifelong fans of your organization.

Why Email Marketing Is Important for Healthcare

Besides humanizing the entire process, email marketing also has other benefits that make it essential for healthcare organizations.

     1. Increases Awareness of Offers and Services

Email marketing is an excellent way to keep patients informed about important news and updates from your organization. By sending regular email newsletters, you can ensure that patients are always in the loop about what's going on at your hospital or clinic. In addition, email marketing can be used to promote health awareness campaigns or events that your organization is hosting.

For example, suppose you're running a flu shot clinic. You could use email marketing to send reminders to patients about the event and offer additional information about the importance of getting a flu shot. By promoting your services and events through email, you can reach a larger audience and ensure that patients are aware of the care options available to them.

     2. Easier to Onboard New Patients

One of the most challenging aspects of healthcare is onboarding new patients. With so much paperwork and red tape, it can be difficult to get new patients up to speed on everything they need to know about your organization.

However, email marketing can make the onboarding process much smoother for both you and the patient. A series of welcome emails can introduce patients to your organization and provide them with all the information they need. For example, you could send an email with a link to your patient portal, followed by another email with instructions on how to schedule an appointment. By breaking down the onboarding process into small, manageable steps, you make it much easier for patients to get started with your organization.

In addition, email marketing can be used to collect important information from new patients before their first visit. By sending a pre-visit questionnaire, you can gather information about the patient's medical history and current health concerns. This information can then be used to make the patient's first visit more productive and efficient. It's essential before jumping into this process to ensure your organization is following all HIPAA regulations and is ADA-compliant.

     3. Retains Existing Patients

Lastly, email marketing can also be used to retain existing patients. Even if a patient is happy with your organization, there's always the risk that they'll switch to another provider if they're not kept up-to-date on what's going on. Send regular email newsletters and updates to ensure that patients remain engaged with your organization and are less likely to switch to another provider.

Best Practices For Healthcare Email Marketing

Now that we've gone over some of the reasons why email marketing is essential for healthcare, let's take a look at some best practices for healthcare email marketing.

     4. Know Your Patients

One of the most important things to keep in mind when creating a healthcare email marketing campaign is to know your patients. It's essential that you segment your patients based on their needs and interests, especially since this is one of the most effective email campaign strategies. This way, you can create targeted content that's relevant to each segment.

For example, if you have a group of patients who are interested in weight loss, you would want to create a segment for them and send them targeted content about weight loss. However, if you have a group of patients who are pregnant, you would want to create a segment for them and send them targeted content about pregnancy.

     5. Design Responsive Emails With Personalized Content

Another important aspect of healthcare email marketing campaigns is designing responsive emails with personalized content. Your emails should look good on both mobile and desktop devices, and they should contain content that's relevant to the individual patient. Make sure to address your patients by name in the email and include content specific to their needs.

     6. Analyze Your Successes And Failures

Lastly, it's essential to analyze your successes and failures when it comes to healthcare email marketing. This will help you learn from your mistakes and make changes to improve your future campaigns. Be sure to track things like open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates. You should also take a look at the overall engagement of each email campaign. This will give you a good idea of what's working and what isn’t working.

Summing Up

Email marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to achieve a variety of goals in healthcare. From onboarding new patients to retaining existing patients, email marketing can help you improve the way you do business. Just remember to keep these best practices in mind when creating your campaigns.

At Digital Authority Partners, we understand the importance of email marketing in healthcare. We can help you create a campaign that's tailored to your needs and provides the results you're looking for. Contact us today to learn more.