Design Effective Healthcare Email Marketing Campaigns (5 Tips)

You may have heard marketers ditching email marketing, saying it's ineffective and outdated. But we beg to differ. Let us help you design effective healthcare email marketing campaigns using these five top strategies:

1. Relying on opt-in email lists
2. Avoiding too frequent emails
3. Using email list segmentation
4. Developing mobile email marketing campaigns
5. Promoting privacy and security

It's time to create successful healthcare email marketing campaigns to promote your business or practice and engage your patients.

Let’s go!

1. Rely Only On Opt-In Email Lists

Growing your email list is not as easy as it sounds. Creating an expansive list takes time and effort, and you also need to ensure everyone on your list agrees to be part of it.

Because of the complexity of building an email list, some companies rely on quick and easy techniques. One of these is buying email lists or exchanging customer data with other businesses. For the following reasons, you should never resort to this practice:

• You will violate rules on giving patient consent.
• You have a list of contacts that don’t know you or your business.
• These contacts will negatively affect email deliverability.
• Your emails may be marked as spam.
• You may end up getting penalized by your email provider.

Avoid these consequences by creating email marketing campaigns only for contacts who have permitted you to include them in your list. Despite being time-consuming, doing so helps build trust.

Building an opt-in list ensures that everyone on the list is likely to consider your service. This could improve your engagement and will ensure only a few unsubscribes. Here are a few tips to help you create your opt-in lists:

• Create valuable site content
• Use visible subscription forms
• Verify with a double opt-in method
• Offer discounts, gifts, or other incentives
• Create engaging newsletters
• Run surveys about your service or products

2. Avoid Too Frequent Email Messages

One of the reasons people unsubscribe from email correspondence is that they receive too many marketing emails. A recipient can only take a certain number of marketing emails in a day or a week.

A successful email marketer knows the best time to reach out and the right frequency of sending emails. Of course, these vary depending on your customers’ behaviors and preferences. So you need to study your target and existing customers first.

Once you’ve profiled your customers, start creating and sending marketing emails at the time and frequency that fit their preferences. The chances of your target customers opening and reading your emails go up. At the same time, you reduce the possibility of annoying them and getting your emails flagged as spam.

3. Rely on Segmentation for Your Healthcare Email Marketing

Email segmentation is about creating smaller groups from your email list. An email list for a dental office may be segmented into smaller groups based on certain customer traits like age, gender, dental ailments, etc.

A segmented list will help you create more focused content to target your audience better. An engaged email recipient will more likely consider availing themselves of your services or products. Here are some tactics you can use to segment your email list.

• Demographic segmentation. Group your email list based on identifiable non-character traits such as gender, educational attainment, income level, age, profession, and family status. One source of demographic data about your prospects is your social media page.
• Geographic segmentation.  Group patients according to their location identifiers like city, country, region, and postal code. Your social media page is also a good source of this information; another is a sign-up form.
• Psychographic segmentation. Group your list according to their personalities and personal interests, such as values, lifestyle, beliefs, hobbies, and life goals. Secure this information by posting questionnaires, quizzes, surveys, etc.
• Behavioral segmentation.  Group your target recipients based on how they manage to interact with your services, products, or brand. You need in-depth research and tools to determine your recipients' behaviors, such as those available at various metrics websites.

4. Develop Mobile Email Marketing Campaigns

More people use their mobile devices to check their email. According to HubSpot, 46% of email opens happen on a mobile device.

A mobile-first approach to email marketing is a strategy you should adopt for your current and future campaigns. Remember these strategies to optimize your emails for mobile users.

• Use short subject lines. Long ones will get clipped on mobile. Think about catchy and concise subject lines.
• Make use of larger fonts and small images. Larger fonts are easier to read. Smaller images fit small device screens.
• Create inviting calls-to-actions (CTA). Place CTA in a prominent location with a white background to stand out.
• Use responsive email templates. Email campaigns are mostly outsourced, and a good email marketer uses an effective email design tool to optimize your campaigns on all mobile screen sizes.

5. Consider Your Recipients’ Privacy and Security

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulates the use of patient health information (PHI). Creating HIPAA-friendly emails should be part of your campaigns, whether your goal is improving brand recognition or disseminating health information.

HIPAA aims to protect patients' privacy and ensures that all PHI is secure. Having a HIPAA-compliant email strategy means that you are doing the following:

• Ensure that your email service practices end-to-end encryption.
• Create policies on email use and train your employees or staff accordingly.
• Please obtain permission from your patients before adding them to your email list.
• Include opt-out links or unsubscribe links in your email communications.
• Add your business address and contact details to your email.

Always consider that every email is a chance to engage with your customer. Thus, you want to develop better, more engaging email campaigns to promote your brand and improve audience engagement. Follow these strategies, and you're on your way to designing more effective healthcare email marketing campaigns.

Summing Up

Create the best email marketing campaigns using opt-in email lists by considering email frequency, list segmentation, and mobile email campaigns. Also, promote patient privacy and security with HIPAA-compliant email messages. All these tactics are practical, effective, and  ideal for healthcare businesses and practitioners.

Do you want to know how email marketing can help you grow your healthcare website? Contact Digital Authority Partners today.