Powerup! Healthcare Email Marketing and AI for Great Results

Good healthcare email marketing needs a solid plan and the right tools. Artificial intelligence (AI) fills many roles, such as automation, that yield excellent results.

This article discusses integrating AI into your email marketing strategy:

• Three reasons email marketing is lucrative.
• Reasons your marketing success is slow.
• Uses of AI to improve your strategies.

We have a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

Let’s go!

3 Smart Reasons to Have an Email Marketing Plan

Email marketing and AI help generate cost-effective leads in many ways. It costs significantly less to market with emails. Other reasons include the following three points:

     1. Nurture Leads and Retain Old Patients

A good customer relationship keeps clients, but you must earn their trust. This is especially true in healthcare, where patient comfort is a driving force.

Sending regular and relevant content displays a private practice’s genuine concern for its patients. Consider how those gentle vaccination reminders during flu season positively affect a person’s health choice.

The content type is up to you as long as it does not violate any law, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Holiday greetings or health tips are good examples. Even email reminders for appointments have their benefits.

Building a content strategy that educates patients is one of the safest choices. Making people aware of health issues encourages them to seek help, and who better to listen to than you? Emails also provide a more secure method of communication, which is always a plus. 

     2. Let Patients Have a Say in Targeted Ads

Precise targeting is another reason to build great healthcare email campaigns: 

• The messages resonate better because they match the segment’s needs. 
• It gives patients more control over how they engage with you. 
• Allowing subscribers to opt out makes you compliant with marketing regulations.

Precise targeting also provides subscribers the power to choose the emails that they want to receive. This circles back to building patient relationships. Doing this tells patients that you respect their choices, helping you earn their trust.

Additionally, customizing subscriptions simplifies email marketing. The audiences pick their preferred mailing lists, while a marketing agency sets triggers to automate the workflow and improve targeting precision.

     3. Automate Lead Generation Efforts

Automation is one of email marketing’s main selling points. Manual efforts waste finite resources and decrease returns. Marketing platforms, such as HubSpot, solve this persistent problem. Their features enable independent work, while the collected email data refine campaigns. Some are even capable of generating content ideas.

Other common uses of healthcare email automation include the following:

• Confirming and reminding patient appointments.
• Setting triggers for messages based on the person’s response.
• Launching email sequences based on the patient’s mailing list.

Streamlining email marketing reduces staff workload and lets them focus on other high-value activities. It also enhances the user experience (UX), keeping patients more engaged with targeted content.

Inefficiencies That Weigh Down Healthcare Email Marketing

Email marketing is effective but also prone to mistakes. For example, the email lands in a subscriber’s spam folder, or the inability to scale it leads to wasted resources. Rambling content, suspicious subject lines, and poor due diligence also significantly hurt your strategies. 

Avoid irreparable damage to your brand’s reputation by paying more attention to these other crucial mistakes: 

     1. Lack of an Organized Marketing Approach

Email marketing is more than simply sending messages to patients. You must have the optimal response ready and know who and when to mobilize emails to maximize their benefit. 

Organization helps define marketing success, and it is no different here. Simplify your template and segment your mailing list to increase open rates and deliver targeted leads, maximizing conversion.

Use marketing software and AI to develop a detailed and organized email management workflow. For example, a marketing agency creates a mailing list for every medical concern so that a hospital sends patients the appropriate message every time.

Segmenting also adds another layer of security. It blocks potential leaks of protected health information (PHI) by restricting access to only authorized parties. It also requires a patient’s consent upon signing up to avoid sending unwanted cold emails.

     2. Noncompliance with Email Marketing Rules and Laws

As simple as email marketing seems in theory, it is challenging to manage, especially in the healthcare industry. Among its many hurdles are federal laws. These include the US Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) makes email marketing in the state more complex. Other states have passed similar laws and expect more to follow suit. Expert email marketers should know these local healthcare marketing regulations.

A healthcare business should also account for HIPAA in its email marketing plan. That means using compliant, secure software and establishing strict protocols in handling patient data.

Noncompliance results in hefty fines and massive damage to reputation. Hiring a healthcare marketing agency helps improve compliance with its familiarity with laws.

     3. No Clear Message or Call to Action (CTA)

The lack of a solid CTA in email marketing holds a strategy back and goes against best practices. 

How do you make your CTA good? Here are some ideas:

• Make it pop. 
• Be specific by directly telling the lead what they should do next.
• Use it to lead the user and inspire action.
• Ensure that it is clear and cohesive to retain a reader’s interest. 
• Keep it short, sweet, and on point. 

Interactive content is also one of the most effective healthcare email marketing strategies. Images and graphics are great assets to capture attention and deliver the right message. Of course, the CTA should stand out and fit in naturally with the content.

For instance, a dental clinic’s marketing email for root canals presents a side-by-side image of a damaged and repaired tooth. It then rounds off its pitch with a CTA saying, “Book a free dental assessment today!” or another offer to spur new appointments and inquiries.

How AI Tools Refresh Email Marketing Strategies

Email marketing mistakes are costly, so find ways to simplify the process. Using AI to enhance a campaign is among the most effective methods.

AI optimizes many aspects of a healthcare marketing strategy. These include the following:

     1. Track and Score All Top Marketing Leads

Lead scoring maximizes marketing returns by informing you about high-converting prospects. Doing it manually is slow and complicated and hampers productivity.

Marketing teams use AI to set up an email campaign and simplify tracking and scoring leads. Actions that require a score include signing up for newsletters and interacting with CTAs. These signal interest in your healthcare services. The data then guides resource allocation and patient management. Remember, connecting with patients is vital in healthcare.

The right tool must pass HIPAA compliance while automatically scoring leads based on interactions. HubSpot is a perfect example because partner agencies offer hands-on help. Either way, consult experts to identify platforms that align with your marketing goals and assist you in integrating AI into the email process.

     2. Write Impeccable Healthcare Email Ideas

Content creation is the most popular use of AI in marketing, even in healthcare. Reducing the mental burden of writing effective and attractive emails makes a big difference in the quality of campaign results, particularly in the efficiency and cohesion of a strategy.

This is not to say that generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are flawless. It simply means that integrating AI into brainstorming or drafting content has a lasting positive impact. Personalization plays a vital role in healthcare marketing.

AI also excels at simplifying medical content into layman’s terms to help you connect better and prevent intimidating patients. 

Avoid relying on AI too much, however. Working with a team of skilled experts still has merits in email marketing. They further boost AI’s benefits by reintroducing or emphasizing the human elements in content. AI lays the groundwork, and marketing experts smooth out all the bumps along the way. Together, they provide the best of both worlds to yield impressive results.

     3. Find the Optimal Times to Send an Email

Analytics is another way that AI provides real-time support in digital marketing strategies. It gives a more accurate view of a campaign’s progress. The correct setup also tracks if and when the recipient opens your message. This provides a lot of critical marketing insights.

For instance, knowing the optimal time to send emails based on peak open hours leads to more patient interaction. When is the best time? It varies, depending on the target market’s behavior.

Letting AI analyze and optimize email marketing solves most of the tedious parts of healthcare promotions. However, marketing software must comply with HIPAA and other laws. Otherwise, optimization is not effective. 

Work with email marketing experts who can help you choose the right software for the job and leverage AI to do more and perform better.

Summing Up

AI is set to play more prominent roles in digital marketing. This is more evident in healthcare email campaigns, where complexity hinders success. 

AI tools do most of the work, from writing drafts to sending emails. They also provide crucial benefits, such as optimizing email marketing elements based on customer interactions. Reliable instant marketing insights are what make AI a valuable partner.

Need help powering up your email marketing strategy with advanced AI tools? Contact Digital Authority Partners (DAP) to learn how we can help.