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Make Sure To Use These Five E-Newsletter Success Tips For Greater Patient Response
An email newsletter can be a great way to educate and engage your current and potential patients, with your services and products in mind. It’s also a great way to build your authority, differentiate yourself from your competition, build anticipation for new services / products, drive more patient visits, and even create on-demand sales. Follow these tips for a successful email newsletter to do this and more.
However, the effectiveness of your campaigns will depend entirely on the relevance, targeting, consistency, and most importantly, the value of your email newsletter to the reader / subscriber.
The continuing value of email
It has been reported that 99% of consumers check their emails every day. Additionally, 59% of consumers say that marketing emails influence their purchasing decisions.1
Email newsletters can be a valuable and important part of your marketing strategy, and your success is all the more likely when your recipients choose to give you their email address. They raised their hands at some point in their relationship with you and determined that what you have to offer is something they want or need – or at least deserves further investigation.
Most importantly, this is a list of contacts / emails you own, not strangers you compete with to introduce yourself through ever-changing social media platforms.
Whether you’re considering sending an email newsletter to your patients or sending out an email newsletter and seeing very little engagement, now is the time to ensure a return on the investment of your time and resources.
Here are five tips for a successful email newsletter:
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Know your audience and deliver what they want – consistently
To be successful, you need to deliver value. To deliver value to your subscriber, you need to know what they want (and need) the most. This is why outsourcing is often inefficient. Plus, you need to communicate regularly.
So how do you know what they want and how often should you send your e-newsletter?
You will know what they want based on what they ask of you and your team every day in your practice. For example, if you’re often asked about ways to improve your posture, the best exercises for hip mobility, or the top causes of back pain, here’s what you should include in your email newsletters. As for consistency, it can be a bit subjective; but I recommend at least once a month, but not more often than once a week, so you can stay ahead.
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Create a simple design with creative subject lines
After reading tip # 1, you might think that these tips for successful email newsletter success will be too difficult and take too long. However, a simple (consistent) design will help ease the burden.
Everyone is busy, so you want to make sure your email newsletters are concise, easy to read, and identifiable with your logo and color scheme. You don’t have to be fancy. In fact, fantasy can be confusing or overwhelming for many.
Tips for a successful email newsletter: Choose 3-4 items you want to include and consistently distribute them in the same order. For example, the logo at the top, the helpful article, the workout of the week (can be a graphic or a link to a video you have on your website or YouTube channel), the success story of a patient (with photo) and the featured product / service or team member. At the bottom, you should include a way to unsubscribe if you wish, along with your address, website, and phone number. You can test these items through your performance metrics and modify them as needed.
There are many secure online software options with a variety of templates you can choose from to further simplify this and positively impact your deliverability and open rate.
Think about the e-newsletters you have subscribed to and the e-mails you generally receive. You’re probably opening the ones that grab your attention, that look interesting, and that come from a trusted source. A “Monthly Newsletter” subject line is not likely to get a lot of response. However, a subject line of “Best Exercise for Lower Back Pain” or “New Treatment for Joint Pain” will prompt the reader to open the email newsletter and continue reading.
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Balance and leverage your content
Your email newsletters should contain around 90% educational / inspirational content and 10% business content. If you create them with the intention of best meeting the needs of your ideal current and potential patients, your content will come naturally and your patients will want more.
The sales part should coincide with the content if possible. For example, if your article is about the benefits of massage, you can easily include a way for them to schedule a visit for a massage or take 10% off the price of a limited-time massage voucher.
When it comes to content, get the most out of your efforts. If you are writing an article, be sure to use it as a blog post on your website and then link to the blog from your social media channels for increased search engine optimization. You can also provide a way for people to share the article with others. You can even ask them to share it with anyone else who might benefit from it.
If you create a video, place it on your website and / or YouTube channel and link to it from your newsletter and social media posts. Then transcribe your video and use it as a blog on your website. The more you use your content, the better. Over time, your organic online reach will increase as well as your total number of subscribers / patients. Of course, it’s also important to grow your mailing list.
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Include a main call to action
As people get to know you and like your newsletters, they will likely want to use your services and / or buy your products. So make sure you let them know exactly how to do it.
Don’t include too many options, however. Select your main call to action (what you want them to do: plan, buy, share) and focus on that first. Sometimes you may have another call to action, but if you include too many it becomes confusing (or boring) and as a result no action is taken or your churn rate may increase.
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Measure key performance indicators and modify your strategy based on the results
Almost all messaging platforms include automated metrics so you can monitor what is working well and what is not resonating with your email newsletter subscribers (and make changes accordingly).
Among the tips for successful email newsletter success, here are some key metrics you should watch out for whenever you send out an email newsletter or explosive email, along with referral percentages:2
- The opening rate : Percentage of the total number of email subscribers who opened your email newsletter campaign (overall average: 18%; healthcare average: 23.4%).
- Click rate: Percentage of the number of subscribers who click a link or image in your email on all emails you have sent, whether or not the subscriber has opened the campaign (GP: 2.6%; Average health care: 4%).
- One-click open rate: Percentage of email users (those who open an email) who click on a link or image in an email (overall average: 14.1%; healthcare average: 15.6% ).
- Unsubscribe rate: Percentage of email subscribers who have opted out of receiving emails (overall average: 0.1%; healthcare average: 0.31%).
Another metric is the deliverability rate of your campaign. You want to be as close to 100% as possible.
Tips for a successful e-newsletter: increase your subscription with authenticity
Finally, it’s natural to have some attrition from your list over time. So, it is very important to make sure that you are simultaneously working to grow your mailing list with people who could benefit from your services and / or products. There are many ways to do this, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
In the meantime, be authentic, be yourself, be creative, involve your team, have fun, and always approach your email newsletter with a desire to serve your ideal patients. When you do this, you will have a greater impact on your patients, more fun for you and your team, and increased growth and profitability for your practice.
KAROL CLARK, MSN, RN, is the bestselling author of “How to Add Medical Weight Loss to Your Practice: 7 Steps to a Pleasant Business, Healthier Patients, and Increased Profitability†and various other bestselling books. She is the owner of Weight Loss Practice Builder and the exclusive Membership Program for Weight Loss Practitioners at BariatricBusinessBoss.com. She has over 20 years of experience working with surgical and non-surgical weight loss patients, and has helped physicians build an enjoyable weight loss practice. She partners with Nutritional Resources (d / b / a HealthWise on healthwisenri.com) to create educational programs and articles for weight loss practitioners.
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