Does your healthcare business effectively market to customers? Email marketing is beneficial for your healthcare business because it not only allows email users to become aware of your services, but it will also allow you to capture data and further inform users of your business.
According to Oberlo, there were an estimated 3.9 billion email users in 2019—a figure that is set to grow to 4.3 billion by 2023.
Email marketing is a cost-effective communication tool to reach healthcare patients, caregivers, doctors, and other medical professionals. Depending on what your healthcare business provides, you could send e-newsletters with information on your facility and services, reminders for upcoming appointments, or dates for clinics and special events.
Your healthcare business is more likely to get a click-through from an email that your company sent out than from a company tweet. However, to effectively market by email, it is beneficial to remember the following tips:
1. Personalize Your Content
Personalized subject lines increase the likelihood that your emails will be opened. The first thing that each email user will see from your company’s email is the subject line. It is crucial that each email sent out contains an interesting subject line, inviting the user to open the email. Second, give each email user a face. Customers want to be acknowledged by their names rather than a bullet point on a large list.
2. Segment Your Email Messages
Email campaigns that send out segmented content are likely to have higher open rates than campaigns that do not. Email messages are more effective when they are relevant to users. For example, you can segment your audience to receive content that is relevant to their age or what they are looking for in the healthcare industry. Offer a dropdown or option selector to your email opt-in form, allowing your subscribers to self-segment based on your service lines and the content they would be interested in receiving. Split your email lists by relevancy and create content related to each self-segmented audience for better overall results.
3. Be Creative, But Clear
There is nothing wrong with sending out a well-designed email to your customers. In fact, an email with minimal text and more images helps to give your email a higher engagement rate.
However, it is important to remember that the overall creative should be built around the content message. Before sending out an email, make sure that your message is clear throughout the email. Avoid using complicated text that may need interpretation. Instead, give clear instructions on the intention of the email, such as confirming an appointment or information about what your health care services your business offers.
4. Create a Mobile-Friendly Experience
The emails that your company sends out need to be compatible across all platforms. According to SaleCycle, 42.3% of surveyed consumers will automatically delete emails that are not mobile-optimized, without reading them. Therefore, sending emails that are mobile-friendly allows users to stay connected to your healthcare business anytime, anywhere.
5. Evaluate
Email marketing is an efficient way to bring information to your audience and to drive traffic to your company website. However, don’t forget to track email marketing data such as open-rate and the traffic that was directed to your website via email in order to adjust your email marketing strategy. Make sure that each email is informative to the subscriber and that you do not over-email. Otherwise, you face the consequence of earning a higher unsubscribe rate.
Finally, implement a lead-nurturing system for retaining newsletter subscribers and maintaining the engagement rate for your emails. A consistent email schedule, as well as secondary emails that give added value to your subscriber, can help to keep your hospital top-of-mind for when they are making healthcare decisions. Sporadic emails or emails with long periods of silence between them will cause your subscribers to become annoyed or forget why they had subscribed in the first place.
At BlaineTurner Advertising, our expertise is layered with strategy and innovation to offer our clients the ability to discover and capture customers at every stage of the purchase funnel. Contact us if you are in need of email marketing expertise or other marketing insights.
Resources:
Oberlo: 10 Email Marketing Stats You Need to Know in 2020
Campaign Monitor: The Future of Email Marketing is Here and It’s Personalized
SaleCycle: 18 Essential Email Marketing Statistics
Forbes: Time to ReThink Your Email Marketing Plan
Net Atlantic: Healthcare.
BackLinko: Email Marketing Stats that Prove Email is Here to Stay (In 2020)