A Doctor's Slam Dunk Guide to Email Newsletters – How to Increase Patient Referrals

Marketing your dental or medical practice and increasing referrals is about more than just pitching your services to new and current patients. It’s about making a real connection, building trust, and offering practical solutions and advice. To do this you need to stay in constant contact with your clientele.

Making routine phone calls isn’t practical or necessarily effective. However, have you ever considered developing a newsletter?

Newsletters are effective because they:

• Keep you in the forefront of your patients’ minds
• Actively engage patients and remind them to consider their dental health
• Offer an opportunity to share best dental or medical health practices and advice
• Allow current patients to share information with friends and family
• Are a marketing tool useful for both existing and new patients

How to get started:
1. Sign up for a Free Account to Mailchimp.com, this allows you to send 12,000 emails a month to 2000 subscribers absolutely free

2. Make your contact information visable –  Even though current patients may have the information at hand, potential new clients won’t. Make it prominent so it’s easy to find.

3. Articles relevant and fresh – Don’t rehash the same old thing that everyone is talking about. Find (or write) articles that offer new information or a fresh perspective. And consider articles that specifically target your demographics (i.e. elderly, families) and offer them tips or how to guides that can improve their lives.

Once you write an article, you will need to post it on your website blog so that your patients can read and also share it on other social media sites like Facebook or LinkedIn.

Here are two resources to help you with your social media campaigns

1. 6 quick tips for doctors – Be a rockstar on LinkedIn
2. Using Facebook to Market Your Medical/Dental Practice: Social Networking for Doctors

If you’re thinking that you don’t have the time or staff to develop a newsworthy newsletter, there are options. There are services that can do the work for you. They customize it for your practice and make sure it gets to your current as well as potential new patients. We  have some friends at Level 2 Marketing that do an amazing job if you need some training or help.

4. Good use of your good name – Let your patients know about you. Tell them about achievements, rewards, contributions, new technology or services – be sure to get the word out.

5. Electronic Newsletters vs Paper – It will save you money on printing and postage, and it helps the environment. Additionally, it allows recipients to forward your e-newsletter to friends and family easily.

6. Add a feature box to your blog – What is a feature box you ask? It is a call to action to help collect email addresses from your patients so you can keep in touch automatically without having to email each individually.  Recommend offering an incentive such as a free guide to good health, when they signup to your newsletter. The email addresses are directly imported into a database managed by your email newsletter company (ex. mailchimp) where you can then set future campaigns and send them details about your practice, stories, newsletters, etc.

See the Big Blue Box below with the large Subscribe Button? That is our feature box, go ahead and test ours out and see how it works.
What do you think?
What are some ideas you use for your newsletters?