Is your practice still spending thousands of dollars per year on postage?
Perhaps it’s time to consider switching to Email Marketing.
Remember when postage only cost 20 cents? Now it costs $1 and takes up to 3 business days to deliver. It’s time consuming, expensive and ineffective in this day and age. But you can still increase your patient communication and your practice’s brand… using email marketing.
The main concern we hear when our clients are considering making the switch from snail mail to email marketing is “We don’t want to SPAM our patients”, being a medical professional gives you the advantage of your emails not being ignored. People are less likely to ignore emails from their doctors. When you give them information that is relevant, up-to-date and important, it won’t feel “spammy”.
For example:
- New Patient Welcome Email (introduce the team and include information for their first visit)
- Post Care Follow Up Instructions (do they need to follow specific instructions?)
- Holiday Trading Times
- Flu Shot Reminders
The Benefits
- The main benefit is to build on your relationship with your patients, keep in contact with them and provide information which is helpful.
- It’s better for the environment. Reducing the amount of paper waste with e-mail marketing will make your business greener.
- It’s cost effective and can be integrated with your Patient Management Software.
- Emails are a great way to encourage referrals, it’s so simple to forward an email onto a friend.
numbers to consider…
Let’s say you have 2000 patients and each year you send them 1 letter.
POSTAGE: 2000 x $1 = $2000 every year
TIME: 3.5 hours spent folding, enveloping and labeling = $100
PRINTING: 2000 x $0.88 =$1760 (based on Office Works prices)
TOTAL: $3860 spent every year.
Mailchimp is a $500 one time setup fee and allows you to send unlimited emails.
Is it for you?
Take the time to assess whether it’s beneficial for you to make the switch.
- Work out how much you are currently spending on postage and print.
- Do you have enough email addresses? There is no point implementing email marketing if you do not have enough patient emails. If you don’t, your first step is to train your staff in collecting patient email addresses then reassess in a couple of months.
- Check whether your Patient Management System allows for integration with MailChimp. Not sure how to check? Give us a call!
If you’re still unsure whether this is a good option for you give us a call or read our blog Creating Effective Email Campaigns (Health Professionals) to get a better understanding of how you can utilise Email Marketing.