Email is one of the most powerful marketing channels for patient engagement in the healthcare industry. Effective email marketing is a gold mine for lead nurturing and direct sales, with three times higher conversion rates than social media. According to the Digital Marketing Association, email campaigns in healthcare deliver a 4300% ROI. That’s a whopping $43 for every $1 spent!
As you work to build a profitable healthcare marketing strategy, there are some things you’ll need to consider. When your patients give you access to their email, you have the opportunity to enter their personal space nearly around the clock. That’s why savvy marketers use email wisely to build trust and personal relationships with their patients.
How do you keep patients engaged and take advantage of the primary benefits of email marketing in the healthcare industry? Let’s discuss!
How Can You Keep Patients Engaged with Effective Email Marketing?
The long-standing success and incredible ROI of email marketing is a game-changer for many healthcare professionals. However, you need to make sure you build your strategy the right way if you want it to be effective. Email has the power to deliver a high rate of conversions at a low marketing cost. But to keep your patients interested, you’ll need to ensure engaging content and secure delivery.
Here are some crucial tips to bring your healthcare practice to the next level with your email marketing campaign:
1. Send a Newsletter Every Month
Newsletters or educational emails are an excellent way to provide patients with valuable information and keep them connected to your practice. Be consistent with your monthly emails, and identify relevant information that can be helpful to your audience.
You can add healthcare tips, office information, solutions for common health issues, and other healthcare updates that patients may want to read. You can also add links to positive patient reviews to build trust between your practice and patients.
Regular newsletters that are informative help strengthen the patient relationship. You can use health updates and tips as an opportunity to familiarize patients with your products and services. Add relevant blog content to increase your website engagement and connect patients to the vital information you’ve already published.
Show patients how your practice and staff can help them address common health concerns or improve their overall wellbeing. Identify quick and positive changes they can implement into their daily lives by taking advantage of what your practice offers.
2. Use a Responsive Template
Using a responsive template is essential to your marketing success. Responsive email templates automatically adapt to any screen size. Whether your patients open your emails on a smartphone, tablet, or computer, you know they will always offer complete functionality and look great.
Templates are the easiest way to offer responsive emails, especially for those without a coding or development background. They save time on designing, and they always look professional. You can stick to a theme that matches your brand for even better results. Plus, many basic email templates are free. You can quickly and easily download our free template from Net One Click by signing up for a free Aweber’s account to get started on your effective campaign.
3. Include Essential Branding Elements
Finally, make sure you include all the essentials for branding to ensure your email marketing success. Here are the elements you’ll need to have:
- Your practice’s logo, phone number, and a book appointment link at the top of your email
- Clean, organized, and relevant content
- Evergreen links to old blogs
- A footer with vital information about your practice and your address
- Social media links
- A call-to-action for every piece of content
- Always end with a thank you from your practice
Understanding Email Metrics to Enhance Patient Engagement
Now that you understand how to boost profits and connect with patients through email, you’ll need to know how to track your metrics and analyze campaign success. An effective healthcare marketing strategy tracks four vital email metrics to increase patient engagement.
Open Rate
The first metric you’ll need to examine is the open rate. This refers to the percentage of recipients who opened your email out of those who received it. Since this is the first opportunity to engage with your email, it’s the first step in increasing your email marketing success. Simply put, if your audience isn’t opening your emails, you have lost the opportunity to connect.
According to Constant Contact, the average open rate for the health and wellness industry is 18.6%. If you want to improve your email marketing strategy, start by working on your open rate. You can test changes to the subject line, send time, recipient list, sender name, and your overall content. One of the best ways to increase your open rate is to send relevant information to the right group of people.
Click-Through Rate
The next metric to look at is the click-through rate or CTR. This refers to the percentage of people who click on a link within your email out of those who open it. While some people confuse this with the open rate, it is actually referring to the individuals who click links inside of your email content.
Your CTR is another important metric because it tells you whether or not your email engages your audience. Do they take action in response to your message? Does your email help you achieve your marketing goals? According to Constant Contact, the average CTR for the health and wellness industry is 0.9%. The best way to improve your CTR is to focus on engaging designs, effective calls-to-action, and clear messaging. You can also take advantage of A/B testing to strengthen your strategy.
Unsubscribe Rate
Keeping an eye on your unsubscribe rate is also essential. This refers to the number of email recipients who elected to opt-out of future emails from your business. While many people panic about unsubscribes, they’re not always a bad thing, and it’s normal to have a low number of unsubscribes. Patients who elect to unsubscribe save you time and increase your open and CTRs as you focus on patients interested in your marketing campaigns.
To reduce your unsubscribe rate, be sure only to include information that is relevant to your contacts when sending emails. If you notice a sudden spike in your rate, you’ll need to create a new strategy. This typically means your subscribers are not happy with the messages they receive.
Bounce Rate
The final metric you need to watch is your bounce rate. This refers to the number of emails sent compared to the number delivered. There are two primary types of bounces. Hard bounces indicate a permanent error, such as an invalid email address. A soft bounce is a temporary technical problem, such as an issue with the email server.
According to Constant Contact, the average bounce rate in the health and wellness industry is 8.7%. While you can’t do much to increase your bounce rate, you should manually remove recipients with hard bounces from your email list.
Start Today with a Free Account from Aweber
Now that you know the vital elements of an effective email marketing campaign and how to track your success, it’s time to get started! Head over to Aweber to sign up for your free account. You can also contact our marketing team to discover the best way to create a strategic medical marketing system.
