Do you want to see better results from your healthcare email marketing strategy? Then improve the plan.
This post gives you five ways to improve your medical healthcare marketing process, get more leads, and get a better return on your investment.
5 Email Marketing Ideas for Medical Groups
Email marketing is the most intimate form of advertising. Because it connects directly with leads and existing customers, it has also become one of the best digital marketing strategies.
But like other plans, sometimes it demands little tweaks, if not major revisions. This way, it can:
- Keep up with the market changes
- Align with overall organizational goals
- Maximize available tools and strategies
- Streamline the process to make it more cost-effective
The question is how.
Here are five healthcare marketing ideas to begin with:
1. Audit Your Existing Email Marketing Plan
You will never know what to fix unless you take a good, hard look at your present medical email marketing strategies.
Assess the following:
- Marketing objectives. Have your campaign goals changed? What do you hope to achieve within the next three months, and how can email marketing help you reach it?
- Metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs). What have been the trends over the last six months or a year? Do all of your metrics still matter, or do you need to introduce new ones? Comparing yourself to your competitors, are your numbers within the average, or are you faring better?
- Audience. Are you attracting the right leads, and what are their usual entry points? Can you spot new markets or niche segments that you can tap into?
- Content. Does your content still resonate with your readers? What do they say about it? Are they bland or too distracting? Should you introduce new elements, such as videos or AR/VR experiences?
- Tools. Are your email marketing tools living up to their promise? Have they remained HIPAA compliant? New platforms are available almost every day. How do they compare with the ones you are using?
- Workflow. Are there any gaps in your process? How efficient is your workflow, especially when you face technical issues?
According to Digital Authority Partners (DAP), email marketing helps you generate valuable leads. But you will struggle unless you clearly understand how your system works.
2. Break Down Broad Audience Segments Wisely
Healthcare email marketing strategies usually fail when the message does not match the recipient (or vice versa). At the end of the day, every person who receives your newsletter often asks, “What is in it for me?”
But contrary to what many medical clinic SEO experts believe, you do not always need to break down niches. Consider doing it when:
- Your market is so broad that messages become less effective. Suppose you have 100,000 subscribers. You can probably break them down according to interests (health and wellness, condition-specific, promos, or latest news and updates).
- Your department has the budget for it. Segmentation requires big data and extensive resources, such as time and people. Spending a lot on very small groups may be inefficient in the long term.
- Marketing goals have changed. Market segmentation helps you identify audiences to prioritize, depending on your objectives. For example, if you want to increase booking appointments, you might want to focus on remarketing to dormant patients while nurturing new leads.
3. Enhance the Visuals
A 2022 study involving undergraduates suggested that people could learn more effectively when visuals, such as images, accompany texts. The reason is simple: pictures and videos help us establish relationships between concepts.
Such is the power of visuals in medical marketing. In fact, their value is more significant in your field since you should explain the jargon in layman’s terms.
Further, many have the preconceived notion that the healthcare industry is boring, intimidating, and unapproachable. You can use these assets to make your brand more relatable to your audience.
But how do you make them truly work to your advantage? Consider these ideas:
- Use them to break long texts. Doing this also prevents your images from triggering spam filters (although it is helpful to remind your subscribers to add your emails to their contact lists as soon as they sign up).
- Apply Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs). AMPs enrich the user experience by helping you create more dynamic, interactive emails. For instance, you can run polls without forcing subscribers to open another page or display carousel ads that match your message. These pages also make your emails friendly to mobile users.
- Invest in original photos and videos. Stock assets save you time, but they can never speak of your brand. Besides, you can repurpose long videos into clips and redesign images with free tools, such as Canva.
4. Get the Timing Right
As they say, timing is everything. It has never been truer when you are doing email marketing. This topic is so crucial that HubSpot conducted a study about it. Here are the results:
- The best time to send an email is between 9:00 a.m. and noon. People are more likely to be in the office, prepping a day’s work and, yes, checking their emails.
- The day with the highest engagement is Tuesday. Mondays could be filled with meetings and goal setting not everyone has the time to read all the emails, let alone browse landing pages, answer surveys, or purchase products and services.
You might also want to consider the following when planning your email marketing blast:
- Send welcome emails within seconds or minutes after signing up. Do not keep your subscribers wondering whether they successfully completed the forms.
- Create email sequences leading to major promotions or events. October is Breast Cancer Month. Start the campaign at least a month before if you are running activities or promotions, such as discounted mammograms.
- Check your email marketing analytics. Know your audience’s behavior. When do they usually open their mail? How long do they stay on the page? Do some types of content receive higher engagements at certain times?
- Deliver messages on major healthcare events. Have you changed phone numbers or addresses? The flu season usually comes in full force during the winter months. Have you informed your subscribers about getting their shots?
5. Automate the Workflow and Monitoring Process
Email marketing is hard work, especially in healthcare. Your content should match HIPAA guidelines; the industry is constantly evolving, and you are more likely dealing with an influx of patients and a labor shortage.
You cannot skip this strategy if you are dead serious about online marketing, but you can simplify or streamline the process with automation, particularly your workflow and monitoring.
Here are some helpful ideas:
- Create an automated welcome email for new subscribers. Have it set up on a platform so that you can send these first messages within seconds after they have signed up. It will make the onboarding process faster and more efficient.
- Set up email automation sequences. These include welcoming emails, educational or remarketing emails, appointment reminders, or service updates.
- Make use of email tracking. It will give you insights about your campaigns, such as open and click rates, bounce rates, and more. You can view the results in real-time and make adjustments when needed.
Summing Up
The best healthcare email marketing plan does not stick to a formula. Instead, it is agile, allowing you to improve every element. This way, it continues to be effective, affordable, and reliable.
These five ideas are just a starting point. Try them out and see how they work for your campaigns. You can also work with high-caliber digital marketing agencies to help you craft strategies that will drive results.