- Marketing
- August 10, 2023
Why Email Marketing is a Must for Healthcare Brands
There is no doubt that most people are cautious about their health. That’s why they care deeply about health articles, and it’s natural to pay attention to emails that can help them stay fit and give them a sense of overall well-being. As people are naturally interested and inclined toward health issues, this is a great opportunity for medical professionals to take advantage of this and provide their patients with a healthy dose of information.
Business opportunities for healthcare email marketers are real and better than they were a few decades ago. Most adults are digitally connected and individually addressable by email, making email marketing the go-to option for healthcare professionals. In fact, the number of emails per day is expected to reach 351 billion by 2023, and it is pretty evident that email is here to stay and presents a perfect opportunity for all healthcare marketers looking to add to patients with value-based products and services they offer.
Here’s why email marketing is essential for healthcare brands
Email communication is a reliable option for any healthcare marketing plan. Whether it’s attracting new patients, referring and retaining them, or building trust, email marketing offers brands a huge opportunity to seamlessly interact with their customers and prospects. In addition, low costs in return for exceptionally high results help healthcare professionals brand themselves as a trusted partner.
Besides acquiring new customers, email marketing in healthcare is particularly effective at building patient loyalty. It works because email allows healthcare professionals to speak directly to their patients by creating an emotional connection. In times of distress, such emails can be extremely comforting to patients.
According to a recent survey, the conversion rate of email is three times higher than that of other channels. Similarly, 47% of customers regularly check their email for promotions, while the average email open rate in healthcare is 26%. This means that nearly half of the customers who regularly check their email will likely open a relevant email campaign. From a business point of view, the ROI of every dollar that a healthcare professional spends on an email brings them $38 in return. Although health isn’t always about profits, these numbers should help marketers understand that emails continue to deliver remarkable results despite competition from other relatively modern marketing channels.
Benefits of Healthcare Email Marketing
Save Time & Minimize Costs
An effective healthcare email marketing strategy can help you keep costs down. Email marketing helps minimize costs, maximize process efficiency, and helps you ahead of the competition. Automation is another top benefit of healthcare email marketing. You can automate nearly all of your important email and communication tasks with healthcare email marketing. This way, you don’t have to spend time and resources sending healthcare emails to your patients. Additionally, healthcare email marketing can also help you confirm appointments, send email reminders, conduct patient follow-ups, and provide important information to the patient before the appointment, save time for your employees, reduce the risk of email failures, and increase patient turn-ups with an efficient follow-up mechanism.
Maximize Communication with Patients
If you are looking to share meaningful communication with your healthcare audience then a comprehensive email marketing strategy is just what you need. According to excerpts from a survey, email is still one of the most popular methods of communication, 9 out of 10 adults use email regularly. What distinguishes email from other communication channels is that, unlike other channels, people use email for important information and insights. You can also reduce missed appointments with automated email reminders, and reach your patients through a medium like email that they check almost daily.
Share Important Information
Email helps you deliver important information to your patients frequently and instantly. Patients worry about their health, and with healthcare emails, you can reduce their anxiety and concerns to a large extent. You can broadcast important information such as lab test results, tips and remedies for diseases, new drugs, product announcements, appointment confirmations, and appointment reminders.
Increase Patient Engagement
Engaging your patients and making them comfortable is one of the most important determinants of a healthcare brand’s success. Healthcare emails can help you give your audience the information they need when they need it. In turn, this helps you create a positive relationship with your patient and increase trust and credibility. Email marketing can help you share relevant insights with your patients, even if they don’t need medical assistance. A solid healthcare email marketing strategy can help you – Become a trusted source of information, solve patient problems, and provide relevant insights.
Establish your Brand
Healthcare email marketing is one of the best ways to establish your authority as an effective healthcare provider. By disseminating important health information, you can become an authority in your niche. You can create your own wellness content or healthcare emailers about the latest happenings in your industry.
Here are 5 result-focused email marketing strategies that healthcare marketers need to consider
Today, email marketing campaigns are not about gathering patient data or sending them occasional updates alone. It’s a lot about how seamless you make the entire journey to reduce the stress related to health concerns and provide value-based insights and assistance that makes them feel cared for and secure. Here are a few key strategies to make the most of your healthcare email marketing effectively.
1. Provide Online Registrations
One of the best ways to get an email address for your contact list is to offer a signup form on your website. Make sure you can easily gather key information with as few fields as possible so that your visitors don’t have too much information to fill. This is a good start to any healthcare email marketing strategy. You can also allow visitors to sign up for different types of emails in these forms, such as monthly newsletters, hospital updates, or information about events you’re hosting, etc.
2. Give Something Back
When asking patients to fill out email forms, be sure to offer something in return. Most patients want to know that they are not disclosing their contact information for any purpose, so make sure to mention the context clearly in your email, whether it’s free preventive care instructions or just a monthly wellness newsletter, make it clear and set the expectations right.
3. Segment & Personalize your Messages
Imagine emailing senior citizens about maternity wellness, this can be a waste of time for both parties involved. To avoid this, segment your mailing list into different personas and customize your content accordingly. For instance, if you are sending out a series of emails to older adults, mention how yoga can help them improve their immune system against certain health ailments. If you’re sending emails to mothers, consider sending information about how they boost the overall morale of children and tips to induce healthy eating habits. With every segment and level of personalization, you are one step closer to winning the trust of your potential customers, and will only help them make them feel more comfortable trusting your brand over the rest in the industry to address their needs and concerns.
4. A/B Test your Emails
If you want to reap the best results from your hospital email marketing campaign, you need to A/B test your email content. You can start by A/B testing your subject line to see what drives the highest open rates. For instance, you can check if a subject line in the form of a question has a higher open rate than a line in the form of an affirmative sentence. You can A/B test a variety of email elements, such as the number of images, including links, or different subject lines. By ensuring this, you can gauge the most effective email and tweak your content to ensure optimal engagement and ROI.
5. Schedule your Hospital Email
When you schedule your health email campaigns periodically, you become trustworthy to potential customers because they will always know when they get new information from you. It’s also important to set a schedule so that you don’t send too many emails each month. Decide on a consistent time to send each of your emails, usually every two weeks or monthly. When your email is consistent, you can be sure that you get to your patient’s inbox often, but not too often which may annoy them.
When done right, healthcare email marketing can help marketers create meaningful relationships with healthcare brands and patients. From increasing patient appointments to building relationships with new people and more, it can help in highlighting the value you offer as a brand without having to spend a lot of time or money. If you are yet to make the most of this efficient marketing channel now is the time to get started.
