Opt-in E-mail Marketing

A great way to reach potential patients!

Did you know that there were three billion e-mail marketing messages received by consumers in 1999? This number is expected to jump to 268 billion in the next five years! A majority of those messages will be geared towards existing customers. Jupiter Communications reports that in 1999 there were 240 million e-mails sent that were prospecting for new customers as opposed to 2.8 billion retention e-mail messages sent that were designed to keep customers by building relationships with them. Over 60% of marketers are currently using e-mail marketing and resulting revenues for 1999 were approximately $164 million. By the year 2005, revenues generated by e-mail marketing are expected to grow to $7.3 billion.

With this expected explosion of e-mail marketing, now is the time to get started on your office’s very own e-mail marketing campaign. The first step is to start collecting the e-mail addresses of all your patients and consultations. Also, make sure you give all new patients an opportunity to check a box on your sign-in forms that states "check here to receive more information" which gives you permission to e-mail them your newsletter that is designed to retain them as patients.

You can collect hundreds and hundreds of e-mail addresses by continually going to other health and beauty experts in your area and allowing them to write the lead article.

In today’s market, e-mail marketing is the best way to communicate with your patients on a regular basis. This tool can be used in a variety of creative ways to involve your patients and foster their loyalty. For example, our office recently sponsored a charity golf outing in town and none of the doctors could go to the tournament. We decided to open the foursome to our e-mail patient base and about 20 patients came forward wanting to represent us in the tournament. We ended up sending four patients and they loved it!

Another example from our office is e-mailing an invitation to patients to join us at a public event or ceremony. Recently, we invited patients to join us at the county’s Small Business Awards Ceremony, which was a great way to let them know we had won the award. We have also alerted our patients as to the channel, time and date when I’m scheduled to be on television as a guest expert. Let your patients know in advance so they can tune in and maybe they’ll even tell their friends! This marketing method is ideal for keeping your name and activities in front of your patient base. Also, show that you care enough about them to send the latest breaking information about their health or tell them about the fun activities that are going on at your dental practice that you know they won’t want to miss. To give you an idea, last weekend we sponsored a carnival for kids in our parking lot. Imagine how appreciative your patients will be when given a chance to respond to an unplanned opening in the hygiene schedule that will allow the first person to snatch a 15% "quick call" discount.

Taking this concept one step further involves writing a monthly newsletter (for example, Madison Health and Beauty E-News). You can then send it out to your patient base and feature local specialties like the plastic surgeon or the health spa. Now have those experts write a short article for your newsletter. They’ll most likely be excited to do it in order to get their name and information in front of your thousand patients. Plus, there is an even greater benefit to you when they turn around and give you their e-mail addresses so you can mail to their patient base; of course including your practice’s promotional message. Your health and beauty e-newsletter will appear as if it’s coming from the medical doctor’s office (or health spa) and yet it’s actually coming from you. You can collect hundreds and hundreds of e-mail addresses by continually going to other health and beauty experts in your area and allowing them to write the lead article. Once you’ve collected all these e-mail addresses, you’ve done far better than any professional company can do to supply you with a list of opt-in addresses of prospects that you have permission e-mail; plus they are all interested in health and beauty!

Now if all of this isn’t enough to convince you, as soon as you’ve collected thousands of subscribers in your database you’ll be able to sell a couple three to four sentence advertisements at the close of each newsletter. The going rate for the newsletter is around 25 cents per person, so with 5,000 names on your subscriber list you might be able to generate thousands of dollars each time you e-mail your health and beauty e-newsletter. In order to get people excited about upcoming issues make sure each issue contains an unbelievably great offer (usually from one of your expert authors). If the offers are extremely good, not only will you have people looking forward to your newsletter, but they’re also very likely to pass it along to friends as well. In any e-newsletter you send make sure you always put a clickable link that can send people directly to your website so they can learn more about your wonderful practice. A note of caution: always give your recipients a chance to opt out (unsubscribe) to your newsletter and you will avoid issues with unwanted e-mail.

The electronic age of communicating dentistry is upon us. If you’re not currently sending out e-mail newsletters to your patients you are missing an incredibly inexpensive method of building a relationship with your existing and prospective patients. In five years each man, woman and child in the United States is expected to receive 1,600 messages per year. That day is getting closer and closer, but the good news is that today there are nowhere near that many messages. Start your e-mail marketing campaigns now and your messages will get far better attention than if they have to compete with the clutter that will develop within the next five years.

Author Dr. Chris Kammer, DDS is Editor of The Advertising Dentist and runs the I.D.E.A. Group, a marketing firm specifically for dentists. For subscriptions and general information, call 608-218-9481 or e-mail: dentalad@tds.net