E
mail marketing is the most cost-effective and quantifiable way to market your company’s products and services. If used correctly and effectively, permission-based email marketing can easily become your number one customer acquisition and retention tool. Here are five great reasons why patient care facilities should send an email newsletter.
Budget friendly
What exactly does that mean? You have a newsletter subscription list of 500 people and you want to mail them on a monthly or weekly basis. What is that going to cost you? Postage alone will cost you over $200.00 (at least!)
Email newsletter services can charge around $25 a month to maintain a list of up to 500 subscribers.
The intended recipient IS the intended recipient
You send an email to an individual. Period. There is nothing (except maybe a spam filter) to get in the way of your communication.
When you send out a direct mail piece, you cannot guarantee that it will end up in the hands of the person you sent it to. You just can’t.
Analytics
THIS. This should be the one and only reason for using an email newsletter versus any other type of marketing technique (but some people need more than one reason…)
With an email newsletter, you can tell:
- When someone opens the email
- What links they clicked on
- How many times they have opened the e-mail, and
- Who has not received the newsletter with the bounce report.
You will never get that kind of data from any mailing you have ever done. You can’t. It is impossible.
Sharing the first open-rate and click-through-rate reports with a new email newsletter customer is so much fun. They are always amazed. Oftentimes they have never seen anything like it. Measurable results are a beautiful thing to anyone even remotely interested in their ROI. In this mixed up, crazy time who doesn’t want to see exactly what they are getting for their money!
Build that pipeline!
Your email newsletter keeps you at the top of your prospective customers/clients/patients minds until they are ready to buy. If someone shows an interest in what product or service you are providing – by replying to the email newsletter or clicking on a link, you can follow up immediately. An email newsletter lets you communicate regularly with your target markets on a consistent and regular basis – share your expertise, customer testimonials, specials and information products.
With each issue that goes out you are establishing credibility, reinforcing familiarity and creating a relationship. People like to do business with those that they know, like and trust. What better way to get someone to “know” you than to communicate with them on a regular and personal level.
Stay in touch with your loyal customers
Everyone knows the statistics on the cost of getting new customers versus keeping existing customers. It costs 8 to 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing customer.
In O&P patient care, the patients you have to worry about losing are the “easy” ones. The ones you fit successfully without a whole lot of trouble. They did not have any real issues you had to contend with – no big problems to solve. They go home, go about their daily lives and then all of a sudden someone else comes along, does a better job of marketing to them and they are gone!
What happened?
Did you know? When customers have a problem and you fix it, they are actually going to be even more satisfied than if they never had a problem in the first place. True.
Communicating regularly with your existing customers shows that you care about them and want to continue to improve your relationship with them. You want to show them what is new in orthotics or prosthetics. What they need to know about – whether it is reimbursement related or new technology.
Here’s a true story of how an email newsletter could have benefited Ms. CPO who shared this story with me several years ago.
“A prosthetic patient, Sammy, came in to say goodbye and thank me for my years of care. He was going to XYZ O&P because he had received a mailing from XYZ highlighting a fancy new type of limb covering. I convinced Sammy to stay by explaining that any prosthetist, nationwide, has access to that particular product and that he didn’t need to go to XYZ but could continue receiving care from me.”
In relating the story to me, she was furious. “How could he do that to me? I have taken care of him for years!” she ranted. “Why doesn’t he know that we (practitioners) can all buy the same parts?! That I can get him the same covering?!!”
My answer?
“Sammy did you a favor. He could have just left and not said anything at all and you never would have had the opportunity to win him back. When was the last time you let your patients know what products and services, especially the newsworthy ones, you provide?”
An email newsletter makes it so easy for you to keep your existing customers updated on all the new products and services you provide. It also provides an opportunity for you to remind them of all your other products and services. Do they think you are just the “AFO guy” because that is how they know you? They may have no idea that you provide prostheses or custom knee orthoses.
Tell them.
It can make the difference between keeping a patient and having them head down the street or across town for that “new” patient experience!
Questions? Stories? Need help with YOUR email newsletter?
Email me. Elizabeth-at-cecpo.com
Clinical Education Concepts 