Build and nurture your email contact list

Why your patient email list is particularly valuable

One area which always surprises me when starting out on new digital marketing contracts for dentists, is how few practices actually have a well-developed and managed email contact list.

Often we will have examples where there is a partial list loosely maintained in the practice management software, but infrequently do we find a full contact list which has been built up and maintained for the purpose of marketing to existing patients.

Why is this important?

I don’t need to discuss in this blog why the dental market is so much more competitive these days; suffice to say that it is and that everyone in the business of dentistry knows about it. We are seeing the average salary for dental professionals decreasing markedly and an increasing number of practice closures as competition increases.

Consequently, more-so than ever before, the need to acquire new patients *and* hold on to existing ones is business critical. As we’ve discussed elsewhere in this dental marketing blog, it is commonplace for dentists to focus too heavily on new patient acquisition and neglect existing patient retention. Other than the standard six monthly recall, nothing much else happens. This leaves a huge window of opportunity for other suppliers to muscle in on your clients, particularly those who will be shopping around for more “high-end” cosmetic or restorative procedures.

So what can you do about this?

Rather than sit back and accept that some of your patients will move away, you need to ensure that there are systems in place to measure and prevent this. I regularly work with dentists who was completely unaware of their patient churn rates until we discuss it and put systems in place to measure it – one recent example was a dentist who had actually lost nearly 20% of his patients over the previous 3 years and was only just counteracting this with new intake. He had no clue that this was happening and even less idea of how to prevent it. I suspect this is the case in lots of UK dental practices.

But there are some relatively simple ways to counteract this and today we will briefly discuss the importance of your patient email list and how you can use it to help prevent patient churn.

Email marketing to your existing patient list

Like it or not, you need to stay in touch with your existing patients and subtly promote your services to them – for sure your competitors will be trying so you need to counteract this. One of the simplest ways is by using email marketing and of course to do this effectively, you need a comprehensive and well-maintained patient contact list.

The actual tools we use to carry out the process are discussed elsewhere in this blog (click here for more) so I won’t cover that again here. Today’s discussion is more about the mechanics of how to set up your email list and maintain it ongoing – remember that without the email list, you can’t run an email marketing campaign!

Building and nurturing your patient email list

First off, it’s important to understand that you can’t just send emails to patients without their permission to do so. So ensure that you seek their approval and document it. A simple form to sign or a section on the new patient registration forms should suffice. It is also important that a suitably trained member of your team explains what you will be sending to them and why – remember that no-one likes to be spammed so this needs to be explained carefully and the benefits to the patient pointed out.

Next you need to make sure that you have a clear procedure in place for recording the email addresses and transferring them to the email marketing system. Will you record them in the practice management system and if you do, are they easily accessible? Or will you use a simple spreadsheet? Whichever, method you choose, make sure it’s backed-up to prevent accidental data loss. With some systems, you can add the new data directly and it’s all stored safely on-line.

As with all data, it’s good practice to ensure that it’s up-to-date – so encourage your patients to tell you if their email address changes. This should be part of your regular data review. And of course make sure that any changes are reflected across to your email marketing system.

Summary

Many dental professionals fail to build and nurture an email marketing list and consequently miss out on one of the most effective and targeted ways of staying in touch with their existing patients.

Building such a list is quite straightforward if you have the right procedures in place – and it makes sense to start as soon as possible.

Even if you have other marketing priorities to address before embarking on email marketing, it is still important to start building your “list” from day one.

If you would like more advice about effective email marketing for dentists, including building your contact list and then how to use it for regular mail shots, please call Dental Media on 01332 672548 for a no-obligation discussion.