Marketing With Email

Email marketing should be used by every doctor to increase efficiency and grow revenue.

Upon reading the title of this blog, you may be asking how email marketing can help doctors increase efficiency and grow the revenues of their medical practice.
The answer to this question is very simple, each one of us has been to the doctor’s office, some of us even have doctors in our families but how often do you get a happy birthday card from the doctor? When was the last time that the doctor sent you relevant information in regards to your last visit or followed up to ask if you are feeling better?

It seems that in today’s world doctors are too busy meeting the demand of their patients and the doctor’s assistant is even more busy trying to help the doctor deal with patients making sure they understand what the doctor recommended as well as helping the doctor with physical exams, order lab tests, provide health care counseling and making patients as comfortable as possible.

With all of this, you are probably wondering “When does a doctor have time to follow up or even send me a birthday card?” That’s where the wonderful world of email marketing comes in.

Email marketing makes the doctor’s office more efficient and makes the doctor’s patients feel better about the relationship making it more likely they will come back as well as refer others to the medical practice.

How would the patient feel if they received a welcome email after the first visit to the doctor’s office to thank them for choosing the doctor and their medical clinic as well as including the doctor’s office hours in that first email? It’s my opinion that patients would feel appreciated and welcomed.

How much more efficient would the receptionist be when they do not have to answer the many phone calls asking what hours the office is open. The welcome email makes the doctor’s office more productive as the receptionist can now focus on more revenue generation tasks such as billing or booking new appointments.

Let’s break down the information that the doctor has on their patients to realize the many potential segmentation opportunities that can exist to engage with the patients through email marketing newsletters.

Patient information

• First name – To personalize the email newsletters.

• Last name – Same as first name but more cordial.

• Address – To engage with clients in a particular part of town and send them updates on community events showing interest in the neighborhood.

• Email address

• Male/Female – Specific email marketing campaigns for issues that affect male or female patients.

• Birthdates – Email birthday cards to the patients. Using email marketing improves efficiency in the office as the email marketing manager would use the patient list to send them out via email marketing software instead of the office staff putting stamps and addressing individual envelopes. Less expensive then stamps and more efficient then writing individual cards.

• Insurance information – The doctor can send an email newsletter to alert patients regarding important information of any changes to their client’s policies which may affect the patient’s coverage. An email newsletter can be sent only to the patients affected by a specific insurance company changes by segmenting the entire list of all patients to include only those affected by any changes.

• The doctor may ask why the patient came to see them (If there is a concern or if they had any questions about a service that the doctor offers). For example;

- If the doctor is a Dentist, the patient may have come in to ask about whitening their teeth or they may have had pain in the tooth that needed to be fixed.

- If the doctor is a Podiatrist, the patient may have come in to inquire about constant foot pain when they walk or information on how to prevent foot injuries because they are diabetic.

These are all opportunities to learn about the patients and better understand their needs. Once the doctor understands the reasons that the patient came in, they can put them into a specific list of email newsletters that go out every month delivering health information or how to stay healthy.
By doing this, the doctors are engaging with their cliental making them feel important and showing them that they care about the issues that are affecting the patients.

• The doctor has information on each patient. For example, if clients have seasonal allergies – An email newsletter can be sent once a month to patients by general practitioners or allergy specialist advising clients what allergies are in season as well as some treatment options that may be available.
The email newsletter can provide valuable information as well as act as a revenue generation tool when patients call in to make appointment to treat their allergies.

• The doctor would also know what medication the patients are taking in case there was a recall alerting all patients to come in for a new prescription.
If doctors have a good opt-in subscriber list of all their patients then the message going out to patients is easily segmented by the email marketing consultant. The email list needs to be updated on a regular basis with patient’s names as well as their email addresses.

In part two of this series I will share valuable email marketing strategies that I have implemented in doctor’s offices to help their medical clinic become a more productive, efficient revenue generating health center while at the same time helping them build relationship with their clients through the use of email marketing newsletters.

We have just been notified by the  folks at theemailguide.com that Ben & Jerry will continue to use email marketing in the United States but the UK division of Ben & Jerry may continue to use email marketing. With this in mind, my views below are in regards to the UK division of Ben & Jerry and not the company as a whole.

The news on Ben & Jerry UK decision to stop the use of email marketing is and at the same time not surprising as many companies are looking for the latest marketing buzz to get the name of their product in front of customers.

While I can understand Ben & Jerry UK desire to be in front of people’s face on the most successful social media site (Facebook), Ben & Jerry UK decision to stop their email marketing campaigns is in my opinion a mistake.

Facebook is hot at the present time but what will the people on the internet be interested in 2 years from now? What will be the latest hottest social media site be then? Some people may say that Facebook is not going away and while that may be true (I also love Facebook) plenty of people said the same thing a few years back about MySpace. MySpace was HOT for a few years and then slowly faded away in popularity as Facebook took over.
My point is that instead of jumping ship and going to the latest popular trend, the marketing people at Ben & Jerry UK should focus on what works and what has great conversions as well as a proven track record in the marketing world.

I am not suggesting that social media should not be a big part of the global picture at Ben & Jerry UK or any other company’s marketing plans. In fact Ben & Jerry UK should be active on social media sites. What I am suggesting is that email marketing campaigns and social media campaigns should work hand in hand to bring Facebook fans and email subscribers together.

Email marketing can bring fans to Ben & Jerry UK Facebook fan page and Ben & Jerry UK Facebook fan page can bring fans into the email subscriber’s list. Utilizing the two marketing channels, Ben & Jerry UK team can get to as many internet citizens as possible.

It is my view that the marketing team at Ben & Jerry UK do not appreciate or understand it yet but email will still be a functional part of their Facebook campaigns. The reason is because every time content is added to Ben & Jerry UK Facebook fan page, an automated email will be sent to every one of Ben & Jerry UK Facebook fans in order to give them an update.

Ben & Jerry UK decided to stop retargeting their customers via direct email campaigns but they have not stopped using email per say. Ben & Jerry UK will continue to be using email throughout their social media campaigns to connect with their Facebook fans.

Ben & Jerry UK will on the other hand be losing a magnificent opportunity to segment their customers by the country, state/providence they live in or the local zip/postal code or even the client’s favorite ice cream flavors. This eventually leads to loss of engagement with customers and market share.

I also disagree with some that say Ben & Jerry UK doesn’t need to communicate every month to encourage a relationship with customers as the customers are already engaged or the fact that ice cream is not the kind of product that needs an email to encourage customers to purchase it. The reason I disagree is because when companies don’t engage on a regular basis with their customer they lose market share.  A few example of the many lost opportunity by Ben & Jerry UK when they are not going to be using direct email marketing to connect with their customers are:

1. Ben & Jerry UK will no longer be able to send email coupons to customers for their favorite ice cream when sales of that particular product are falling off in a certain region of the country.
2. Ben & Jerry UK will no longer be able to invite customers living in a certain location to an event that is being sponsored by Ben & Jerry UK to drive goodwill within that community. While they can send a message to everyone on Facebook does the guy in New York really need to know about an event that is being put together in Seattle? With email segmentation Ben & Jerry UK can target specific customers in a specific location around the country making the message more focused with less noise to everyone else.
3. In the Northeast we have recently had a heat wave that Ben & Jerry UK could have taken advantage of. They would have sent an email newsletter on the wonderful benefits of ice cream such as it having calcium for kids or ice cream recipes and included a coupon in the newsletter to encourage people to buy the product. Customers who never received an email may not thing about buying Ben & Jerry UK ice cream but when an email newsletter is sent it plants seeds and desire for a product.
4. Ben & Jerry UK will no longer be able to send an email to their client’s in order to wish them a happy birthday. Imagine how a customer would feel if they received an email newsletter and once the client opens the email they see an ice cream cake shaped message saying Happy Birthday. All Ben & Jerry UK have to do is collected that information through the website when customers sign up to receive the newsletter or on the retail side when a client visits the store.

Ben & Jerry UK is missing out on a huge marketing opportunity to deliver the right message to the right person in order to drive sales results.

Email marketing can do amazing things for your current and prospective customers if used correctly.

To get more information and ideas on how email marketing can bring your marketing plans to the next level and how it can help your business grow, contact me at email.marketing *-at-* marketing-with-email.com.

Why is email marketing no longer going to be used by Ben & Jerry’s? Because they can’t see the lost opportunity.

Earlier this morning I read a blog post by Christopher S. Penn on Ben & Jerry decision to stop using email marketing and was going to leave a comment on his blog but one thing led to another and my comments became to passionate and the comment became bigger then expected that I figured I post my own blog post on this issue.

Ben & Jerry’s do not realize it yet but they will still have email working in the back ground because when they target their Facebook fans it is an email that will be delivered to the user’s in box to inform them of a new message from Ben & Jerry.

Ben & Jerry have not stopped using email; they are just using it in a different way to engage with their fans.

They will however miss out on many opportunities to segment their fan based list by state, zipcode and even ice cream flavors in order to engage with them. Let’s look at some of the lost opportunity that will be experienced by Ben & Jerry

- Ben & Jerry can no longer send coupons for a specific client’s favorite ice cream

- Ben & Jerry can no longer invite clients to an event in a particular part of the country that is being sponsored by Ben & Jerry to drive goodwill within the community

- Ben & Jerry can no longer communicate the wonderful world of ice cream to clients residing in certain parts of the country that is having a heat wave.

- Ben & Jerry will also miss out engaging with their client’s to wish them a happy birthday if they have that information in their database.

What Ben & Jerry fail to see is that they will still communicate with their fans on Facebook via email but not to the same extent or powerful ways that they could have with direct emails messages.

Ben & Jerry is missing out on a huge marketing opportunity to deliver the right message to the right person in order to drive sales results.

Their loss and our (professional email marketing industry) gain as pointed out by Christopher S. Penn.

As the French would say it, Merci mon ami (Thank you my friend).

Everyone talks about optimizing email campaigns and how to make them better but the fact is that in some places this is not done so I came up with a list of the top ten reasons why someone would not want to optimize their email campaign. The list is funny but has some interesting points on what companies are missing by not putting in the time to optimize their email campaigns.

So read below, have a laugh and next time you’re sending an email newsletter think about your subscribers and your bottom line. Is it worth taking the time to optimize your email campaigns? Of course it is unless you like to be part of the group that is in the top 10 list below.

Top 10 reasons not to optimize your email campaigns

1. Your organization does not need any more opt-in subscribers.

2. There is no need to write great e-mail messages because subscribers who may be opt-in will get used to somewhat good email marketing messages.

3. There is no need to design effective email campaigns because conversion rates do not matter.

4. It’s not really important to make sure your emails newsletters reach your audience.

5. Can’t handle any more increases in open rates and click-through because the money is just flowing in and to make more money would only mean paying more taxes and who really wants to pay more taxes to the government?

6. No need to do any A/B testing because email subscribers are not really interested in telling you what they prefer to read and engage with. They get what they get and if they don’t like it, to bad because you’ll just keep on sending email message to the inbox.

7. Your organization doesn’t care about the risk of email campaigns failure because no one really tracks those anyway.

8. No need to optimize sales as well as average order rate through the use of sweepstakes or online coupons via email campaigns because email subscribers don’t really want to feel special.

9. User-friendly email version that meets the subscriber’s expectations are not something that your organization strives for.

10. Personalizing emails have not become something that you care deeply about to increase sales because who really cares about more sales and revenue. Oy Vay that would mean having to deposit more money in the bank.