Patient relationships start and continue on way past the waiting room. What you say and do outside the doctor’s office can greatly impact your patient’s view of your organization or practice.
Email newsletters may seem like a small piece of the puzzle, but they can drive customer loyalty, spread awareness about future initiatives and keep patients up to date on what’s happening in health-related news. If done correctly, your newsletter could be the vessel where patients get their health-related information. And they may even look forward to your newsletters.
Related: Ten tips to revolutionize your relationship with patients through email in 2023
1. Understand your patients
Understanding what your patients are interested in is crucial when creating your newsletters. To keep your audience captivated your newsletter must be interesting, important and informative.
According to Medical Economics, it takes an average person about 51 seconds to scan a newsletter. That gives you very little time to catch the reader’s eyes. Relevant headlines, bullet points, and snapshots are a great way to grab the reader’s attention in that short amount of time.
When creating a structure for your newsletter, it’s important to ask yourself these questions:
- Who are my patients? Demographics? Procedures?
- What information is most relevant to them?
- What information can help my patients know my practice?
Once you answer these questions, knowing what content to include and what can be left out will become easier.
Related: The transformative power of email for your patients
2. Curated content
With everything happening at your organization or practice, finding time to create new content for every newsletter may be challenging. Take advantage of third-party content from journals, articles, and other reliable sources.
When collecting curated content, consider using a variety of content. Some examples include:
- Infographics
- Blog Posts
- Health news
- Tutorials and tips
- Videos or webinars
- Photos
- Interesting facts
- Holidays, events, and memorable dates
Utilizing multiple forms of content will keep your newsletter fresh and attract the eyes of your patients. And always be sure to cite your sources.
3. Clear calls to action
Although you don’t want your newsletter to be a sales pitch, you do want clear calls to action that help patients toward the next steps you want them to take. Calls to action allow the reader to take a step outside the newsletter. Those next steps could include:
- Signing up for a webinar
- Joining your social media platforms
- Reading more on an article
- Learning more on your webpage
Calls to action should be bold and easy to spot. Many times, they can be in the form of a clickable button or hyperlink.
4. Consistent
How often should you send newsletters? Weekly? Monthly? Bi-monthly? That depends on your patients. There isn’t one right way. If your patients enjoy staying up to date on significant health news in your area or worldwide, then maybe once a week is a good amount. If your newsletter is focused on what’s happening at your practice or new technology in the industry, then once a month could also be good.
No matter what you decide, it’s important to be consistent. If you’ve grown a loyal following, your patients will be waiting for the next read. Sending inconsistently not only lets your patients down but also tells them you’re unreliable.
5. Captivating subject line
Your subject line is one of the first things your readers see when they receive an email. So be sure to make it captivating and relevant. Failure to pique their interest from the start leads to poor open rates and less engagement. Poor subject lines are the quickest way to end up in the trash folder.
The “from” line may be even more important than the subject line. If you don’t specify your brand name, the email will get flagged as spam or sent to the trash folder again. Both places don’t do you or your patients any good.
Create engaging emails efficiently
Paubox Marketing takes these best practices and brings them to fruition. Our drag-and-drop design editor makes it easy to segment and send secure emails, including PHI, to increase engagement and build your business while remaining HIPAA compliant.
With Paubox Marketing, you can create personalized care journeys and leverage tailored content and dynamic text to move beyond generic group messages.
Compared to the standard marketing tools, Paubox Marketing is the best option for maintaining HIPAA compliance while harnessing the power of personalized email marketing.
Try Paubox Marketing for free and make your email marketing HIPAA compliant today.
