Linda talks about the four most common mistakes dental practices making in email marketing.
Linda provides dental professionals actionable marketing knowledge they can use to grow their dental practice.
Linda Mettler: The second mistake that people make with email is not sending a welcome email. So when you acquire that new patient Welcome to the Mettler Marketing Podcast where we will talk about
marketing strategies and tactics to grow your practice. I am your host, Linda Mettler and I have worked with dental practices for several years now. And I want to share my knowledge and experience
with you so that you can gain valuable and actionable steps on how to grow your practice. We will talk about the latest and greatest and marketing features some guest speakers so that you can hear
firsthand what is and is not working and help you unravel the complexities of the digital marketing world. I work really closely with my clients. So we will also delve into some other issues that
affect your practice from time to time, such as staffing problems, COVID protocols and similar issues. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. Welcome to the Mettler Marketing
Podcast, where we talk about marketing strategies and tactics for your dental practice. And this morning, I want to chat with you about email marketing, because email marketing is a great way to just
you know, be in front of your your patients attract new patients, and reinforce your brand. So and it's easy and low cost and very effective. But there are some common mistakes that I see people
making with email marketing. So just want to kind of chat with you this morning about those mistakes and how to fix that. So we're going to talk about four mistakes with email marketing this morning.
So and the first of all, the reason you should be doing email marketing, if you're not already, is that the ROI on it is extremely high, you can expect about an average return of about $32 for every
$1 spent on email marketing. So that's a great ROI. Email Marketing is really easy. There are so many, oh gosh, for lack of a better word premade templates for you to use. Really not time consuming.
With email marketing at all, you should already have a good database of emails for your patients, that should be part of your intake forms and your practice management software should be helped
helping to collect those email addresses of your patients. So email marketing, if you're not doing it, please start right away. Very effective, very low cost, great ROI, great way to stay in front of
your existing patients and attract new patients as well. All of your email campaigns can be shared on your website and on social media too. So lots of reasons to be using email marketing, a couple of
great product email products that I like to use, I use Constant Contact. There's also MailChimp revenue well, which is a practice management software that some dental offices use offers email
marketing that's built right into their platform. So that's, that's a great one to use as well. They're all very easy to use, very intuitive, Constant Contact and MailChimp both have pre made
templates for you to use. So very, very effective method of marketing is email marketing. So let's talk about some of the mistakes that people make there. They're pretty simple and pretty simple fixes
that can help your conversion rate and can increase. You know the number of people that open your emails, and click on any links that you have. And the first mistake is by not personalizing your
email. So there's a couple ways to do that. First of all, your subject, your subject line should be personalized to the person that it's being sent to. So if I receive an email from your office, when
I open it, it should say hi, Linda, or you know, dear Linda, but actually you should say hi, Linda. So that's that's the very first thing for personalizing it. You can also personalize it by sending
out emails on people's birthdays, or holidays. And again, always personalize that name in there. You can send different emails, you can segment your emails to send them to different types of patients
on different you know, maybe their anniversary or you know how long they've been a patient in your practice something like that.
you can also personalize your email, you can get even more sophisticated with it using
dynamic content, different things like that. And if you look inside of constant contact, or MailChimp, they there's a lot of great tutorials on how to add that dynamic content and how to do that, they
can show you how to do that that'll be personalized to the recipient of your email. So that's the first mistake that people make that's very easy to correct. The second mistake that people make with
email is not sending a welcome email. So when you acquire that new patient, in your practice, you want to send an an Welcome to our practice, or welcome email, welcome to our dental family, you want
to send that email out just to them very personalized email, thanking them for choosing your office thanking them for coming in to see you letting them know that you value them as a new patient. And
that you know, they can expect the best care from your office. So having a welcome email, that's the second mistake people make, they just usually add that person's email to their database, and just
kind of put them on the next standard email. But send out well welcome email to that new patient in your office, that's going to really help with that, that brand loyalty, they're going to be more
likely to open the next email that they received from you. The third and biggest mistake that people make with email marketing is not having a clear call to action. Or in my world, that's known as a
CTA call to action, it's great to send some checking in or Hello emails, I definitely encouraged that always send an email out to your patients when there's a holiday, you know, with without a call to
action. So those emails you want to say, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Thanksgiving, happy fall, happy spring, those emails, you don't need a call to action. Those those emails are just to
reinforce your your brand identity and stay in front of your patients. But your other emails that you send out need to have a clear call to action. You know, Call today to schedule your appointment.
You know, click here to learn more about implants if you're doing an article on implants. So every email should definitely have a very clear call to action. And even those emails that I referred to a
minute ago, that are just checking in or saying hello or holiday emails, you can actually even have a call to action on those emails, because on the bottom of them, you can always put a link to review
you. So click here to review our office and include a link that goes directly to Google or Facebook and have those people leave your review. So actually, I have to revise what I say in every every
email should include some type of call to action. You can ask people to share your email on social media. Or if you're having an event in your office, you can send out an email letting people know
about the event. And your your call to action would be to have people register or sign up for that event, maybe you're having an open house. Or maybe you're doing some type of zoom webinar on implants
or restorative dentistry, and you want people to sign up for that. So your call to action is to have that link. And that text in the email asking people sign up here, click here, go to this website,
give us a call. All of those are call to action messages that you definitely want to have in your email. So
be sure to do that. make them easy, make them big, make them prominent, make them bright, bold, it you know put a color around it so that people see that call to action button. I like to make them a
button in my emails I like just have a button you know, click here or, or call give us a call, you know in a button. So and speaking of those buttons, the fourth biggest mistake that people make with
their emails, which is also very, very important is they neglect their mobile users. So So we've talked before about how many people 75% of people are looking at their content on their mobile device,
whether it's a tablet, or their phone. So you definitely want to make sure that your email is very readable on a mobile device. And because not everybody is looking at stuff on their desktop. So and
it shouldn't just be a cell phone, you want to make sure that it's, you know, mobile optimized for somebody on a tablet as well. So that's, that's a huge one, as well, to make sure that people are
opening and reading your emails. So you want them just make sure that those four things are covered. Also, make sure your content is really worthy of people's time. You don't want to have boring
content and and, you know, bad strategy, you want to really put some good strategy around your email marketing. And I also think that, you know, let's get real, you're a dental office, you're a
dentist. And while we all love dental offices, and dentists, you know, the common person doesn't want to hear from their dentist every single week, or every month, even. So I really advise our clients
to send out email newsletters, by monthly, so every other month, but put a strategy around that content and have that content sync up with what you're doing in your office, what you're doing with your
other marketing. So if you are running a promotion on Invisalign, and you're doing a lot of social media marketing, and some Google ads on Invisalign, it's a great time to send out an email, offering
people a discount on your Invisalign treatment, as well. So have it synced up, don't have it just be random, use some strategy around there. And that email marketing will really enhance your other
marketing, as well. And again, you know, make it content that people want to hear. And sometimes it can be content that's healthcare related, and not necessarily dental related, all healthcare and
dental health care are tied in and relate overall anyway. So right now with, you know, all the COVID information and misinformation, maybe send out an email to people with with some links to where
they can find some really good information, maybe to their county health department, or their state health department, the ADA, the CDC, just so that people can get clear information on COVID and
other health issues, maybe people just don't know where to go. So you could send out an email saying, Hey, we care about your health, we want you to have the most factual and up to date information.
And here's the list of links to help you with that. That's something that people would definitely be interested in having nothing with any opinions on vaccination or, or their health care, just a list
of, you know, resources for them to get good information, that's a great thing to send out. So content like that content that's relevant to their health care to their life, to you know, how keeping up
on their dental pair is going to improve their overall health in their life. That's the type of content that you want to be sending out to your existing patients and your prospective new patients, and
any type of content that reinforces that they can trust you, as a health care provider, and that you're going to be there for them. So that's the type of content you want to have. Alright, so just
make sure that you you've got that great content in your emails, that you're not forgetting about mobile users, that your your emails are optimized for mobile content, you're sending out those welcome
emails, you're personalizing your emails, and that they have a clear call to action. If you do those four things, or five, actually, if you count content, I think you're going to be fine that email
marketing is a great, you know, addition to the rest of your marketing, you know, works really well with your social media, and all your other digital marketing and I think you'll find a great ROI
with that. And that will really enhance your marketing efforts. So if you have any questions as always, feel free to reach out to me I'm I'm available by phone, email, text, you name it, you can find
me it's not hard. So and Remember if you want to have a great day, go out and make it a great day.
Ed Bejarana: Are you committed to the growth of your practice better Marketing can help at medtner marketing. We help dental practices gain new patients, increase referrals and maximize patient
retention with customized Marketing Solutions tailored to fit your needs. Visit www dot medtner marketing.com to schedule a free consultation and learn how we can help grow your practice. Thank you
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