That said, the data proves that medical practices still make a lot of money with email campaigns to prospective and prior patients, meaning that email marketing is still relevant even in the second decade of the 21^st century. For a refresher on the best practices for email marketing these days, our team is here to help.

Why Email Marketing Still Matters

Despite the nearly universal experience of having a disorganized and spam-ridden digital inbox, everyone uses email every day. Many of us check multiple accounts multiple times a day, our attention focused in different ways at different points in our routine.

This means there’s still lots of potential to put your name and your practice’s brand in front of eyes that are paying attention, and therefore gain awareness of your practice with minimal effort or expense on your end. There are a few more reasons why email marketing is still an effective tool in today’s digital marketing landscape.

Email is Targeted

Assuming you’ve collected good lead data and have former patients segmented by procedure type, interest level, and even dollar amounts spent, you’ve got specific audiences that will be receptive to specific messages ready to be reached out to with emails. This allows you to hone your efforts on people who are more likely to return and spend money at your practice, versus sending 10,000 cold emails out to addresses you have no idea whether they’re interested or not.

Email is Easy to Measure

Views and click rates are simple and reliable ways to know whether your email worked or fell short. Subscription rates and unsubscribe rates also inform you whether a specific campaign is effective or off-putting. Using these easily gathered metrics can inform not only your email content but also other marketing content as well.

Email Starts a Conversation

One seemingly forgotten aspect of email marketing is that when designed well, emails are interactive with brands. They ask questions of readers, and invite them to take any action beyond the big leap of calling the office for an appointment. It can be as simple as inviting them to read a recent blog post or watch a video – whatever the interaction, it’s part of a conversation they’re having with you, just without you in the room. This builds trust and connection that can make a big difference in their bigger decisions later on.

Does Your Email Marketing Stand Up?

Best practices have shifted over the last several years as email habits have changed and people’s expectations of medical practices like yours have as well. Keep the following metrics in mind as you evaluate whether your email marketing is having the impact it could be.

Is Your Subscriber Base Growing or Shrinking?

You have built-in email subscribers for the patients who visit your office. They’ve already taken the biggest leap of all, scheduling a consultation or paying for a procedure, so why not keep them in the loop on what’s going on?

If your subscriber base, with all your in-office appointments and online sign-up forms, isn’t growing, it’s likely that you’re doing something wrong with your emails. Maybe you’re sending too many; maybe too few. Maybe the content isn’t relevant. Whatever the case, keep an eye on your subscriber count and perform an overhaul if things aren’t going the right way.

How High is Your Open/Click Rate?

It’s a fact that not every single person will open every single email you send out, much less take an action, but if your open rates are below 1% or even 5% and your click rates barely register, it could be a sign that you’re not meeting subscribers where they are.

Take a look at your highest-performing emails. What were the subject lines? How were they formatted? How long were they? Did they have a special offer or update about the practice or a procedure? Analyzing what’s worked well can help you direct your efforts toward email content and promotions that people will pick up on and payout for.

Do Your Emails Match Your Brand?

Your brand is more than just a color scheme or a logo, it’s also your voice. It connects the literal voices people hear in your office, on the phone, and in your emails. If your emails come across as noticeably different than the tone people expect to hear from a medical professional or your practice, in particular, they’re likely not going to perform as well as they could.

Have your email marketer follow brand guidelines diligently and browse your website to identify the tone people expect to see in their inbox or in the voice of someone who answers the phone.

Medical Practice Email Marketing by DLM

At Digital Limelight Media, we’ve been helping medical practices hone and enhance their email marketing playbooks for over a decade. With tools like email automation that automatically places website leads into a drip campaign, as well as a CRM to manage your contacts and segment them appropriately, our proprietary email marketing software is custom-built for practices like yours. Call or contact us online today to learn more about email marketing and our specialty tool, DLM Insight, and our team of expert marketers that enables you to do more with less effort.

The post Email Marketing Is Still Alive And Well: Here’s What To Know appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

1. Do You Need a Newsletter?

Consider the goals of your practice and whether other businesses in the medical industry have a successful email newsletter. Hint, they do. Email newsletters can inform your patient of new treatments and specials and encourage them to schedule appointments. You can also include links to blog posts about relevant procedures or common questions that your clients might be interested in. Whatever you choose to include in your newsletter, make sure it has one consistent focus with a balanced variety of content. Review examples from other medical practices and businesses outside the medical industry to give you an idea of how to create your newsletter and what you should include in it.

2. Balance Information and Promotion

Many businesses use emails to encourage sales, but you might want to make your newsletter more informational since constant emails asking people to buy services can become bothersome. Instead, give them information about those services, such as the benefits or why they might be a great candidate, and let the information guide them to schedule that consultation. Sending out occasional promotional emails can still be effective, but save the promotions for new services and specials.

3. Inform Your Readers

Once you have a focus for your newsletter, set up a “Subscribe” page that tells your clients and future subscribers what will be included in the newsletter, how often they will receive it, and who the email will be coming from.

You can continue to inform readers within your newsletter by including a call to action (CTA) at the end of every email. Remind your readers how they can connect to your office by linking to the contact page on your website and including the office’s telephone number. Since you don’t know whether existing or potential clients are viewing your newsletter, you may also want to include the name and location of your practice.

4. Get Creative

The first thing your subscribers will see is the email subject line and this must grab their attention if you want them to read the email itself. Don’t be afraid to make your subject lines fun, witty, and engaging. You can even design your emails to address the subscriber in the subject line. For example, “Emma: Save Now on Fillers and Injectables!”

The design of your newsletter is also important, but you want to blend creativity with a simple design to avoid a cluttered look that may distract readers from the newsletter’s main message. Make sure this design is functional and looks good in both a desktop and mobile view.

5. Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

Although it may seem like a step in the wrong direction, setting up an “Unsubscribe” page is just as important as the “Subscribe” page. Having an unsubscribe page keeps your newsletter from falling into the “Spam” folder because this shows you are reputable. Unfortunately, people may unsubscribe from your newsletter but when this happens, it’s important that they can do so easily. Design your page in a simple, clear way that will not make it difficult and frustrating for subscribers who want to leave.

Develop Your Email Newsletter with DLM

Digital Limelight Media (DLM) can help you create an engaging email newsletter and marketing campaign that will keep patients coming back, both to your website and office. Give our office a call or schedule a 15-minute meeting to learn more about the services we offer and how we can help your business grow.

The post Creating an Email Newsletter People Will Actually Read appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Getting Started

One of the first things you may want to look at is the churn rate or the percentage of subscribers leaving your email list within a certain period of time. Churning happens not only when clients unsubscribe from your email list, but also when they send your emails to spam or simply don’t open them. A few questions to ask as we analyze your subscription list include:

Are Your Subscribers Staying?

The numbers of your subscriber list may be consistent or even growing, but take a closer look. What might actually be consistent is the balance between new subscribers and those who are leaving, which means your growth rate could be higher than what you are seeing.

Are You Sending Too Many Emails?

The saying “more is better” holds true in many cases, including emails. Although your content might be good, too much of it can make all your emails blend together and important information such as promotions or specials can be forgotten. Too many emails can also clog a person’s inbox, making your content something to be immediately deleted to get out of the way.

Is Your Content Relevant?

Know your audience and what people are currently interested in to create an engaging newsletter. For example, summertime may attract people who want a refresh for their skincare routine. Winter may encourage people to seek out cosmetic surgery.

Improving Your Subscription List

Email lists mirror the number of clients you have scheduled for appointments at your practice. Losing subscribers means losing those potential clients. You can reduce churn rate by:

1. Sending personalized welcome emails
2. Set up a loyalty program
3. Ask for feedback
4. Let subscribers create custom preferences to receive only some emails

Keep altering and testing these methods until you see increases in churn rate, open rate, and clickthrough rate.

Let DLM Track Your Metrics

Our marketing team at Digital Limelight Media can help you develop an effective marketing strategy to engage new and existing clients. Our specialty tool DLM Insight automatically tracks the metrics of your email subscriptions so we can keep testing and improving churn rate and more until you have a consistently growing, fully engaged subscription list. Contact us today to learn about how we can improve your subscription list and your overall marketing campaign.

The post Rethinking Your Email Subscription List appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Creating a Checkbox Form

A checkbox form allows people to subscribe to your email list. These can be included on the home page and other main destination pages on your website. Although you do not have to use a checkbox form, these allow for easy access that lets your clients subscribe with just one click.

First, you will create a new field on your forms. Then, you can create a new smart field that tracks whether each client has already subscribed. The smart feature keeps the checkbox form from showing up for people who have already subscribed. However, you do not want to make this checkbox, or form, required since this may persuade clients not to subscribe. After all, everyone likes to have a choice about what they sign up for and it’s better to organically gain new subscribers since these are the people who will be interested in your content.

You can then create a list of people who have subscribed through the check box and export that list to your blog subscriber emails. You will then set up a workflow, or email automation, to welcome new subscribers and send them emails at designated times. You can send emails daily, weekly, or monthly; just make sure not to flood your clients’ inboxes with too many emails.

How Do Blog Email Subscribers Help Your Marketing?

The more subscribers you have, the more traffic is generated to your blog and your website. Although some of these subscribers may already be leads (people who have visited your website), blogs serve as engaging new content that keeps your leads invested in your business. Blog content can also inform clients about various procedures and answer questions regarding cosmetic or medical procedures.

Creating a Blog

If you don’t have a blog for people to subscribe to, now is a great time to start one! The content team at Digital Limelight Media will write you monthly blogs based on the topics or procedures you want to highlight. Blogs are a great way to attract new and existing clients to your website and can be optimized using keywords for search engine results and revenue.

Generate New Subscribers Today

DLM’s team of designers, marketing specialists, and content writers can help you automate emails, generate new leads, and compile a list of all the people who want to subscribe to your emails. Visit us online or schedule a 15-minute demo to learn more about the marketing services we offer.

The post Boost Your Blog Email Subscribers in 3 Months appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Why Should You Use a Welcome Email?

A welcome email adds a personalized touch to the black and white email inbox and helps your subscribers and clients feel they are valued at your practice. Welcome emails also act as reminders about what your subscribers have signed up for. This is especially helpful if they indirectly subscribed to your email list via a check box on their registration form or the landing page of your website.

How to Create a Welcome Email

Welcome emails can be automated so that they are immediately sent when a client fills out the subscription form. Before you choose to automate that email, it’s important to figure out what you will include in your welcome email. Here are some of the suggestions we have:

Recognizable Sender

To effectively connect with your readers, it is important they know where the welcoming email is coming from. Consider using the name of your practice as the sender and include it in the subject line. For example, “Welcome to the DLM Team!” You can also include your logo within the email, possibly as a header or footer. If you’re not quite sure what to include in your subject line, test a few variations and check the clickthrough rates to see which is working best.

Personalization

To further emphasize that you value your clients, address them within the email. For example, “Hi, Peter!” as an opening or “Thank you for subscribing, Peter. We look forward to meeting you.” at the end of your email if you are prompting subscribers to schedule a consultation.

You should also personalize yourself by signing off with your name rather than the name of your practice. This creates a more genuine human-to-human connection and the appearance of an email that came from a real person rather than an automated generator.

Create Expectations

Remind your subscribers about what they subscribed to. How often will they receive emails and what will the emails be about? If your subscribers know what will be included in your emails, they will know to expect them and can have something recognizable in their inbox.

Thank Your Subscriber

A small thank you can go a long way. Show your clients that you appreciate their interest in your services. After all, they did sign up to receive another set of emails that get added to the inbox; you want to make sure yours stand out as something they look forward to receiving.

Call to Action

The main focus of your welcome email is to greet new subscribers, but you should also use this opportunity to quickly prompt your readers to take the next step. This might be visiting your website, checking out your social media, or calling the office to learn more about your treatment options. With this call to action, you may also want to add links to those social media profiles and your website.

Set Up Automated Emails with DLM

The marketing team at Digital Limelight Media specializes in marketing strategies that help promote and grow your business. Get started with your personalized marketing strategy today by scheduling a 15-minute demo to learn more about our services.

The post Create a Personalized Email Campaign with Welcome Emails appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Reasons You Should Not Buy an Email List

1. You Violate GDPR Rules

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has strict rules to protect data privacy. One of these rules is that you must have explicit consent before sending someone an email; this often takes the form of a checkbox that a person clicks to sign onto your email subscription list. If you are sending your emails to people’s addresses bought from a list, they have not given consent to receiving those emails and this could cause serious legal problems.

2. Damaging Your Reputation

Certain organizations set up spam traps in the form of fake email addresses. If you buy an email list, you could unknowingly buy one of these fake email addresses which will notify the company of your email list and mark it as spam. This will prevent your clients and subscribers who want to be on your email list from receiving your emails since they will automatically be put in the spam folder. Secondly, if you want to use email marketing software to automate your emails, a reputable service will require you to use opt-in email lists created by subscribers who have personally signed up for your list.

3. Lack of Personal Connection

Buying an email list adds subscribers who you don’t know and who probably won’t know you or your practice. If they do not know you or are uninterested in your services, those emails may just come across as annoying which will not benefit you or your practice. It is more worthwhile to take the time to encourage existing or potential clients to join your email list because these are the people most likely to engage with those emails.

4. Putting Your Email Account at Risk

Not only can you face legal trouble from buying an email list, but you may also risk trouble from your email service provider. Providers such as Gmail, Yahoo!, and Outlook do not want to be associated with spam accounts and could permanently close your account if they think you have been sending unwanted emails.

Creating Your Own Email List

An opt-in email list is created when clients opt-in (sign up) to your subscription list by checking a box asking to receive your emails. Building your own list protects your company and more effectively promotes it because you will gain an email list of people interested in your content. To encourage people to join your subscription list, you have to give them some incentives like a loyalty program with special rewards or access to a blog that can answer their cosmetic-related questions.

Protect Your Practice with An Opt-in Email List

Digital Limelight Media has all the tools to help you create an opt-in email list. Visit us online to learn more about the benefits of email marketing and the services we offer to help you market effectively. You can also schedule a 15-minute demo to learn more about how we can improve your email marketing.

The post Why Buying Email Lists is Never a Good Idea appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Creating Your Email Unsubscribe Page

When creating an unsubscribe page, make it as clear and simple as possible. While you should give them lots of reasons to stay on your email list, you should also not make it difficult to leave. Don’t hide the unsubscribe button or design the page in a way that makes it difficult to find. If your subscribers are already on that page, making it difficult to unsubscribe won’t make them any less likely to do so – this will only annoy them when you should be encouraging them to stay. Making it easier, along with the tactics below, could cause them to second-guess whether they want to unsubscribe.

Ways to Decrease Your Unsubscribe Rate

1.      Ask for Feedback

Many unsubscribe pages provide their subscribers, or unsubscribers, with a multiple-choice form that lists reasons they might be leaving. Going one step further with a short answer box where clients can leave their opinions about what was working or not working offers more personalized, specific feedback. There might be a problem you were not aware of and paying attention to this feedback can help you find and resolve that problem before other people also unsubscribe because of it.

2.      Offer Customized Subscriptions

Maybe your subscriber is still interested in some of the services you offer, but they don’t want to receive all the other emails you send with content they aren’t interested in. You can keep your clients subscribed with customized subscriptions that will only send them certain email blasts. For example, you could prompt your client to join a procedure-specific mailing list if they are only interested in some of the procedures you offer. Other customized mailing lists could be for monthly specials, new procedures, and products, or blog posts.

3.      Build Emotion

Your clients or subscribers need to remember that you are human, especially if their only interaction with you and your practice has been through email blasts or visiting your website. Consider adding in some humor, wish your customers well, and engage them so that they know they are important to you.

4.      Personalization

Another way to engage with your subscribers directly is through smart fields. Smart fields personalize a page by addressing the user by name and offering content based on their previous searches. Auto filling the unsubscribe form might also help, since filling out a form for something you are not even interested in anymore can be annoying. By making the unsubscribe page as user-friendly as possible, you may encourage that person to stay subscribed.

Boost Your Marketing Strategy with Digital Limelight Media

An email unsubscribe page can be an incredibly useful tool when utilized effectively. For more marketing advice and a marketing strategy designed specifically for you, including responsive emails, schedule a 15-minute demo with our DLM team.

The post How to Build a Better Email Unsubscribe Page appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Why Should Your Practice Use Email Marketing?

Email marketing refreshes your patients, or prospective patients, on your services and brand with an entertaining tone. These are some reasons you want to be sure your email marketing is working well:

Emails Create a Conversation with Patients

Emails create awareness of your practice and can encourage patients to call your office by promoting special offers and information about services. This conversation works both ways – your patients or prospective clients can engage with links in your email that will take them to your site, surveys, or other promotional items.

Email Performance is Easy Measured

The benefit of online marketing is that you can see the response rate of recipients as it’s happening. DLM Insight is a cloud-based app that allows you to easily view these leads and track how quickly your staff is responding to leads, which is an important consideration in the success of your campaign. You can also use emails to test which offers and types of information generate the most responses, then use those strategies to build your brand.

Email is Affordable and Fast

Marketing that works well and doesn’t cost a lot of money is a huge incentive; this is why email marketing works so well. In a short amount of time, a set of emails can be created and scheduled out on a regular basis using our Marketing Automation system. With email automation, utilizing that system, specific email responses will be sent based on the user’s action. For example, when new patients sign up for your mailing list, a welcome email can be sent to them.

Testing Your Email Marketing

As you develop your email marketing, you may need to do a few trial runs to determine if your plan is on the right track. There are several tests we can run for this purpose: online subscriber growth, in-office subscriber growth, brand alignment, mobile responsiveness, average open rate, and average click-through rate.

Develop Your Email Marketing Strategy at DLM

At Digital Limelight Media, we are dedicated to helping you grow your business. Our team of marketing specialists will work with you to develop a personalized email marketing strategy that will keep patients coming and encourage new patients to call. To schedule a 15-minute demo of our services, contact us online or call (616) 222-3735.

The post Medical Industry Email Marketing: Benchmarks and Best Practices appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most well-known email marketing platforms on the market, and it’s typically the first one that small businesses choose. It’s well-known for a reason – it’s a solid option if you’re looking to begin exploring email marketing with an established brand but don’t want anything too elaborate. That’s because MailChimp offers some great basic tools like WordPress integration, landing pages, drip campaigns, analytics tracking, and a simple template editor. For a decent price, you can use MailChimp to create your own basic newsletters, manage contact lists, build landing pages, and generate reports. One downside? MailChimp-generated content tends to end up lost in the “Promotions” tab for Gmail users. It also recently stopped offering direct integration with Shopify – a big drawback if your campaign includes ecommerce.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a decent option for basic email marketing, especially for practices who want something easy-to-use and streamlined. It comes with helpful tips at every step of the process and even offers a handy “check for errors” tool so you never miss a link or typo. Like MailChimp, it can easily integrate with most other marketing platforms and social media. However, Constant Contact falls behind when it comes to marketing tools like A/B testing, automation, and personalized product recommendations for customers. However, you’ll get the most value for your money with Constant Contact due to the sheer number of features available for your monthly cost.

Active Campaign

Where Active Campaign shines is its automation. It allows you to set up a huge variety of powerful automation channels like sales follow-ups, dynamic content, and triggered campaigns. It’s also a great way to centralize many different tools like SMS, chatbots, and Facebook ads. It also offers thorough reporting and some of the best deliverability on the market. Unfortunately, all of this can come with a steep learning curve and higher price than most other email marketing tools. But, if you’re looking for one of the most powerful marketing tools in the industry, Active Campaign is a great choice.

DLM Insight

When it comes to marketing campaigns, it’s hard to beat the experience of a medical marketing agency. At Digital Limelight Media, you can manage your email campaigns using our all-in-one platform, DLM Insight. Our unique CRM compiles your email lists, call records, and patient medical information so you have a centralized hub for planning, implementing, and assessing your campaigns. The additional benefit is that Insight is a single hub for all your other marketing tools, ROI tracking, and website analytics. It’s a digital marketing platform developed specifically for medical practices rather than a one-size-fits-all tool. Finally, for your costs, you get the expertise of our entire marketing team including email content writers, professional designers, and marketing specialists to help generate customized emails and guide your decisions for the biggest return on your efforts.

Let’s Get In Touch

Ready to learn more about DLM Insight and our industry-leading email marketing tools? Give us a call to schedule a 15-minute demo and see how you can take your business to the next level.

The post What Email Marketing Platform Should I Use in 2022? appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

That said, the data proves that medical practices still make a lot of money with email campaigns to prospective and prior patients, meaning that email marketing is still relevant even in the second decade of the 21^st century. For a refresher on the best practices for email marketing these days, our team is here to help.

Why Email Marketing Still Matters

Despite the nearly universal experience of having a disorganized and spam-ridden digital inbox, everyone uses email every day. Many of us check multiple accounts multiple times a day, our attention focused in different ways at different points in our routine.

This means there’s still lots of potential to put your name and your practice’s brand in front of eyes that are paying attention, and therefore gain awareness of your practice with minimal effort or expense on your end. There are a few more reasons why email marketing is still an effective tool in today’s digital marketing landscape.

Email is Targeted

Assuming you’ve collected good lead data and have former patients segmented by procedure type, interest level, and even dollar amounts spent, you’ve got specific audiences that will be receptive to specific messages ready to be reached out to with emails. This allows you to hone your efforts on people who are more likely to return and spend money at your practice, versus sending 10,000 cold emails out to addresses you have no idea whether they’re interested or not.

Email is Easy to Measure

Views and click rates are simple and reliable ways to know whether your email worked or fell short. Subscription rates and unsubscribe rates also inform you whether a specific campaign is effective or off-putting. Using these easily gathered metrics can inform not only your email content but also other marketing content as well.

Email Starts a Conversation

One seemingly forgotten aspect of email marketing is that when designed well, emails are interactive with brands. They ask questions of readers, and invite them to take any action beyond the big leap of calling the office for an appointment. It can be as simple as inviting them to read a recent blog post or watch a video – whatever the interaction, it’s part of a conversation they’re having with you, just without you in the room. This builds trust and connection that can make a big difference in their bigger decisions later on.

Does Your Email Marketing Stand Up?

Best practices have shifted over the last several years as email habits have changed and people’s expectations of medical practices like yours have as well. Keep the following metrics in mind as you evaluate whether your email marketing is having the impact it could be.

Is Your Subscriber Base Growing or Shrinking?

You have built-in email subscribers for the patients who visit your office. They’ve already taken the biggest leap of all, scheduling a consultation or paying for a procedure, so why not keep them in the loop on what’s going on?

If your subscriber base, with all your in-office appointments and online sign-up forms, isn’t growing, it’s likely that you’re doing something wrong with your emails. Maybe you’re sending too many; maybe too few. Maybe the content isn’t relevant. Whatever the case, keep an eye on your subscriber count and perform an overhaul if things aren’t going the right way.

How High is Your Open/Click Rate?

It’s a fact that not every single person will open every single email you send out, much less take an action, but if your open rates are below 1% or even 5% and your click rates barely register, it could be a sign that you’re not meeting subscribers where they are.

Take a look at your highest-performing emails. What were the subject lines? How were they formatted? How long were they? Did they have a special offer or update about the practice or a procedure? Analyzing what’s worked well can help you direct your efforts toward email content and promotions that people will pick up on and payout for.

Do Your Emails Match Your Brand?

Your brand is more than just a color scheme or a logo, it’s also your voice. It connects the literal voices people hear in your office, on the phone, and in your emails. If your emails come across as noticeably different than the tone people expect to hear from a medical professional or your practice, in particular, they’re likely not going to perform as well as they could.

Have your email marketer follow brand guidelines diligently and browse your website to identify the tone people expect to see in their inbox or in the voice of someone who answers the phone.

Medical Practice Email Marketing by DLM

At Digital Limelight Media, we’ve been helping medical practices hone and enhance their email marketing playbooks for over a decade. With tools like email automation that automatically places website leads into a drip campaign, as well as a CRM to manage your contacts and segment them appropriately, our proprietary email marketing software is custom-built for practices like yours. Call or contact us online today to learn more about email marketing and our specialty tool, DLM Insight, and our team of expert marketers that enables you to do more with less effort.

The post Email Marketing Is Still Alive And Well: Here’s What To Know appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.