Although social media and other digital channels have gained traction recently, email remains one of the most powerful marketing tools for healthcare organizations and medical practices. If done right, it can help you deliver personalized messaging, gain valuable data insights, and boost traffic to your practice website.
Email is an all-around communication tool that can help you stay in touch with current and prospective patients and clients. But it’s also a highly cost-effective healthcare marketing tool that produces solid returns for your marketing efforts. Healthcare organizations can expect a return on investment (ROI) of $42 for every $1 spent on email marketing efforts.
However, healthcare email marketing is neither an exact science nor an easy walk in the park. You might think you’re doing everything right yet struggling to get meaningful returns from your campaigns. If this sounds like you, we’ve compiled five tips and strategies to help you elevate your healthcare email marketing game.
1- Establish and document your healthcare email marketing strategy
Executing your email marketing campaigns without a plan is like throwing darts in the dark. How do you know if your campaigns are getting the desired results? Always create a solid marketing plan before writing email copy and hitting send.
Recent research and surveys suggest that many healthcare providers and marketers have some form of email marketing in motion. But only a small percentage of them have a formal email marketing plan in place.
A well-established strategy will help guide your email marketing efforts from start to finish. Remember, too, to document your strategy to track your campaigns’ ROI and success. It’ll also ensure that you’re creating email campaigns that speak to your target audience’s needs and pain points, as well as your medical practice’s marketing mission.
2- Grab the recipient’s attention with the subject line
If you want prospective patients and clients to read your messages, you need to craft compelling subject lines. They should make the recipient curious enough to open the email. An attention-grabbing subject line could incorporate a direct call-to-action (CTA), clear benefit, name, or pose a question.
Given that more than half of consumers say they prefer when email marketing campaigns include offers and products, it’s safe to say that personalizing the subject line will do the trick. But before you do that, you need to know something about the recipient.
For healthcare marketers, that usually means you’ll want to know what struggles your potential patients are facing and what solutions they may prefer. While there’s no single most effective way to craft a killer subject line, these tips will help:
- Include a clear offer – The recipient should get a clear picture of what they can expect from your email. The proposal should be easy to understand.
- Create a sense of urgency – Aim to entice the recipient to open your email marketing messages right away. If they see the subject line and choose not to open the message immediately, they might never return to it. It won’t take long before your email is buried under a massive stack of other emails.
- Add a personal touch – Personalization is the key to boosting the open rate of your email marketing messages. Use the first name of the recipient in the subject to capture their attention right off the bat.
- Mirror the message content – According to CAN-SPAM and HIPAA regulations, all healthcare-related emails should use subject lines that reflect the message’s content. Do this to avoid any legal trouble.
At the end of the day, the perfect subject line is relatable, concise, and snappy. With just a glance, the recipient should get the gist of the message, including who you are and how they will benefit from the email.
3- Give the same attention to the preheader as the subject line
The email’s preheader is crucial. It deserves the same, if not more, attention as your subject lines. The more enticing the text of the preheader, the higher the open rates of your emails. You shouldn’t neglect the preheader space, as this is one of the most effective ways to boost engagement and supplement the subject lines.
The bottom line? Optimize both your email’s subject line and preheader. They give the recipient the gist of the email at a glance.
4- Optimize your emails for mobile viewing and reading
The numbers speak volumes: people spend an average of four and half hours daily on mobile. Moreover, recent studies have shown that consumers are happy to interact with email on mobile; more than 61 percent of email opens occur on mobile.
This means it’s a no-brainer to incorporate device compatibility into your healthcare email marketing strategy. How to do this?
- Shorten the subject line – According to Digital Authority Partners, your email subject line should range from 25 to 30 characters long to display fully on mobile, not the 60 characters available for desktop and webmail clients. So, create clear and concise subject lines that readers can read entirely, even on mobile devices.
- Keep your emails short and sweet – As with the subject lines, your email body should be snappy, concise, and easy to scan. Leverage bullet points and headers to emphasize specific points. Use short paragraphs to put your messages into small text blocks.
- Minimize image use – Images reduce load speed and can make your emails look cluttered on small screens—ditch imagery for enriched content.
- Optimize preheader text – Keep the preheader text to 90 characters—the more pithy, the better for the mobile experience.
- Bring your CTA to focus – We love to place our CTA at the bottom of the email. But that could cost you a prospective patient. Instead, bring the CTA close to the top of the email and 44 x 44 pixels to boost clickability. And make it contextual.
5- Test your emails before you hit send
Testing your emails before you send them can save you plenty of “uh-oh” moments. Employ A/B testing strategies to evaluate various email elements and monitor the results closely. You’ll eventually find the sweet spot for your email copy template.
Split testing, if done right, can optimize your email messages for lead generation, conversion, and other key performance indicators (KPIs) like open rates and click-through rates (CTRs).
Conclusion
These five crucial tips will help you create killer email campaigns for your healthcare marketing efforts. Start with a solid strategy and compelling subject, and then continue with mobile-optimized content and A/B testing.
