Most dental practices note patient interests, hobbies, etc. in the patient chart. Why? Naturally, conversation comes easier when there is a common starting point, and what better starting point than a subject that is interesting to the patient.
The same theory should apply when sending any information to a patient. Why send a newsletter about Invisalign to a patient who is the mother of an 11 year old and has recently asked about orthodontics? Similarly, why send a newsletter about fixed braces to a 40 year old attorney who recently asked about straightening her lower anteriors and is the ideal Invisalign candidate? Also, you wouldn't want to send a card announcing a whitening special to a patient who has already expressed no interest in cosmetic dentistry.
Until email marketing arrived, it would have been practically impossible to send information to your patients based upon their individual interests and desires. Now, because of email technology combined with the advent of easy-to-use email marketing services, it is possible to segment your patients into groups of specific interests.
If you send a message that your patients are interested in receiving, you will get their attention and your goals for the mailing will likely be a success. If you understand this simple concept, you will understand why email is the ideal marketing tool for patient communication: it can be targeted and done at a fraction of the cost of traditional mailing.
Of course, no email marketing is possible without your patients' email addresses. So, while it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss address collection, please understand the value of collecting your patients' addresses. It opens a whole new world of communication possibilities. If you haven't already started, put a simple plan together as soon as possible and slowly begin to build what may become your most important marketing investment. Even a few addresses a week will allow you to start communications right away.
Segmenting Your Patients
So, how does someone go about segmenting his or her patients? There are several email services that allow you to create "groups" and then associate one or more customers to that group. Dentigram (www.dentigram.com) is just such an email service designed specifically for dentistry. The application allows you to define whatever groups you want, and then, add any number of patients to the group. Groups might include age, gender, hobbies, job types, treatment history, treatment interests (cosmetic, whitening, ortho), etc.
A good place to start is to take whatever information you already have about the people in your email address database and put it to good use. This exercise will also give you some insight into the type of information you will want to gather to better segment your database in the future.
Then, once you're satisfied with the way you've segmented your database, you can create a message that will be relevant to each of those groups. A lot of people make the mistake of creating email campaigns (newsletters and/or special promotions) that appeal to themselves rather than their target audience. The more you know about your patients, the more you can customize the message, look, and feel to better speak to the people to whom you are sending the message.
Enhancing Your Knowledge
When you go through the exercise of segmenting your database for the first time, you will probably think about what additional information would be helpful to know to better communicate with your patients. Make a list of the most important things (e.g., magazines subscriptions, industry they work in, hobbies, etc.) and incorporate these questions into all of your new patient discussions. Over time, you will consistently collect the relevant information from all new and prospective patients. With programs like Dentigram, you'll have drop down menus for these fields to standardize the way information is fed into your application.
In addition, if you want to incorporate marketing best practices, you can analyze all the treatment rendered to any of your defined groups. These sorts of patterns, combined with demographic data, will also prove very valuable for future marketing campaigns. Analyzing your database on a regular basis will provide invaluable marketing research. For example, you may find that patients in a group titled "Baby Boomer" produce the highest hygiene revenue. You can then customize future mailings to that group accordingly.
It's important to communicate with your patients on a regular basis. But, you need to have a good reason for communicating with them; one that brings them value in some way. As you learn more and more about your groups, you will be better able to anticipate the frequency of each group based upon interests and needs, and then set up a calendar for anticipated mailings.
Measuring Your Results
Tracking the results of your campaigns will enable you to determine what's working and what's not. Any of the newer email services, including Dentigram, will track campaign results.
After each campaign, you can analyze the results, including how many people you sent the email to, how many emails were delivered, how many people clicked through, and how many people opted out (again, most email marketing systems will give you these stats). In addition, if you look at the number of people who responded, you will be able to calculate the campaign's success.
Last But Not Least!
As you gather more and more information about your patients, you can use this information to "paint a picture" of your ideal patient. They are the people who bring you the most joy into your day-you definitely want more patients like them, and now, you'll be able to better predict how to find them.
William B. Jackson, DDS is Vice President of Business Development at Planet DDS, Inc. He can be reached at
bjackson@planetdds.com.