Patient newsletters are an excellent tool for connecting with both current and potential patients to remind them to come and see you when they have a medical problem you can solve. But only if those newsletter are informative and interesting, helping people stay closely connected to you and your practice. For them to work, though, you have to have people’s names and contact information so you can send them out. How do you get those? If you’ve ever been contacted by a “marketing” group that says it can sell you a list of contacts in your local area so you can send out your newsletter, STOP immediately. You need to build your list yourself, not buy it.
Why does this matter? If those are lists of people in your community that you would like to be aware of your services, why wouldn’t you send them your newsletter regularly, whether through e-mail or snail mail?
In short, because doing so is a terrible mistake that will waste your time and your money.
See, buying a list to send your newsletter out to is like shooting at a gun range with a blindfold on. Sure, you might hit the target a few times, but more likely you’ll simply waste a lot of bullets. Accuracy requires sight and knowledge. You want to be able to see exactly what you are targeting so you are more likely to hit it dead on. And this is a very expensive way to market your practice.
In order for your newsletter to work well as a marketing tool, it needs to be read, not trashed or marked as e-mail spam. You have to be targeted in who you send it to, not just shooting it randomly to anyone and everyone in your community. People who are not interested in what you can do for them not only won’t want to read your newsletter, but they won’t be likely to convert to a patient in the future anyway. For a newsletter to work well as a tool, you have to send it to people who have actually expressed interest in you and your practice.
This is why building your list is so much better than buying one. You and your team collect the information of current and potential patients and then add them to your marketing database. Current patients are people who already know you, like you, trust you, and are interested in what you have to say—and are thus much more likely to read your newsletter and benefit from it. Potential patients are looking for answers to their problems and are interested to see if you might be able to help. Sending them your newsletter establishes that connection and can help them convert to patients in the future.
Your patient newsletter is a valuable tool, so don’t waste your time and money by buying a list. Build one instead through your website and the connections you make in your office and in your community. If you’re not sure how to go about this, our Mastermind group discusses this topic, and others, regularly. We also have an expert database marketing and management team that can help you. Just contact us for more information by calling (717) 725-2679 or emailing [email protected]
