It's Time For Your E-mail Marketing Campaign

E-mail marketing serves as one of the most valuable marketing resources today. The number of e-mail users rises exponentially every year. In fact, research suggests that this number will reach 4.3 billion accounts in 2016. Because of its profound popularity and numerous benefits, it is essential that e-mail become an integral part of your marketing plan.

The benefits of e-mail marketing are numerous. When you consider the time involved in print mailings or direct marketing with phone calls, the time spent on e-mail marketing is significantly less. In fact, an e-mail marketing campaign can be created and sent out in under an hour a month. The time factor is an enormous benefit of e-mail marketing.

The concept of real-time messages serves as another benefit of e-mail marketing. It’s possible to send “day of” messages. These messages can promote something going on within the practice or can even be used to wish patients a happy birthday. Often, real-time e-mails encourage potential consumers to take advantage of special offers in a short time frame. E-mail marketing allows practices the option of sending messages within short time frames.

Personalization represents a unique quality of e-mail marketing. Many other forms of marketing abide by a “one-size-fits-all” mentality. For example, with print marketing, you tend to send out a mass production of print content to the entire target population. With e-mail marketing, it’s easier to personalize each message so that it speaks more profoundly to the receiver. E-mails can be personalized with individual names and e-mails. This is more intimate, and people tend to be more receptive to personalized messages. With e-mail marketing, it’s possible to segment off selected patients to form separate lists. In this way, the e-mail campaigns can be targeted to specific patient populations. Providing great content that speaks to your patients in a personalized way is one of the huge benefits of e-mail marketing campaigns.

Frequency of contact is another important consideration for all types of marketing: print advertising, print mailings, phone calls, etc. Reaching out to the target population a single time is not likely to yield noteworthy results. Multiple contacts is the best way to stay in the mind of your potential consumers. E-mail marketing simplifies messages and thus makes frequent contact cost effective and easier to achieve.

The ability to monitor a marketing campaign and assess it is paramount to the success of the campaign. Even if the campaign brings you no leads, it still gives you information you didn’t have before. E-mail marketing servers, like MailChimp or Infusionsoft, provide you with analytics regarding how many users opened the e-mail, if they clicked on any links within the e-mail and if their clicks resulted in a conversion on the website. All of this speaks to the effectiveness of every campaign and reflects another reason why e-mail marketing is a great resource.

Next week I will share with you some of the rules that the federal government has put in place to protect consumers. You will need to abide by these when you start your e-mail marketing campaign.