Posted by Amy Carbone on Jan 17, 2019 9:30:00 AM
While email marketing may be a very effective way of promoting your dental practice, crafting those emails and being confident in your efforts may be a big challenge for practitioners without experience. Even seasoned marketers may struggle to create email subject lines compelling enough for contacts to open them.
Here are some suggestions that may help you:
1. Consider Using Patient Personas to Segment Your Audience
Patient personas, or fictional representations of your ideal patients, may help you to create more effective email subject lines by segmenting your contact list. By targeting a very specific group of patients with common challenges, needs or goals, you may be able to create much more specific subject lines and messages.
Recipients of segmented emails are actually 75% more likely to open them.
Consider a scenario in which you receive two marketing emails. The subject line of the first may be general, attempting to appeal to a broad contact list. For example, “Save on dental treatment plans.” In contrast, the second email’s subject line may be much more specific, “Save $200 on in-office whitening at our Raleigh Practice.”
The second email line may be more effective because it may be sent only to those patients that are likely to be interested in whitening, can typically afford the procedure and live within the target area. Also, before they’ve even opened it, the reader will know what the purpose of the email is, whether it’s relevant to them and how it’s valuable to them. In this case, that value is monetary and very clear.
Patient personas may also help you to choose the right tone of voice, to select the appropriate offer for the audience, to promote the service this type of patient is likely to need and perhaps best of all, help to inspire trust and loyalty in your practice.
2. Use an Emoji
This tip is simple: include an emoji in your subject line and you may see a higher email open rate than you would without one.
3. Offer Value
Resist the urge to promote your practice and instead, consider focusing on the value you’re offering. Give contacts a reason to open the email that serves them, not your practice.
Options for value in a subject line include:
- Solving a problem your targeted patient experiences
- Discounted services
- Special offers
- Free education or advice
- Free consultations
There may be a lot of options for creating value in your subject line, just be sure it applies to and appeals to the patients you’re targeting.
4. Dare To Be Fun (or at Least Interesting)
Today, entertaining, fun or funny email subject lines may be a common practice among marketers and businesses of all types. However, the strategy may be more effective for dentists because it’s less common in the industry. Consider thinking outside of industry standard practices to catch patients and prospective patients off guard with an unexpected style or tone.
Imagine receiving an email from your dentist that, instead of a typical marketing subject line, had a fun fact about teeth like, “Cheese can Protect Your Teeth,” or “Mosquitos Have Twice as Many Teeth as You Do.”
Whatever your strategy is, the goal of this tactic is to hook the reader into wanting to open your email however you choose to do so.
Looking for inspiration? Social media sites including Facebook or Instagram and hashtags such as #dentists may be valuable resources for finding entertaining and popular dental practice communications.
5. Test Your Subject Lines
If you’re unsure of the best strategy or have several options you like, split up your segmented email list and experiment. Just measure your results thoroughly.
In the marketing world, testing may be an important part of effective email campaigns. Many marketing email programs and software may also include tools to test different subject lines and track, then analyze your results.
One strategy for testing is to create two different subject lines for one email, then send the first subject line to your entire list.
After tracking who opened the email and who did not, resend the same email with a new subject line. Not only may this give you an opportunity to try both subject lines, you may be able to get more mileage out of one message.
When testing the effectiveness of different email subject lines, you may want to consider the email open rate and clicks through to your website or offer as well as your end goal. You may need to utilize a program such as Google Analytics in order to track this data.
Finding the Right Approach for Your Practice
No matter how hard you look, there may never be a one-size-fits-all approach to your patient email marketing.
The right approach for your dental practice marketing and email subject lines may depend heavily on your specialty, the types of patients you treat, your practice’s goals, your practice’s challenges and the style or personality of your practice. Use these tips as a guide as you explore strategies.
Use Email & More to Help Grow Your Dental Practice
Email subject lines are just one small way you can try to build your list of loyal, repeat patients.
If you want to take additional steps, we've compiled some effective methods that can help you grow your practice to the next level.
Are you ready to try something new to help your practice thrive?
Download our free guide today!
About Treloar & Heisel
Treloar & Heisel is a premier financial services provider to dental and medical professionals across the country. We assist thousands of clients from residency to practice and through retirement with a comprehensive suite of financial services, custom-tailored advice, and a strong national network focused on delivering the highest level of service.
Treloar & Heisel and Treloar & Heisel Risk Management are divisions of Treloar & Heisel, LLC.
Insurance products offered through Treloar & Heisel, LLC.
Treloar & Heisel, LLC. does not offer legal or marketing advice. Please consult a professional in these areas.
