Email Marketing for Dentists: The 7-Step Guide

In the digital age, staying connected with patients is vital for any dental practice. Unfortunately, sending the occasional update to your clients simply won’t cut it.

That’s why you need to make the most of email marketing. It helps you retain your current patients and attract new ones. As a result, it can significantly increase your revenue.

In our definitive guide to email marketing for dentists, we discuss:

• Why it’s so important
• Its many benefits
• How to create an effective email marketing strategy
• The best practices you need to follow

Let’s begin!

Why is Email Marketing Important for Dental Practices?

Email marketing is important for any type of business – and dental practices are no exception. In fact, 64% of small businesses use email marketing.

Your patients lead busy lives and the simple email is the perfect way to keep in touch with them. You can use this marketing channel to remind them about things like check-ups, routine cleanings, and even dental surgery. By doing so, you can maintain your patient relationships and improve customer retention.

However, dental email marketing isn’t just about sending appointment reminders. It’s also a great way to attract new customers to your practice. It enables you to market your services to potential patients looking for a new dentist, so you can grow your practice and increase revenue.

5 Benefits of Email Marketing for Dentists

Still not convinced that your dental practice needs email marketing? Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits.

1. Keeping patients informed

One of the benefits of a dental email marketing campaign is that it’s an easier way to keep your patients informed. This largely consists of sending them:

• Appointment reminders
• The details of upcoming surgeries
• Information about opening hours during holidays
• Billing information and receipts
• Referrals to specialists
• Updates on oral appliances you’re making for them

Additionally, you can send targeted promotional emails about new products and services, and dental hygiene tips.

Although most of these messages wouldn’t be classed as traditional marketing emails, they help to keep your patients engaged and strengthen their relationship with your brand.

2. Attracting new patients

One of the primary aims of your email marketing efforts is to gain new patients and grow your practice. It allows you to target potential patients with personalized messages promoting the benefits of your services.

You can segment your email list (more on this later) to ensure that your recipients receive emails that are highly relevant and valuable. As a result, they’re more likely to convert and start using your practice.

3. Improving patient retention

Dental email marketing campaigns are very effective for increasing patient retention. How so?

You can use your emails to offer things like:

• Loyalty rewards for long-term patients
• Exclusive discounts on cosmetic procedures
• Offers on dental appliances

This provides added value to your loyal patients and creates a sense of exclusivity. As a result, you enhance patient loyalty, making them more likely to stick with you.

4. Improving brand recognition

Let’s be honest – the dental industry in the US is huge, and patients have plenty of options when they need an appointment. You need to ensure you’re the first practice they think of when the time comes. This is one of the reasons email marketing is so important.

By maintaining consistent contact with your subscribers, you keep your practice top-of-mind. Then, when they need dental care, they’re less likely to start searching for other dental practices in their area. Instead, they’ll get in touch with you.

5. Increasing ROI

Email marketing tends to be far more cost-effective than other marketing channels. Costs are relatively low (especially when compared to acquisition channels like Meta an Google) and return on investment is pretty high. This is particularly beneficial for a small business like a dental practice.

The main costs involved in establishing an email marketing channel are:

• Paying for the software you use
• Creating content for your emails

When you compare these costs to the significant increase in revenue your email channel can generate, it’s clear why it’s so cost-effective.

How to Create an Effective Dental Email Marketing Strategy

You’re up to speed with the many benefits of dentist email marketing. Next, we’ll guide you through the seven steps you should follow to create an effective campaign.

(If you’d rather let the experts do it for you, contact InboxArmy. Our email campaign management service team will build a winning strategy for you from the ground up. From audience segmentation to campaign automation, we know what it takes to create a campaign that gets results, every time.)

1. Choose the right email marketing platform

Even if your subscriber list is small, executing an email marketing campaign manually can be incredibly time-consuming. One of your first decisions will be to choose an email marketing platform that can enable you to send emails effectively and efficiently.

There are many different options and it can be tricky to identify the one that’s right for you. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

Here are the things to look out for when you’re choosing your platform:

• Drag-and-drop editor: Choose a platform with a drag-and-drop editor. This means you can easily edit your emails and add different design elements.
• Template library: Ensure the platform has an extensive library of pre-built email templates. This will speed up the design process and make your emails more engaging.
• Segmentation tool: The platform you choose must include a segmentation tool to ensure a successful campaign.
• Automation tool: Check that the platform has automation capabilities. Also, look out for platforms with pre-built automated workflows.
• Testing and analysis: Check that it has an in-built analysis tool and an A/B testing feature. You’ll need these to track your campaign’s performance and fully optimize your email designs.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll be using MailChimp for the following steps as it meets all of the requirements laid out above.

(There are plenty of other excellent platforms out there like Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign. To see how Klaviyo stacks up against Mailchimp, check out our Klaviyo Vs Mailchimp comparison.)

2. Define your goals

Once you’ve chosen your email marketing platform, you need to set the goals you want to achieve with your campaign. These goals will determine how you approach your strategy.

For example, if your goal is to reengage inactive subscribers, you’ll need to set up a win-back email campaign, which would contain content like this:

Some of the most common goals for dental email marketing include:

• Increasing revenue
• Boosting customer acquisition
• Maintaining patient satisfaction
• Building brand reputation
• Increasing organic traffic to the practice’s website
• Preventing appointment cancellations

3. Grow your email list

Now, you need some people to email, right?

Of course, you probably already have an email list for your existing patients. Still, you want to expand this and attract users who haven’t used your practice yet.

The easiest way to do this is to include a form on your practice’s website, like this one from Lagniappe Dental:

You can use your email marketing platform to create a sign-up form. Any decent platform will come with pre-built sign-up form templates, like this:

This is a good way to capture email addresses and grow your list. Yet, this probably won’t be enough. Here are some other ways you can increase your number of subscribers:

• Patient paperwork: When patients register with your practice, take their email addresses and ask them to opt in to receive marketing emails.
• Social media: Promote your email sign-up form across your social media channels.
• Industry events: Attend industry events to promote your dental practice and encourage attendees to sign up for your mailing list.
• Paid ads: Consider using Google Ads and Facebook Ads to get more people to sign up.

4. Segment your audience

Segmentation is a vital part of any successful email marketing campaign and involves splitting your audience into different groups based on shared characteristics like demographics, interests, and purchase history.

This allows you to create personalized emails that target different segments with different messages. By doing so, you provide your subscribers with content that’s relevant to them and that they find valuable. As a result, they’re more likely to take a desired action like booking an appointment.

Now, if you’re a beginner, building your own segments from scratch can be quite daunting. That’s why it’s great if the platform you choose has pre-built segments, like these from Mailchimp:

5. Automate your campaign

You certainly don’t have time to email all of your subscribers manually. That’s where automation comes in.

When you automate your campaign, you create workflows triggered by specific events. For instance, when a new subscriber signs up for your list, they’ll be sent a welcome email automatically. This ensures that your subscribers receive the right messages at exactly the right time.

Again, you don’t want to spend hours creating your own workflows from scratch. Your email marketing platform should have pre-built workflows, like this pre-built welcome email workflow:

6. Design and send your emails

It’s time to design the emails to send to your subscribers. The easiest way to do this is to use the pre-built templates included with your email marketing platform. You’ll need to design unique emails for each workflow and the content will be different depending on the segment.

For instance, welcome emails will have different designs and content than appointment reminders. To give you an idea, here’s an example of a welcome email from Toothy Dental Clinic:

Here are some tips to follow when you design your emails:

• Ensure your emails are mobile responsive so they adapt to different screen sizes.
• Use a clear, structured layout that guides the user’s eye through the content.
• Incorporate high-quality visual elements, including photos and infographics. However, use them sparingly to avoid cluttering the page.
• Use web-safe fonts that can be loaded in all major browsers and operating systems. This ensures your emails can be read by the vast majority of users.
• Maintain brand consistency by using the same fonts, logos, and color schemes across all of your emails. This should also align with the content on your other marketing channels.
• Include a compelling and personalized subject line as these have been shown to improve open rates.
• Add a clear call-to-action (CTA) that encourages users to convert.
• Provide an unsubscribe button at the bottom of your emails – this is a legal requirement.

If you follow these tips, you’ll create engaging emails that are sure to make your email marketing campaigns successful.

7. Analyze your performance

Now you need to keep track of the performance of your emails. Your email platform (or an outside analytics tool) should allow you you to track key performance metrics like:

• Open rate: The percentage of your emails that are opened by recipients.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of successfully delivered emails that received a click on a link.
• Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed after receiving an email from you.
• Delivery rate: The percentage of emails that successfully reached recipients’ inboxes.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of recipients who took a desired action like making a purchase.
• Bounce rate: The percentage of emails that failed to be delivered.

You’ll be able to view metrics like these in your platform’s analytics dashboard, like this:

Campaign analysis is important as it enables you to adjust elements of your strategy that are underperforming. It also helps you identify the parts of your campaign that are performing well, so you can replicate them.

Best Practices for Dental Email Marketing Campaigns

There are plenty of others you need to pay attention to when you’re building your campaign. To ensure you know everything you need to, let’s go through the most important ones now.

Optimize for mobile

Your email designs should be “mobile-first.” These are the best ways to optimize your emails for mobile devices:

• Use large font sizes that are easily readable on small screens.
• Keep your subject lines short (30-40 characters) to avoid truncation on mobile devices.
• Use large, tappable CTA buttons.
• For new images, use small file sizes and compress any other images.
• Use a single-column layout for easy mobile scrolling.

Create relevant and valuable content

The content you create for your emails needs to be relevant to your recipients’ interests. This is why segmentation is such an important element of your campaign. For instance, an 18-year-old patient is less likely to be interested in content about dentures than an older one.

As well as being relevant, your content must provide value to your readers. So, focus on what the recipient will actually get out of an email.

Has the patient been struggling to take care of their teeth? Send them an email packed with dental hygiene tips.

Has a patient recently had an extraction? Provide them with an email on aftercare advice.

When the content of your emails is both relevant and valuable, recipients are more likely to open them. This will keep your open rates high and lead to improved user engagement.

Test your emails

A/B testing is just as important in email marketing for dentists as it is for any other type of email marketing. So, what is it?

A/B testing involves creating two versions of the same email. The only difference between the two is one altered element. This could be the subject line, the layout, or anything else.

You send version A to one group of subscribers and version B to another. Then, you monitor the performance metrics of each email to see which one performs better.

Based on these metrics, you choose a winner to use for your wider email marketing campaign. This should lead to improved performance for your overall strategy.

Final Thoughts

Email marketing for dentists is essential for enhancing patient communication, improving retention, and attracting new clients. By following steps such as defining your goals and segmenting your audience, you can create highly effective and personalized campaigns.

If you stick to the steps and best practices I’ve laid out for you, you can take full advantage of the most cost-effective marketing channel of them all.

FAQs

What are the legal requirements for a dental practice when sending marketing emails?

There are several legal requirements your dental practice must adhere to when sending marketing emails. These include:

• Gaining explicit consent from patients before you send them any marketing emails.
• Providing an unsubscribe option in all of your marketing emails.
• Ensuring you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
• Ensuring you comply with GDPR guidelines (if you have EU customers) and CASL guidelines (if you have Canadian customers).
• Ensuring compliance with HIPAA guidelines.

Does social proof work in dentist email marketing?

Yes, using social proof can be highly effective in dentist email marketing. Typically, this involves including patient testimonials that speak positively about your dental practice.

This type of social proof is an excellent way to demonstrate the value of your services and attract new patients.

What types of content perform best in dental marketing emails?

Generally, the types of content that perform best in dental marketing emails include:

• Educational content
• Practice news and updates
• Promotions and special offers
• Appointment reminders
• Patient spotlights
• Video content
• FAQs