Eye Care Marketing: Effective E-Newsletters The Easy Way

You would think that once you’ve collected a the patient emails, uploaded them to your email delivery system, and refined your website, that the rest would be smooth sailing.

What’s the big deal, right? You get a ton of email newsletters in your inbox. Which ones do you read?

But a lot of people have a hard time from here.

Obviously, you have valuable insight on a subject people need and want to know about. But how do you deliver this efficiently

Here are the keys:

Keep it short and sweet.

Everyone is busy and we tend to scan ‘E-stuff’ quickly. And ‘Sweet’, in this context, also means lively – so keep it fun where appropriate.

Speak in your voice.

This a personal connection. Much more so than most imagine. If you are thinking about all those emails in your inbox, STOP. This is different. Your patients SEE you in an  entirely different manner than we see marketers and spammers. This is an email coming from the Doctor!

Give THEM something valuable.

Say you’re on a long flight. Your neighbor – a really nice, well-adjusted person you could get along with. They have problem-X and they want to know how and why it happened to THEM and what THEY can do about it. Tell them. Who knows better than you? If someone does know better than you, tell them that too.

Show them how to act.

We all need a little guidance. If you have a link to your appointment schedule or if people make appointments the old-fashioned way (they call), then remind them about. And tell them specifically what to do – as a service.

Once you have that, the next step is simply a matter of pressing send! Then watch the appointments fill in.

Not ready for this? Most doctors have a tough time with this aspect of practice.  Click to learn more about email marketing for your practice.

Optometric Marketing on the Internet

What does your optometric marketing plan look like? A typical plan—successful, but typical—might rely on getting the word out to patients via the Yellow Pages and ads on radio and television. There’s nothing wrong with this approach in and of itself—except when you compare it with what you can do on the Internet.

If you want to increase revenue and see a steady stream of new patients, you need to be conversant with how the Internet and your optometric marketing plan can work together to produce results. The great thing about it all? It’s actually pretty easy!

First, consider the following: How do people—particularly young people—get their information today? Increasingly, it’s not from magazines, TV, or newspapers, but rather the World Wide Web. Your optometric marketing plan needs to take this into account. But how?

It’s one thing to be on the Internet, and another thing to be able to found there. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Metacrawler are you friends in this case, as are directories like dmoz.org. Make sure your site is listed and available to the major search engines. For starters, you can submit your site to Google here.

When you consider content for your website and other Internet-related matters, the following tips will make a difference:

• Send out an e-newsletter to patients who opt to receive it. Your newsletter should contain coupons redeemable for things like eyewear and contact lenses, as well as interesting optometry-related articles for your patients to peruse.

• While you’re at it, put some of those articles—or others you or your staff write—on your website, too. It’s a professional touch.

• Submit your articles to article database sites like e-zinearticles.com. Use the articles to link back to your site. This is a simple way to increase traffic.

While this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of using the Internet to grow your practice, following the tips listed above will give you a great start. Your patients are moving forward—is your optometric marketing plan going with them?

Using E-Mail for Effective Eyecare Marketing

If you’re using e-mail to connect with your patients and grow your optometry practice, congratulations! E-mail is an essential piece of contemporary eyecare marketing, and using it effectively can help you maintain the patients you’ve had for years and also acquire new ones.

Remember, though, that some uses of e-mail are better than others. Read the following examples, and, in each case, consider whether e-mail is being utilized properly.

• One optometry practice uses e-mail to send regular reminders for annual exams. These e-mails include links back to the practice’s main website for real-time scheduling.

• Another optometry practice uses e-mail to send a weekly newsletter to patients.

• This optometry practice uses e-mail to track clicks over to its website from e-mails that offer special deals on products and services.

• Our final optometry practice uses e-mail to solicit potential new customers, sending communication to a large number of unfamiliar addresses.

Can you tell which practices are using e-mail effectively? How about which ones aren’t? Of the four examples shown above, the first and third represent intelligent eyecare marketing. The second and fourth, conversely, represent approaches that should be avoided.

As with all business endeavors, eyecare marketing clearly has its own list of do’s and don’ts. If you use e-mail judiciously, though, you’ll build trust and loyalty among your patients, and greatly increase the chances of return visits.

Optometry Marketing and Email – How To Use Links

Using links in your optometry marketing email campaigns is an excellent way of demonstrating your good intentions and essential to getting the most out of this powerful and inexpensive marketing tool.
Your patients like to know what you recommend or find interesting.

Not only are giving them valuable information, but the link is also perceived as an added benefit and testament to your sincerity.
This fits with good optometry marketing ethics, plus you have the unique ability to test and measure the effectiveness of your broadcast(s) and links.

Here are a few guidelines on how to incorporate links into your weekly or monthly broadcasts:

• Plan to distribute the link once or twice in the body of the message.
• Only use trustworthy sources – especially when citing news content.
• The ‘PS’ should repeat the main link, but also include a link to your appointment scheduler, blog, and an email link to you or staff for questions.

For specials, have a link to a ‘landing page that goes into more detail’ and finally, make sure to describe the link or at least make it work with the rest of the email context.

Here’s an article you might find helpful for your optometry marketing email endeavors.

http://www.tlcpracticebuilder.com/archives/AnOptometristsGuidetoEmailMarketing.pdf

Eye Care Marketing and Snail Mail: To Be or Not To Be

We’ve practically eliminated all post card or snail-mail marketing.
Response rates (we measured) on post card campaigns were in the 1-2% range. Of course, you get very little feedback or metrics.

In essence, I now think of snail mail as a back-up for recalls (we send reminders by email) and a way to purge the snail-mail database (i.e., usually with an end of year flex spending reminder – which of course also gets mention in the email).

Email is the absolute way to go. You need about 1000 to be really effective, but any number is a good start and enough to create a conversation. I send out approximately 1 email/broadcast/newsletter per week- information mainly.

Just pick a topic or ask in the email what people want to know more about.

Most software programs ($10-$20) per month give you a ton of metrics (who opened, clicked, etc). You can segment the list to test different offers or wording, identify your big fans…etc… And most importantly, you can set up multiple emails in an autoresponder series that go out automatically at an interval you specify.

(We use icontact, but there are many others out there.
Basically, I can count on at least 35% will open and read any note I send. This is very high (in the world of email marketing) and reflects the unique opportunity for a list people have opted in a setting such as ours.

We did a trunk show last June that was the most successful that we’ve ever done. In fact, it was better than the last two combined.

This time I used email (and my website) as the only method of promotion. It frees up money and therefore options in terms of what you can offer by way of promotion.

Their are challenges. You must keep it real, simple, short, and personal. Sounds easy, but it takes practice. Some people will opt-out or use it as an opportunity to ask about their glasses, but basically its a home run.

And by the way, you absolutely do not need fancy graphics or technology.

Hope this helps and good luck!
Jeff Lewis