Eye Care Marketing and Email: The Doctor Will Text You Now

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…513900382.html
(You may need a subscription, but here’s the link)

The article in this morning’s journal, “The Doctor Will Text You Now: Patients Visit With Their Physicians Online as More Insurers Begin Paying for Digital Diagnoses” gets off on to an embarrassing start by using a ‘red eye’ example, which you have to let slide (for now) in order to get to what I think really can be helpful.

This is what motivated me to share it with you:

“This year, 39% of doctors said they’d communicated with patients online, up from just 16% five years earlier, according to health-information firm Manhattan Research, a unit of Decision Resources Inc. So far, the most common digital doctor services are the simplest ones, like paying bills, sending lab results and scheduling appointments. But patients like Ms. Rust are also using computers to deal with issues that usually require a trip to the doctor’s office.”

And this where they miss the point:

The article goes on to focus on reimbursement as they describe the demand for online care growing leading to “more health insurers begin paying doctors for treating patients virtually, albeit at a lower fee scale than for traditional in-office appointments.”
***

Perhaps the Internist, overwhelmed with 40 patients per day, cringes at the idea of answering a flurry of patient emails ‘on the house’. Maybe you can’t blame the insurance provider for looking for ways of keeping patients out of the office.

But what about doctors who simply want to provide a valuable service, build solid loyalty, and GIVE patients a compelling reason to refer family and friends?

Many of you already make this service available in your practices. Its even part of your marketing strategy. You have a website and email contact form (so you don’t get spam). Some of you collect emails and regularly broadcast to your patients.

A lot of patients will email you from vacation. Some will have questions best answered by your staff. Occasionally, you’ll get a note from a prospective patient- usually with a good question – who almost always becomes your new patient soon.

Many of us immediately see the downside. What ‘can of worms’ am I opening with this? Does my response need to be formal? I don’t have time for this. Is this patient going to abuse this/me? Patient loyalty is complex and not predictable, and therefore you cannot rely on this alone to build trust (perhaps true). Is this even HIPPA compliant?

Of course, in reality, patients are simply overwhelmed by your willingness to acknowledge them (in any format) and most-often they WILL follow your advise — whether you reassure them, answer a question, call in an RX, or send them to the nearest ER.

And more often than not, you’ll get a very well-articulated question from a patient pointing out a problem or concern that many other patients might be thinking about. If you can then capitalize on this by delivering your response to the greater patient base, you have just leveraged serious value.

Okay. Now worry with the tiny reimbursement from the insurance masters.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…513900382.html

Read more about how optometry marketing and email can transform the way you practice!

Increasing Revenue With A Modern Optometric Marketing Plan

You want to increase revenue, but how? The answer is simple, really: enhance your optometric marketing plan. Okay, but how do you do that?

A clue lies in the habits of today’s young people. They spend more time surfing the Internet than they do reading magazines, watching TV, or readings newspapers. But what does this mean for your practice, and your optometric marketing in general?

Simply put, the traditional marketing strategies employed by optometrists—reaching patients through the yellow pages and radio and television advertisements—are on their way out. If you want to reach customers in today’s day and age, you have to use the Internet. You can still use those traditional methods to connect with patients—in fact, some of them might still expect it, to some degree—but no contemporary optometric marketing plan is complete without using the Internet.

Your first stop should be Google. It’s the most popular search engine, and it’s how people will find you. Your website needs to be one of the first a prospective patient sees when he or she is looking for an optometrist in your area. Additionally, you should make sure that your website is listed in dmoz.org and Yahoo directories. Bottom line: if your patients can find you, they’re more likely to call you and make an appointment.

As far as your website goes, put up some interesting optometry-related articles that you think your patients would like to read. Send out an e-newsletter with coupons and an interesting article or two. You can then increase traffic to your website by taking your newsletters and placing them on article database sites like e-zinearticles.com.

Strategies like these are easy to implement and will make a big difference. The sooner you’re up on the web in a noticeable way, the quicker your optometric marketing plan will take flight.

Expanding Your Business through Optometric Marketing

A successful optometry practice requires a solid client base. If you’re happy with that number of patients you currently have, you might be surprised to find out how many more you could have with a few tweaks to your optometric marketing. In any case, sitting back and assuming you’ll always have the same number of patients is the wrong thing to do.

More patients means more success—it’s as simple as that. Your competition knows this, and it’s your job to attract new business before they do. A solid optometric marketing campaign is the best way for you to take on—and keep—new clients.

You might be concerned that since you’re not a large practice, you lack the resources necessary to carry out such a campaign. Don’t worry. As a small practice, you bring the one thing to your clients that larger practices simply can’t: individual attention. And with the advent of the Internet, you can work to get your name just as visible as some of the large healthcare practices.

As a small practice, you are in a unique position. You can offer your patients all the benefits of a large practice without sacrificing the personalized attention that makes you stand out among the crowd. As your practice grows, keep the following tips in mind so that your practice will always retain that “small” feel.

• Make sure that each patient feels special. Your patients are your most important assets; treat them accordingly.

• Make sure you have enough staff. As your practice grows, add doctors and administrative staff as needed to handle the expansion.

• Offer additional services. Observe other practices to see what they offer their patients. Are they offering services that their patients value? Are you offering those same services? Keep up the innovation—adding new services to your optometric practice is a great way to grow your business.

• Use technology to your advantage. Using technology wisely can be a great way to keep expenses down. Though you should be adding staff when necessary, technology can in some cases “replace” employees, and thus keep your costs at a minimum.

Including optometric marketing in your practice is great way to expand your business while retaining the advantages of a small practice. Growing your business doesn’t have to mean sacrificing the things that built your client base in the first place.

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.