Eye Care Marketing and E-Newsletters: Does Frequency Really Matter?

Many of us who commit to email marketing as part of our overall eye care marketing strategy get hung up on which matters more:  Frequency or Content?

Well, it depends…But first,

Content Is King

Okay, so you’ve figured out that email is an extremely cost-effective way of getting your message out to the patient base.

Your email systems set up and ready to go and you even have a few emails collected.

So what are you going to talk about? The answer is easier than you think.

The key to is to give patients what they want – useful information about their eyes.

Yup. That leaves it wide open.

Whatever topic you focus on, it must be about them – for them – with them in mind.

But of course, written by you, from you, and with some semblance of your voice included.

Great content delivers value in style. The style is you, the practice, the doctor, or the eye care owner. The value is whatever topic promises to help people.

So you create an email broadcast and you send it. To your surprise it gets lots of opens. A few patients even write back to you. And if you are truly on the ball, more than a few decided it was time to see you…

So they clicked your online appointment link and now you’ve paid for the hosting, email service, and time it took you to put the email together.

Now you are ready to send the next one?

How about next week?

What Will Patients Think About Another One So Soon?

The answer again, depends.

And this time, its about your track record.

Or, to follow along with our discussion, how you put together that first message together.

Another thing about great content is that it always takes people on a bit of a journey. Everyone likes a story so its natural to cover a topic and mention that in the future there will be more about this.

For example, the topic of this discussion is one part of a much longer story that I’ll covering in great detail as we go on. Indeed, I’ve been putting this stuff together for you for quite some time, but I have my own practice to run.

In fact, I’m in the process of getting my next series of emails out to my patients about our upcoming Trunk Show. So I better keep this short.

The point is this:  If you are delivering good content – or information that does not sound corporate or smell of sales and marketing or looks like the last three messages in their inbox, then you can send them out as much as you want – especially if you told them  -as part of you story.

Maybe your not convinced and worried about turning patients by sending to many marketing messages. Most eye care professionals tend to discount the power of email in their overall eye care marketing strategy.

Eye Care Marketing For The Internet Age: How To Use Your Blog

So you’ve got your website set up and humming in the eye care marketing backgroud – pre-selling qualified patients by offering information and answers that they are looking for.

And your email system is steadily growing, maintaining a healthy list of actively engaged patients who can’t to see what you’ll send them next.

So now it’s time to test things out with an  eye care marketing event or a promotion.

You set up an announcement on your home page and start talking about this in your email broadcast.

Obviously, not everyone will be interested, and the last thing you want is to turn off your loyal followers with an intense marketing campaign.

So what do you do?

Take the group that wants to know more to your blog. As you know, blogs are incredibly simple to set-up.

A Wordpress blog is free and you can have someone set one up for your for the cost of a pizza.

Once you have a simple, clean looking template set up, you’re ready to start posting.

Okay. Back to your promotional campaign.

Here’s how to use your blog for a profitable event:

Somewhere in your email broadcast, let people know about the upcoming event.

This could work for trunk shows, special promotions, community events, and many other eye care marketing strategies.

And tell them that they can learn more about it by visiting your blog.

The click the click the link that takes them to the blog post.

Of course, the best part is that your blog post will encourage comments and questions that the other folks can see and be a part of

And we all know the power social proof. Of course, this is merely one use of a blog.

I plan to cover others in future approach – especially with regard to how your blog can build traffic to your main website.

Finally, eye care professionals tend to discount the power of email in their overall eye care marketing strategy.  Again,

We’ll be covering more of this as well.