5 Essential Tips for Email Marketing in Healthcare

Trust is essential between healthcare providers and their patients. It’s just as important for providers and their advisors. To develop a fruitful and long-term business partnership, consultants such as healthcare lawyers, accountants, and compliance specialists must nurture their relationships with physicians, executives, and administrators in the healthcare industry.

One of the best ways to build these B2B relationships is email marketing, even in the age of social media. How the channel is used depends on the industry, but in general, it’s a great way to educate readers about products and services, new announcements, and relevant news. Many companies use email marketing as another way to distribute their blogs, videos, and other content originally created for other channels.

The Benefits of Email Marketing in Healthcare

After email was invented in 1971, it only took a few years for a savvy marketer to use it as a sales opportunity. In 1978, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp built a small list of just 400 contacts and emailed them about a new product. That one outreach resulted in $13 million in sales. Today, the ROI on email marketing in healthcare isn’t that extreme, but it still has a number of benefits.

Direct Line of Communication

Clients who receive email newsletters read the newsletter when it is convenient for them because they have opted-in to receive the communication. In contrast, B2B marketing content on social media can go unnoticed—especially when you consider how it randomly appears in feeds while people are mindlessly scrolling through content on their phones. B2B marketing content on Instagram, for instance, won’t be effective if it pops up in someone’s feed while they’re trying to mentally check out from work.

Your email readers, on the other hand, are there because they want to be there and engage with content because they chose to open a message.

Great Return on Investment

Nothing will ever compare to $13 million in sales, but four decades after that historic campaign, email marketing maintains one of the highest ROIs of any channel. A study by the Direct Marketing Association found every dollar spent on email generates an average of $38 in sales.

This is true for email marketing in healthcare as well. The Data & Marketing Association found B2B emails have a 15.1 percent open rate, and a click-through rate of 3.2 percent, outperforming B2C emails on engagement. Not bad when you consider how cost-effective email marketing is.

Best for Retention

Social media is great for amplifying messages to a wide audience, but it doesn’t really build relationships to help retain existing customers. Email marketing allows you to send personalized messages to individual clients you’ve supported for a number of years—especially if you keep an up-to-date and detailed database.

For example, you can automate emails to clients reminding them it’s the fifth anniversary of the first time you filed their taxes for them. You can also send more personalized messages to groups of subscribers, offering a specific segment of customers a discount on one of your services because of their loyalty. This kind of detailed messaging is not possible in most other digital marketing channels.

Essential Tips for Email Marketing in Healthcare

With these benefits in mind, here are five essential tips to make the most of your email marketing efforts.

1. Keep Detailed Notes

To maximize communications with clients, keep notes on all your interactions with them. Consider how they became your client. Keep track of where you got their email address from, who referred them, what services they’ve used and when, and how much they’ve paid over the course of your relationship.

This information can help you draft more personalized messages, such as thanking them for their specific contributions to the industry or acknowledging the work you’ve done together in the past.

2. Segment Your Email Lists

You may be tempted to keep your email subscribers in one increasingly massive list, but you are missing out on major opportunities if you don’t segment and customize emails. So always evaluate the impact of sending customized emails to specific people.

If you collect a bunch of emails from a networking event, segmenting these new leads into a special list to thank them for signing up could be the starting point for an entire series of offers. For example, you may invite them to a free webinar that’s specific to their needs to educate them on your value as a consultant.

3. Create Valuable Content

No matter how well you organize your lists, your email campaigns will amount to nothing if your messages don’t offer value. Don’t simply look at email marketing in healthcare as a way to directly sell your products or services—offer information and content that readers will find genuinely useful.

For example, if you’re a tax consultant who specializes in the healthcare industry, you could write a blog with industry-specific tax preparation tips and send it out in your e-newsletter ahead of tax season. Of course, you can use the newsletter as an opportunity to sell your services at the very end, but this will only be effective if the information you’re sharing before you plug your services is helpful to readers.

Similarly, a healthcare attorney may issue a written advisory on new laws that will impact their clients, with tips on how to limit liabilities. If clients need more information or have follow-up questions, the newsletter could be just the prompt they need to call.

4. Experiment With Different Types of Emails

Don’t limit yourself to just one type of format—even if it’s proven to work. Experiment with a variety of emails, such as short messages asking for feedback, long-form explainers about your industry and its challenges, or case studies on problems you’ve solved for previous clients. Keep track of engagement for different types of content, and let that data inform your future email campaigns.

5. Reward Your Subscribers

Don’t just treat email as a way to overwhelm your audience with messages—reward subscribers for sticking with you. Email is a direct channel to give perks such as free consultations, discounted services, and exclusive content for those who sign up and read your newsletters. Special offers will further deepen your relationship with clients while generating more revenue.

While you implement these tips to develop your email campaigns, you should also be aware of email’s limits. Email marketing in healthcare can take a lot of effort and money, with no guaranteed ROI. That’s why consultants should complement email marketing with referrals, which offer a better conversion rate.

One solution is Perla, a new type of quality B2B lead generating platform that directly matches well-vetted healthcare providers to lawyers, accountants, bankers, compliance specialists, and other consultants, combining the benefits of referrals with organic search. The Perla platform delivers these leads, who are actively looking to hire consulting support, at a fraction of the cost of any outbound marketing campaigns. Become a Perla Advisor today to take the pressure off your marketing efforts.