It may be tough as a dentist to maintain the constant stream of patients you need to remain profitable.

Some patients prioritize their dental health, while others go years between visits and only visit when something goes wrong. This implies you’ll need to put in some effort to keep them interested. Email marketing can help with that.

Email marketing that is effective can help you attract new consumers while also encouraging existing patients to invest in their dental health and keep regular appointments. This post goes through why email marketing is so essential for dentists and the five different types of emails you’ll need in your email campaign. The first step to getting started on your email marketing campaign is determining what type of business you’re running, which we’ll go through next.

Why email marketing strategy is super effective for dentists

Let’s begin with a brief overview of why email marketing is so advantageous for small businesses like yours.

It’s cost-effective

The return on investment for email marketing is tremendous and increasing. According to data, the ROI for email marketing is $40 for every $1 spent, which greatly outweighs any other form of marketing.

Furthermore, there is little initial expenditure. Email campaigns creation and transmission are inexpensive, so even a relatively modest marketing budget may have a significant impact.

It builds patient loyalty

Your email list may be used to bring in new patients and keep current ones engaged. It can be used to inform your subscribers about new services and provide tailored discounts to patients who haven’t visited for a while. The average lifetime value of a single patient is $12,000–15,000, so each one you keep helps your bottom line significantly.

It enhances credibility

After a visit, sending a follow-up email offers patients the chance to provide comments. Taking action on their suggestions shows that you care about them and value their business, which improves your connection.

You can also ask for a client testimonial as part of the email. This adds to your dental website or Google Reviews social proof, which is important for attracting new patients. 87 percent of customers read online reviews while looking for local services. Positive comments validate your service, distinguish you from the competition, and enhance your reputation.

5 types of marketing emails for dentists

Now you know why email marketing is so important for your company, let’s go through the five types of emails you should think about when developing your marketing strategy.

1. The welcome email

The welcome email, perhaps more than any other email you’ll ever send your subscribers, establishes the tone of your relationship and allows you to introduce your brand to them.

Let’s face it: A dental newsletter is going to be a hard sell. But if you really want people to sign up for your service, it pays (literally) to be persistent. Dental newsletters are 4x more likely than other email communications to get recipients to open them, so this is the message to send in order for them to take action. It may also entail signing up for a dental practice, obtaining educational materials on your services, or making an appointment.

To increase the chance of prospective patients booking their first appointment, it’s worth adding a promotional offer in your welcome email. A welcome email that contains a special offer boosts revenue by 30% per email compared to those that don’t include one.

They can also use their welcome email to share health-related news. The health publication assures its subscribers that they’ll be receiving helpful material on health issues, as it does in this example with a promotional email.

2. The new product or service email

You can use this email to announce new goods and services in your practice. For example, if you’re launching a cutting-edge technique for teeth whitening, create an email that explains the service, who it’s best for, and what benefits it provides.

You may also include a limited-time offer in the email, such as a 20% off for the first 100 patients or a complimentary at-home maintenance product. This is fantastic since time-limited discounts create urgency and act as a purchase trigger.

As a bonus, this sort of email serves as a gentle nudge to encourage subscribers to interact with you. For example, after seeing your new product or service email, several clients may realize they’re behind in their regular scheduled appointments and book a routine check-up, even if they aren’t interested in teeth whitening.

3. The educational and how-to emails

Educational and how-to emails serve two main aims: to develop credibility and offer value. As a result, sending customized material via email helps your subscribers see you as more than just a dentist.

You demonstrate knowledge if you provide how-to instructions. It indicates that readers can trust you for expert advice on dental care, so you may serve as a one-stop shop if they have queries or issues that need to be addressed in terms of their dental health.

4. Reminder emails

Reminder emails may seem unmarketable, but they’re critical. Appointment reminders will encourage client responsibility, resulting in a reduction in no-shows for dentists like you. They also assist you in avoiding missing out on the opportunity to book another customer if patients learn that they won’t be able to make an appointment.

If you don’t charge a no-show fee, these missed appointments can have a damaging impact on your bottom line.

You may also use appointment reminder emails to promote supplementary services. For instance, you could encourage patients to schedule a scale and polish when their check-up is scheduled. You may also utilize a reminder email to encourage patients to book their next checkup, ensuring that you have a constant supply of revenue.

5. Targeted promotional emails

If you need to re-engage inactive patients, give loyal ones a reward, or match a competitor’s offer, targeted promotional emails are your friend.

Promotional emails may be tailored to a certain group of your email list, with a one-time discount on their dental checkup or holiday offers like as a Black Friday or New Year’s sale.

Boosting engagement and enticing people to take action is critical in the email marketing world. In fact, promotional emails influenced the purchasing decisions of 68 percent of millennials.

5 key steps to starting email marketing campaigns for dentists

Let’s assume that you’re convinced that dental email marketing is the best way to go for your business. How should you get started? Continue reading to discover more.

Step 1: Start by choosing a great email marketing platform

Using a professional email marketing solution allows you to devote your time and energy to your patients. Setting up an email marketing campaign is simple, but there are several factors to consider, including design, substance, scheduling, and management.

Key features in a great email marketing platform

What are the most important characteristics to search for when choosing an email marketing software?

• Design options: You’re searching for a platform that allows you to create stunning, engaging emails. If you’re just getting started with email marketing, seek out companies that provide a variety of templates to get you started. Look for a platform that allows you to design from the ground up if you’re more seasoned.
• Mobile friendly: Around 80% of Americans who browse their emails on the move do so using mobile devices. As a result, it’s critical to pick a platform that offers good user experience and mobile-friendly communications.
• Automation: Automating your email scheduling means you’ll have one less thing to worry about. Automation can also help with customization, which is critical for boosting patient engagement.
• Easy import: If you already have patient email information saved on another platform, you don’t want to spend time transferring it over. Look for a service that allows you to easily and securely import your data.

Pro tip: It’s important to choose an email marketing service with all of these capabilities that makes it simple to get started and obtain results quickly.

Step 2: Create a valuable freebie and a signup form for it

Your first line of action is to figure out what you can offer your audience in return for their email (or “a valuable freebie”). You may create something similar to a smile guide, the top five dental blunders you’re making, or providing an exceptional discount.

The most crucial aspect, though, is that your freebie be an offer they can’t refuse. To create this sort of offer, dig into your dental practice’s history and find a bothersome problem that patients commonly discuss. Then craft a freebie to assist them address that issue.

If after completing the task, you’ve decided to ask for their email address, this freebie becomes what you’ll use to request it. It might be a blog post, an ebook, a video, or anything else that works best for you.

You must first make a form once you’ve completed your valuable freebie. In essence, this form is what you’ll use to invite your audience to provide their email addresses in exchange for your freebie.

You can generate three distinct types of newsletter signup forms:

A popup form

This version, as the name implies, appears as a pop-up over your website’s content while people are reading specific pages on your site.

A full page form 

Flodesk’s full-page form is ideal for you if you don’t have a website yet and aren’t planning on having one soon. If you don’t want to build a website, Flodesk’s complete page form is ideal since it publishes directly to the internet without requiring any code to be pasted in. Simply copy and paste the

An inline form

An inline form may be displayed almost anywhere on your site. Once you’ve created it, you’ll have a code that you can use to position the form however you like on your site.

Step 3: Start promoting your forms and collecting emails

How do you get started collecting addresses and building your email list? Let’s have a look at some alternatives:

• New patient paperwork: Don’t forget to use offline methods to grow your email list. As patients register at your clinic, you may ask if they would want to receive newsletters or updates.
• Your website: Include a contact form on your website so that visitors may leave their email addresses when making an appointment or requesting a callback. You can also use a pop-up or inline form to transform people into subscribers so that you may communicate with them again and again after they’ve gone from your site.

Simply ensure that you include a checkbox to obtain their consent to join your email marketing list.

• Other people’s websites: Make use of your skills to contribute guest articles to other people’s websites, particularly those that provide services relevant to your target audience. Then add a link to your Full Page Form in the author byline.
• Your social media: It is possible to develop interaction through educational material on social media such as dental suggestions. After that, you may use your social media to grow your email list by including a link to your form on Instagram or elsewhere on other social networking sites.
• Paid ads: You may also use Facebook advertising to bring visitors to your Full-Page Form or website’s opt-in page. Advertisements on Google and Instagram are also viable options.
• Events: Attend local company or social gatherings and give a little present, such as toothpaste and a toothbrush, in exchange for an email sign-up, to promote your business.

Step 4: Start sending emails (but have a goal for each one you send)

It’s time to start sending your emails now that you’ve built up a mailing list and developed an audience eager to receive them.

The welcome email, according to our research, should be the first one you send because 74% of subscribers anticipate getting a welcome letter as soon as they join an email list. Your welcome email should also serve as the beginning of your automation procedure; it should be the first in a sequence of automated emails that your subscribers receive after signing up. You don’t want to have to track sign-ups and manually send an email every time someone new joins up.

Flodesk Workflows make it simple to send automated emails based on particular triggers such as sign-ups or new service launches that a specific audience segment is interested in. Watch What Are Workflows and When to Use Them in Your Email Marketing to learn more about how to utilize Workflows.

Automation also allows you to get savvy about when you send emails. According to research, the ideal time to send emails is Tuesday morning, so scheduling campaigns to be delivered at that time is a wise idea.

If you’ve just imported an existing subscriber list into your new platform, you may send a reminder email or targeted promotional email to those clients who haven’t visited in a while.

Step 5: Monitor your email marketing numbers

Knowing where you want your email marketing campaigns to go is also essential when it comes to monitoring important metrics.

Dental practices are time-consuming to manage, so you must be strategic about your marketing strategy. You want to put your resources where they provide the most return and have a good understanding of the numbers is required to do so.

If your email marketing platform provider offers built-in analytics so you can learn more about how your campaign is performing, be sure to check them on a regular basis so that you may influence your decision-making. Learn more about how to employ Analytics to make better decisions by reading Understanding Your Email & Workflow Analytics.

The three key things you should be tracking with analytics are:

• Click-through rates: the % of email subscribers who click through links
• Unsubscribes: the number of subscribers choosing to opt out of your email list
• conversion rates: the % of subscribers interested in your offers

The data that you collect from your email marketing efforts can provide valuable information about whether or not they are working for your dental practice.

Dental email marketing FAQs

When you’re just getting started with email marketing, you’ll undoubtedly have a lot of questions. The following are two of the most frequently asked queries:

Do dentists really need email marketing?

Email marketing may help you develop your dental practice. You may utilize a variety of strategies to attract and keep patients, but email marketing is hard to beat in terms of value for money.

You can also develop your reputation as a service provider by delivering high-value, relevant information in the form of emails. Many people find going to the dentist stressful, and creating a trustworthy relationship is an important first step toward having a long-term customer.

What makes a good dentist email?

The two most important elements of a great email are value and customization.

Value: Create and send emails that are only valuable to your audience. Keep things in control; email marketing is not about flooding your subscribers with irrelevant data in an unorganized manner. More than half of Americans consider receiving too many marketing emails, so you need to be aware of how many times you’re sending them.

Personalization: Making them aware of goods and services that may be ideal or tailored for them increases the likelihood that they will engage with you. Plus, providing targeted promotional deals can be the push they need to make an appointment or try a different service.

Let effective email marketing boost your dental practice

Email marketing initiatives can help you develop your dentistry practice whether you want to convert potential patients into loyal clients or encourage current customers to try a new product or service.

The right email marketing solution takes care of the heavy lifting for you, allowing you to generate unique material, schedule it automatically, and evaluate outcomes.