Welcome back to our series on how to set up a successful e-mail marketing (SEM) strategy for a medical practice!
In the previous segment, we established some important prerequisites for your SEM strategy:
- A clear understanding of your target audience and their needs
- Targeted content that is relevant and interesting to your audience
- A consistent approach to e-mail marketing to build credibility with your prospects and expand your reach
- Proper attribution and measurement of ROI (return on investment)
- An investment in both people and technology to support your SEM initiative
Now that you’re equipped with the basics, let’s get to work!
Set The Guiding Principles For Your Strategy
With the information you gathered from your target audience, you can craft your strategy around these five guiding principles:
- Make your e-mails relevant and interesting to your audience
- Focus on the needs and goals of your audience
- Create value for your audience by providing them with useful information
- Be thego-to resource for your industry
- Avoid direct marketing to prospects
- Craft personal messages rather than mass-produced pitches
These principles will help you develop content that is both relevant and engaging for your audience. Keep these five tips in mind as you plan your strategy and make sure to apply them throughout the development process.
Select The Best Platform
Since you’re an online-based business, you have several options for e-mail marketing platforms. Let’s discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.
The most popular and established option is probably Mailchimp, which has been around for over a decade. It’s highly flexible and offers a variety of features that make it easy for most businesses to get started with. Its pricing is also quite affordable.
Another popular choice is HubSpot, which also offers a variety of features for marketers to use. It was originally designed for small businesses but has recently become very popular with larger brands and enterprises.
If you’re looking to establish a stronger presence on social media, you can integrate your email marketing with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Both platforms offer easy-to-use tools for connecting with your audience and engaging with them.
The last option we’ll discuss is ConstantContact. This is a tool specifically designed for email marketing with a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform. It’s quite popular and has been around for over a decade. One of its biggest selling points is that it has a free tier, which allows you to try it out for six months without any limitations. After that, you’ll need to decide whether or not to continue paying for the service.
Each of these services has its advantages and disadvantages. We recommend using a free trial and seeing how you like the service before you decide to commit. Remember: you’re the expert of your industry. What’s best for your practice may not be best for your competitors.
Identify Your Key Marketing Areas
Once you’ve decided which e-mail marketing platform is best for your business, you can move forward with the process of developing your strategy. You may decide that you want to focus on increasing web traffic to your website or social media accounts, generating leads via online marketing, or developing e-mail marketing campaigns to grow your practice.
Since you’re an established medical practice, you can focus on increasing web traffic to your website or social media accounts to establish yourself as an industry expert. Establishing your credibility as a thought leader in your niche can also be accomplished through effective e-mail marketing. You should consider creating educational content for your website, social media accounts, and e-mail marketing campaigns to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. When you establish yourself as an expert in your industry, you open up the possibility for prospective patients to find you through online searches.
If you decide that you want to focus your efforts on generating leads, you can use online marketing platforms to do so. You can integrate your email marketing with digital platforms like Google Search and social media to increase the visibility of your practice.
Developing a successful e-mail marketing (SEM) strategy is a long and complex process. If you continue to use unproven methods and shortcuts, you may end up with an unproductive campaign that doesn’t bring in the results you were hoping for.