Why Your Eye Care Practice Needs An Email List

Email marketing is one of the most effective methods to increase engagement with your content and direct traffic to your website. Communicating with your patients via email may not seem ideal for many small business owners, but creating an email list gives you access to those interested in your content, products, and services.

Use your email list to build relationships with patients. When you utilize your email list as part of your optometry marketing tactics, you don’t have to wait until potential and current patients visit your business in person.

When someone subscribes to your email newsletter, you have the opportunity to establish a healthy connection with your audience even if they haven’t stepped foot inside your eye care office yet. Using email marketing can be the push prospective patients need to book an appointment with you.

Why Eye Care Providers Need An Email List

Do you utilize email marketing at your practice? If not, we’re here to tell you the top reasons why you should be building an email list and using it to gain more patients.

What is an email list?

An email list is simply a list of email addresses from website visitors or patients that have opted in to receive emails from you and are interested in the information or marketing materials that you distribute to recipients. The list includes the total amount of subscribers.

Think of how many people have access to an email address. Most of the people you know probably have email addresses whether it’s for professional purposes or just to use as a consumer.

5 Reasons Why You Should Use Email Marketing

According to 99 Firms, there are over 3.9 billion email users worldwide. That is almost half of the world’s population and it is predicted to continue growing. Email is part of our lives in so many ways and it’s an excellent way to remain in constant communication with your current or potential patients.

1. You have the opportunity to reach mobile users.

More and more people are using their mobile devices to search for businesses in their local area.

What better
way to communicate with them than to send an email that introduces who you are and what your practice
specializes in?

Did you know that more emails are opened on smart devices than on desktops? That means that a large percentage of your audience will be viewing your emails on their phones.

Your emails should be optimized for smart devices so that all text, images, and other media that you include in them appear correctly on a user’s phone. Make sure that your email copy is readable on a mobile device, the images load properly, and all content fits on the screen.

Keep your content short and sweet so your email subscribers understand the purpose of the email and what action to take next. You don’t want to alienate such a large group of prospects, so design your practice’s emails with mobile users in mind!

2. It’s cost-effective.

When you own a small business, budgeting for marketing expenses is very important. You want to maximize your marketing efforts and achieve your goals while also being conscious of how much you’re spending.

Many small businesses use email automation services to get the job done and decrease the workload of writing out every email and sending them to patients themselves. According to Mailigen, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return exceeds $38.

This statistic showcases how cost-effective email marketing is for a business that is working with a limited budget. This method of digital marketing proves to be much less expensive compared to other options such as paying to have your eye care practice’s ads appear online, printed, or even on television. Email marketing is a low-cost tactic that can help drive more patients to your office without having to overextend yourself or your budget.

3. You can personalize your emails.

Consumers are looking more and more into personalization and having digital content that is specifically tailored to what they are looking for. When an email subject line is more personal, subscribers are more likely to open and view the content inside.

For example, you wouldn’t send a new subscriber the exact type of email as someone who has been a long-time patient would you? Of course not! The email should be geared towards them and what they want.

Let’s say someone has just signed up to receive emails from your eye care practice, you can send them a welcome email detailing who you are as a business and encourage them to go to your website to learn more information or to book their very first eye exam with your office.

Not sure how to make an email more personal for your audience? Try these tips:

• Connect personalized emails and landing pages
• Utilize date and time to send emails that are relevant
• Include the recipient’s name in the email
• Incorporate trigger emails into your strategy
• Make use of dynamic content to create a more personable interaction

When you personalize your messages, rather than receiving another generic email in their inbox, your subscribers receive an email that is tailored to them and their interests.

4. You can analyze your email marketing efforts.

When you put time, money, and effort into creating email campaigns for your patients, don’t you want to know how well they are performing? The best way to do this is to measure your results.

Analyzing your email metrics is useful because you won’t have to guess how well your emails are doing; you’ll know. Metrics show you information like open rate, bounce rate, how many people clicked on your call-to-action (CTA), other links you included, or if they interacted with your email in any way.

When you look at the numbers from each email and see what type of conversion rate it produced, you’ll know if the message you wanted to convey in your emails translated well with your subscribers.

If your metrics aren’t as positive as you hoped they would be, don’t panic. Looking over your metrics can be insightful in showing you what changes need to be made in order to fit the needs and desires of the patients on your email list.

5. Email automation is quick and easy.

If thinking about all the emails you have to type out and send to all your patients is steering you away from email campaigns, don’t let it! Automated emails are extremely useful in saving time, helping you to stay consistent with sends, and relevant among your subscribers.

For example, if your eye care practice has an online store that sells glasses, and a website visitor spends time looking at glasses online and adding items to their cart but never actually purchases anything, this would be an excellent time to send a trigger email.

The email could read:
“Hello [recipient’s name],
We noticed that you left a few items in your cart but didn’t checkout. To continue making your purchase, head over to your cart.” [don’t forget to include a Call-To-Action back to their shopping cart].

Email marketing can help you turn a missed opportunity into a win for your practice. Automated emails allow you to stay in constant communication with your patients and give you and your staff time to focus on your practice.

Grow your practice with email marketing.

If you have yet to incorporate email campaigns into your marketing strategy, start right now! No one is a pro at this as soon as they begin. It’s about trial and error and discovering what type of emails perform the best among your patients and prospects.

You can use email as a way to book more appointments at your practice, as an educational tool, or as a way for your subscribers to get to know you better. No matter how you choose to use it, remember to be professional and remain consistent with your patients.

Give us a call at 888.792.8384 or click here to see how we can help you grow your practice with email marketing.