“It takes seven interactions with your brand for a potential customer to remember you and make a purchase.” (Dr. Jeffrey Lant, Rule of Seven for Advertisers)
Applying this principle to your email marketing campaign is easy. Every email interaction you have with your subscribers should stay consistent with the rest of your digital marketing efforts in order to reinforce your brand identity.
Did you know email marketing can also help you create and improve your brand awareness? It is a relatively low-cost channel compared with other digital marketing channels. The best part is that email marketing campaign results are almost immediate and fully trackable when compared with other marketing tools and strategies.
Email marketing is one of the most effective channels to attract new leads and engage existing patients. What makes email marketing so effective is the fact that it helps you communicate to an engaged target audience that has already signed up to receive your emails. They are already becoming familiar with your brand through their inbox. Your subscribers do not have to look for your practice on search engines in order to stay updated, and you do not have to spend precious marketing dollars to lure them to your practice. It is a win-win!
Email marketing is an effective way to market your unique products and services and get the word out about your practice. This marketing tool can help you deliver informative content to your existing and potential patients, at their own convenience. Emails also help instill the loyalty and trust of your target audience in your practice. With an email marketing campaign, you can build and strengthen long-term relationships with potential and existing patients as it gives you a chance to speak directly to them.
Emails That Improve Your Brand Image
Developing a strong healthcare brand is essential to your success. Not only does effective branding differentiate your practice from competitors, but it also helps establish trust and loyalty with potential and existing patients. In order to build a strong brand, you need to represent your brand consistently in all your digital marketing efforts, including email campaigns. Here are five email marketing tips to help you increase brand awareness as well as optimize the patient journey:
- Make your brand stand out: In order to establish a brand image through email marketing, it is important to make your brand stand out in the emails you send. If you want to make your emails consistent with your brand, consider adding your logo to the newsletters you send. This will make your practice easily identifiable to users and build brand awareness around it. Recent studies indicate that when the logo is at the top left of the page. This will significantly improve the brand recall value. In countries where people read from left to right, left of the page is where a reader’s eyes first settle and seeing your logo there will help them identify your brand.
For your routine email communications with patients, make sure your email signature features your logo. This will spread awareness about your brand and you can use the opportunity to link it to your website content or latest offers.
Other crucial things to consider in your emails are font and colors. You will likely have a color that is associated with your brand already. Regarding the font, make sure it is easy-to-read and professional. You can choose the same font that you use on your website or for other marketing collateral materials.
- Consistency is important: If you wish to give your patients valuable content experience and increase your brand awareness, then being consistent with your emails will be your best step forward. If you can gain the trust of your subscribers, it can help you have a lifelong relationship with them. This, in turn, will not only take your brand awareness to the next level but will also help boost your revenue.
From the frequency of your email to its delivery schedule and formatting, everything should be consistent. It will work wonders toward giving your subscribers a unique brand experience and increase the chances that they transform from prospects into your loyal patients. Your brand’s overall look should resonate throughout the email, making it easy for patients to identify your brand from start to finish. Consistency is key – both for building brand awareness and for creating emails that your recipients can associate with your practice. You can use email templates to make all your emails look familiar to your readers. With a consistent template, subscribers will know where they can find their favorite content, making it easy for them to browse through your emails quickly.
- Provide value with your content: The content of your emails is an important aspect, and a strategy must be planned in advance. The content should be aligned with the type or nature of email that is being sent to the subscriber. For instance, if you are nurturing a lead, the content would differ from the one that is included in the welcome email.
It would help if you deliver relevant and valuable content to your subscribers and not merely send emails asking them to book their next appointment. You must know the needs and wants of your target audience as this would help you improve your interaction with them. The content must be crisp and concise so that the reader gets complete information at one glance.
You can leverage emails for sending insightful content related to your industry, staff information, latest discounts, new treatments added, etc. You can take your brand awareness to the next level by organizing informational sessions, free health camps and webinars, and send the invites for them. It would make them value your brand while increasing engagement levels.
The subject line should convey the intent of the email. Keep it attractive and simple. Overall, the content should add value to the subscribers’ experience and provide insights about your brand.
- Pay attention to personalization and segmentation: The number of emails sent and received per day has crossed 281.1 billion in 2018. Making your email marketing campaigns stand out amid such staggering figures is an uphill task. This is where personalization and segmentation can play a role. If you wish to establish your brand awareness and get an edge over competitors, make segmentation and personalization a priority.
Segmentation is nothing but dividing your subscribers based on age, gender, demography, recent history, buying behavior and sales funnel position. This process makes it easy to target potential patients with a personalized approach. From personalizing the subject line to sending trigger emails, you can adopt a host of strategies to make your email campaigns attractive and effective.
Pay attention to what resonates well with your subscribers. Gather the relevant data through surveys and analytics. The best way to keep your subscribers engaged is by providing solutions to their problems and addressing their pain points. Once you know your target audience’s preferences, you can create emails that bolster your brand’s awareness. Segmentation will increase email open rates, decrease drop-off and strengthen confidence in your brand. There is also a greater chance of subscribers sharing your content with others.
When possible, add some personal elements to your emails, such as personalized greetings, offers, consultations, health tips, etc. Showing the human side of your brand is important. You could consider adding a call to action (CTA) asking subscribers to get in touch if they have any concerns or questions. The more your email is personalized, the more they will appreciate your brand.
- Include strong CTAs: No doubt your email content is important. Segmented and personalized content can even increase your open and click-through rates. But what next? You can increase brand awareness by prompting the subscriber to take further action. That is why it is important to have a strong and effective CTA for enhancing the reader’s experience while establishing your brand image. However, be sure to use a single (but strong) CTA in your email while making the intent and results of that CTA clear. This will help retain the subscriber’s attention and encourage him or her to drive through the next level of the patient journey.
Final thoughts
Email marketing continues to be the fastest way to get in front of your potential and existing patients. It is an opportunity to reinforce your brand. The more consistent you are in your approach, the more likely subscribers are to remember and trust your practice. There are many ways to build great relationships between your practice and patients, and email marketing is one of them. It is convenient and cost-effective, and it works.
Building brand awareness with email marketing is not an uphill task as long as you employ the right strategies to achieve your goals. However, developing a trusted brand takes time. You may not be able to apply all of these tips right away. Start small, and keep in mind that the more consistently you convey your brand across all your marketing touch points, the more recognizable you will become, and the more likely your target audience will be to engage with your brand. Just incorporate the tips mentioned above within your email healthcare marketing campaigns and see how you emerge a winner in the long run.