From an outside perspective, healthcare digital marketing seems so easy. Just send out a bunch of emails, buy a bunch of ad space on prominent websites and watch sales soar. Turns out it’s not so simple. Though we’re inundated with advertising messages at literally every corner of the Internet, these messages have been carefully curated and chosen for a select audience. A successful healthcare organization uses customer data and analytics to spread its email message to those most likely to respond. 

The Problem with Email Blasts

Once upon a time, email marketing was all about sending as many emails as you could to all of the email addresses you could find. That’s why only ten percent of commerce-related emails get opened by their recipients. People are used to getting junk in their inboxes and are wary of email marketing as a result. That’s a shame, because email marketing is one of the most effective and practical ways to stay in touch with customers. 

Breaking Through

If you really want to make a go of email marketing - that is, to yield above-average returns and build brand loyalty - it’s up to you to provide your customers with actual value. People want to feel like the companies that email them know them and care about them. A generic email blast that isn’t customized for specific segments of your audience only serves to turn the recipients off of your brand.

Creating an updated email marketing list is absolutely crucial as you ramp up your healthcare digital marketing efforts. If you don’t know who you’re marketing to, you’ll never achieve the gains you seek. Understanding your customers helps you to provide them with better content, which will strengthen their ties to your company and encourage them to spread the word. But it all starts with that initial commitment to maintaining an email marketing list.

Segmentation is King

Healthcare means many different things to different people. Young people may only worry about doctors when they get sick, whereas older people can be very concerned about any ailment that pops up. Your email marketing has to understand all of the variation in your customer base and find a way to address all of these different needs. 

Therefore, your most important job is not the actual sending of the emails, but gathering the data that dictates what information is sent. It might seem like a difficult task to obtain demographic data for your email base, but it’s not that hard, provided you give people an incentive to do so. Promise great tips and money-saving offers, and you’re golden.

The trickiest part is getting customers to fill out the information in a way that best suits your needs. The best way to accomplish this is to set up a form on your website that captures the very data you want to use in segmenting your customer base. From there, the data will populate into a database of customer data. There are many tools you can use to navigate your customers to the form, such as social media posts or QR codes

Trackability

One of the most potent features found in email marketing is the ability to track the actions of your customers. By using email communications, you’ll be able to see how many customers open your emails and subsequently, how many people proceed to your website and take action. This is something that’s only a pipe dream in offline marketing, where there’s no way to track the effectiveness of your advertising.

Use the information you obtain through tracking in conjunction with your customer database. Over time, you’ll learn what your customers like and what they don’t like. With a little time and dedication, you’ll have a well-oiled healthcare digital marketing machine at your disposal, one that engages customers and provides value while simultaneously placing you ahead of the competition.