E-mail Marketing For Healthcare: Is It Still Effective?

Email Marketing has often been declared as ‘dead’ by many online and offline business owners alike; for the most part, this is because of the emergence of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

In this article, we will explore the state of email marketing in 2021 and beyond in healthcare.

Due to the rocket growth of social media, much of the focus for online marketing efforts has been diverted away from more traditional formats such as email marketing. Also, mobile phones are now commonplace and many businesses have aimed their marketing efforts towards SMS.

Is Email Marketing Still Effective In 2021?

Yes, despite the rise of other marketing methods, email is still king when it comes to owning your audience, reselling to pre existing customers, and leveraging free marketing.

Once a consumer is on your email list, they are ‘yours’ – you are not sharing their data with someone else as you are on Facebook or Instagram. Your email audience is the best way to engage your customers with one-to-one direct communication; not only that, but you can re-market to your email list over and over, 100% free of cost.

Not only is it free, but email marketing is incredibly targeted; everyone who is on your email list is there for a reason, whether it’s because they opted in to receive news from you or because they purchased your product or service. Knowing that, you can tailor your email messages to your audience much better than you can with social media posting.

Email marketing is also very measurable; you can analyze your average customer value, how well your audience is responding to your messaging, and how certain marketing performs in terms of sales. This type of ongoing evaluation lets you better understand your customers interests and behaviour.

If you operate a healthcare-related business, email marketing remains as one of the easiest and most effective ways to market your products or services.

Has COVID-19 Affected Email Marketing?

Coronavirus has certainly had a large effect on the marketing industry as a whole, but has it affected email marketing specifically?

The answer is yes.

Mailchimp, a popular email service provider for online businesses, released information gathered from their customers who used their service throughout the pandemic. They noticed these shifts:

• A widespread increase in engagement from audiences.
• Higher click and click-through rates.
• People wanted to hear from businesses more, although most businesses sent less emails during the pandemic than ever.

This means that now is a better time than ever to send more emails to your list, grow your online audience, and improve the relationship you have with your customers.

All of these trends hold true for the healthcare industry.

What’s The Trend For 2021?

Upcoming trends in email marketing include:

• More users reading emails on their phone rather than a desktop computer.
• Artificial intelligence is increasing in popularity – list segmenting and tagging is only getting more common.
• Desire from customers for less templates and more personal, one-on-one content and messaging.

Here’s how to grow an email list:

1. Ask for customer’s emails when the original purchase takes place.
2. Include a pop-up form that collects emails on your website.
3. Post on your social media channels advertising your email list – direct them to a form that collects emails.
4. Create free instructional series or health-related courses that require an email for access.
5. Conduct prizes or contests where people must submit their email to participate.
6. Create loyalty programs that send out limited offers or promotions only through email.
7. When updating customer records on file, ask for email addresses.

Some things to consider when designing drip campaigns are:

• First, introduce yourself and your company.
• Be entertaining, yet informative.
• Warm them up to you and your company in order to make sales in the future.
• Be creative and original – don’t be afraid to inject personality, no matter what line of business you are in.
• Show that you are an authority in your space; since this is the healthcare industry, they must be able to trust you.
• Don’t forget to advertise your product or services – that’s the point of collecting emails.
• Be less salesy, and more conversational and casual.

Top 3 Success Metrics In Email Marketing

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One of the main benefits of email marketing is the measurability of the medium; tracking is key to success in advertising, so it’s very important to continually analyze your email data.

The three metrics to look for in email marketing are:

1. Open Rates (this is the percentage of your email list that opens the email – this tells you how important your messaging is to your audience. If you have low open rates, such as 10% or less, then this may be a sign you need to improve your email content and subject lines).
2. Click-through rate (CTR) (this is how many people are clicking on the link that you include in your emails – ideally, almost every email you send to your list will drive them to click a link to another page. If you have low CTR, such as 2% or less, you may need stronger copywriting in your emails).
3. Sales (yes, this is the main point of email marketing – many businesses seem to forget that the ultimate goal of sending emails to your list is increasing sales. If you aren’t converting your emails into sales, then you are doing it wrong!)

If you have yet to use email marketing for your healthcare business, now is the best time to start growing your list and sending out weekly (or even daily) emails.