Cosmetic Surgery Marketing Success Using Patient Newsletters

How Patient Newsletters Work

Patient newsletters are there to help you touch base with your patients and subscribers in a way that happens when they're not thinking about plastic surgery. As such, it's a great cosmetic surgery marketing tool for your plastic surgery practice. With so many different possibilities for what to include in your patient email communications, it can be difficult to choose what to include and what to leave out.

With these 5 tips for patient e-mail marketing, you can build a better physician-patient relationship, get more traffic to your Internet site, and have more appointments and booked procedures. Here's how to use your patient newsletters to help grow your plastic surgery practice.

Newsletters are great conversation starters

Newsletters are a Conversation Starter 1. Your patients will likely have an idea of what they'd like to ask you when they come in for their appointment. Use this opportunity to do two things that can help your cosmetic surgery marketing. First, take note of what their questions are and then use them to construct your next patient newsletter. Next, use your e-newsletter as a means of informing patients about procedures they want to learn more about. Cover these items in each newsletter to keep patients up-to-date on the latest plastic surgery procedures. While they are in your office, ask them if they've been getting your e-newsletters. If yes, ask them to tell you what they liked most about the latest issue and what you could have improved. It takes fewer than a couple of minutes to have the conversation, but the payoff is well worth the time you've spent.

Ask for Patient Email Addresses Up Front 2. Always ask for a patient's email address when they come in for their initial visit and fill out their patient questionnaire and health information. If you have an existing patient who may not know about your e-newsletter, ask them for their email address (be sure to ask them for their permission on a separate form and have them sign it). Then, tell them that your newsletter is there to educate them as well as to give them special pricing not available to anyone other than subscribers. This is a great reason for them to sign up for your newsletter! Using these email communications to help your overall cosmetic surgery marketing ROI is easy, extremely effective, and educational.

Using Newsletters for Patient Referrals 3. Most likely, a huge percentage of your subscribers are current or past patients. In that case, use your e-newsletters to inform them of your referral rewards available to patients who tell others about you. Use a subtle graphic image that clicks in to a special page of your site. That page is crucial because it will contain focused information that is meant for patient referrals and the rewards that you offer. This keeps every click to that page relevant to what your subscriber wanted to see and thus increases the likelihood that they will start referring people - and that's when you see the tangible effects from your cosmetic surgery marketing efforts!

How to Integrate Patient Referral Rewards into Your Newsletter 4. Use your e-newsletters to tell subscribers about patient referral rewards, discount pricing only for subscribers, or new procedures you're offering. Though these topics are a bit "salesy", you need to ask for the sale or you won't get it! Make your referral rewards and discounts stand out in your newsletters but not over-bearing. The point of it should be educating patients first. Then you can concentrate on offers, asking for referrals, and announcing promotions.

Using Newsletters to Get Patients to Your Website 5. The purpose of building a newsletter list is so you can target your "warm market". These are patients and site visitors who have opted to receive your emails. Use this to help drive traffic to your website! Think of imaginative ways to get more people to your site through your e-newsletters. Offer subscribers a Starbucks gift card for $5 just for forwarding your newsletter to 10 of their friends/family. Or, how about this - hold a contest asking subscribers to nominate special ladies in their lives who deserve a makeover! Have that part of your newsletter take them to a special landing page on your site to prompt them to take immediate action. Be sure to have a deadline for the contest to create a sense of urgency. Once on the landing page on your site, ask them to put in the email addresses of their nominees so you can inform them that they've been nominated.

Be sure to offer all nominees a special prize or discount just for being nominated if they subscribe to your newsletter. This gives you an instant chance to connect with referrals in a friendly and open way. They won't feel like they are being sold to and you will have gotten what you came for - more referrals from patients.