Have you ever tried to solve a problem, only to find much later an opportunity was right in front of you the whole time? Your dental marketing, and especially your internal dental marketing presents many such cases. Consider over the last five years how easy technology has made it to communicate with your patients. If you are only using email to send appointment reminders/confirmations, you’re missing out on an effective and FREE way to boost your internal dental marketing.

Does email dental marketing work? It depends. If you bought a list of random email addresses and tried to persuade them to come in for cosmetic services, you probably won’t get much traction. However, emails to current patients will have a much higher read-rate. Just don’t overdo it. If you incorporate one monthly email into your internal dental marketing strategy, you may add a substantial amount of new work from your current patients. Remember the saying… “it’s a lot less expensive to keep a customer than earn a new one.” Think about that. Let’s rephrase it: “It’s a lot less expensive to use email as an effective internal dental marketing medium to cross- or up-sell a current patient than to bring in a new patient.”

What should you include in your internal dental marketing emails?

• Newsletters – Not that long ago, a dental newsletter could have a read rate of 85%! It would not be surprising if that rate were similar with your email newsletter as you are seen as a trusted authority and service provider in the eyes of your patients (hopefully). Use your newsletter to inform patients regarding practice updates, new treatments/equipment, helping out in the community, etc.
• Treatment Highlights – Don’t be that dentist whose patients give big cases to competitors because they didn’t know you offered the same services. Informing your patients about your offered services will do several things, two of the most important being making them aware that you offer the treatments and the second is getting your patients to consider a service they may not have otherwise.
• Referral Program – One of the best forms of internal dental marketing is a good referral program. Use email as an opportunity to remind your patients about your great referral program by showing them how nice it would be to get the reward. Maybe give them a link to share you on Facebook to make it easy.

To summarize, emailing your patient base offers many benefits and should be considered in your internal dental marketing strategy. Be creative and be interesting and your patients will be happy to reward YOU.