As an optometrist, you are one small fish in a big pond of businesses that have caught on to the email-marketing train. The question is how do you prevent your email from being ignored? How do you make your email stand out by making it into the inbox and capturing the attention of the reader?  Here are a few simple tips to capturing and keeping the attention of your readers.

Tweak your subject lines so your patients are enticed to want more.

The subject line is the amazing new sign you put outside your practice so people walking across the street are curious enough to walk in and check things out. Here are some tips to make your Email Subject Line pop and increase open rate:

1. Keep your subject line under 45-50 characters. Many email marketing systems will cut you off right around there.
2. Segmentation is important here – you can have a friendlier tone with patients who’ve been in more recently, but perhaps you want to be more formal with your inactive patient base.
3. If you have an incentive in your email, try to include it in your subject line message.

Incentives

Include a promotion every time, even if it is free to you.  Different people will be drawn to different incentives so it is great to test out a variety of offers.   Several of your patients also don’t realize all the wonderful services you provide as standard because they may not see you more than once a year.  Try offering easy freebies or a gift with purchase, or you can even offer a complimentary service that is an add-on to one of your services.

Content is king!

A good subject line gets you through the door, but in the end, content is what convinces your readers to request an appointment.

Here are a few tips on how to write “wow” content that generates results:

• How much?  For Newsletters, keep it between 1-3 topics – no more. Each topic should be at most 3 short paragraphs so you can keep your readers engaged enough to call to schedule an appointment at the end of the email.
• What to say?  Here are some questions you can ask yourself when you sit down to write:
• Did I just have a great conversation with one of my patients that others can benefit from?
• Did one of my associations or partner programs recently let me know of a promotion I was entitled to pass on?
• Am I seeing a spike or decline in sales for a specific product or service?
• Do I have extra inventory that I need to move?
• Is there a new service you are offering or product you are carrying that your current patients may not be aware of?
• Are my neighboring businesses running promotions that my patients could benefit from?
• Is there a community event or cause that I think is worth promoting?
• Did a relevant article recently get published (Consumer Reports, NY Times article, industry blog, etc.) that I can re-purpose and add to?

On the flip side, here are some big Don’ts:

• Don’t make your entire email one single image. Internet Service Providers like Gmail and Hotmail look at the ratio between images and text as a way to flag your message as spam.
• Avoid making your text more than two colors – another spam flag and it’s hard on the eyes.
• Don’t send your email without sending a test or having someone else read it. This is a quick and easy way of double checking your message.

Utilizing custom email campaigns can be a great way to stay in touch with your patients and drum up additional business throughout the year. We hope these ideas have helped to get your creative juices flowing and energized you to engage and connect with your patients. Getting your recipients to not only look at but read your email newsletters is not as hard as you’d think. Just keep these simple guidelines in mind when creating your next email marketing campaign!

Interested in learning more about Demandforce?  Click here to view a webinar on how RevolutionEHR integrates with Demandforce.