IDR – Chp 1 – The Importance of Having a Clinic Email Address
The results of this initial chapter give an insight into the current level of online visibility in the Dental Industry. Nearly a third of Dental Clinics in Ireland have no email address at all. An email address is something that will only take a few hours to set up, and offers a vital point of contact for potential clients.
Equipping your dental clinic with a branded professional email address is a critical part of building a successful Dental Clinic.
of the Dental Clinic's in Ireland use an email address for their clinic
28.30% Do not have an email address!
Emails are now the most popular mode of communication in the world – and with good reason. Instantaneous message delivery, higher convenience and lower costs are just a few of the benefits associated with electronic mailing.
By providing an email address, you make it easier for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Phones may provide a more direct route, but it also takes more to compel a user to get off the computer and pick up a phone – charges incurred can also contribute to their reluctance to call. Additionally, emails are great for general inquiries.
An email address also allows you to tap into the large segment of users actively looking for clinics on search engines, offering these prospective clients with a method to get in touch with your Clinic quickly. According to a study conducted by the British Dental Journal, approximately 34.5% of surveyed patients dealing with a dental condition fled to the internet to research their condition and to find a dentist. With an email address readily available on your site, you could attract a lot more patients annually.
Research results from Marketing Sherpa state that 72% of surveyed adults prefer to use email as their main method of communication and 15% preferred phone calls.
Since Internet users are notorious for their impatience, it’s likely that if your clinic’s name shows up in the search results without an email address, they’re likely to contact another that does have one.
There’s another major benefit to having an email address – one that will help you build a long-term relationship with your customers, also enabling you to earn more revenue.
Collecting your patients email addresses and saving the contact details of those who send you messages is a great way to start building an email list. You can use this information to improve patient retention and encourage loyalty.
Patients prefer email
of surveyed adults prefer to use email as their main method of communication
A strong marketing strategy
of marketers in the country have described email as an integral part of their marketing strategy
Approximately 76% of dental practices that engage in sufficient marketing tactics can see active growth in the number of email subscribers they retain.
Also, relying on obtaining your client’s email addresses and adding them to your email list can help you to see an increase of 66% in conversions when compared to other marketing methods, such as social media.
Our advice to you here is to collect the email addresses, whether you decide to use them or not is irrelevant, if you collect them, later you can perform some really effective marketing techniques with this data (we will discuss this later)
Sending patients appointment reminders and feedback requests doesn’t just sustain engagement; it enhances your clinic’s reputation and brand awareness.
Branding your clinic with a personalised email address
It’s important to remember that you’re not just building a business; you’re building a brand (more on this later). As your brand gains popularity and establishes a level of credibility, you’ll find that you don’t need to invest as much in promotional activities. Clients will seek you out and come to you instead!
Setting up an email address is a step in this direction – you’re putting your clinic’s name on the point of contact. It also makes you look more professional. When users hear about you from other patients and search for your clinic online, the absence of an email address is conspicuous.
However, customers today are becoming increasingly sensitive to a brand’s online image. This means that having an email address associated with free web-based email services like Gmail or Yahoo isn’t going to cut it. What you need is a personalised domain, preferably one with your clinic’s name.
According to a study conducted by Visible Logic, 70% of customers say that a free web-based email address looks unprofessional. This clearly indicates that the majority of users begin to form an opinion of a brand’s credibility just based on the company’s email address!
What you need is an email that matches your dental clinics website, for example [email protected] where your-dentalclinic.ie is your domain name. If you don’t have a website, we will discuss this in a later chapter.
Professional Appearance
of customers say that a free web-based email address looks unprofessional.
Email has now overtaken texting as the preferred mode of communication in Ireland. According to Blue Cast Digital’s Email Marketing Insight, over 84% of marketers in the country have described email as an integral part of their marketing strategy! Additionally, 89% of Irish businesses are using emails to improve brand awareness.
Of the businesses surveyed, nearly half had an open rate above 20% – while the average click-through rate at over two-thirds of all the participating companies was above 6%. These are optimistic figures, indicating that a higher-than-average number of recipients were not just being successfully engaged by the companies’ emails, but potentially going on to take a profitable action.
Globally, medical and dental emails recorded an average open rate of over 22% according to insights released by MailChimp. To put that into context, the open rate for emails pertaining to hobbies – the leading category – was around 28%.
Conclusion
If you are one of the 28.3% of dental clinics in Ireland that do not have an email address, the bad news is you have been missing out on a range of enquiries.
The good news is this is very easy to set up and get working. Your receptionist can easily monitor the clinic’s email address, and you can deal with more complicated enquiries personally. An email address will take only a few hours to set up, and there is no excuse not to have one. If you need help setting up a branded professional email address, please get in touch with us today!
Personalised 2017/18 Report now available
