In the past few months, I’ve had several discussions with fellow practitioners who are interested in incorporating email marketing into their practice marketing strategy. Based on these discussions, I’ve found that most people make one of two main mistakes, they either overestimate what they will need, or they don’t really understand what they need.
I’d like to take just a moment to explain just a bit about what an email marketing system is and how to choose the right one for your needs. Understanding what email marketing systems are, how they work, and what kinds of features are common will help you choose a system that fits both your needs AND your budget.
Basically, email marketing systems allow you to send emails to your patients that are tailored to their unique situations.
Say a potential patient visits a page on your site about low back pain. That potential patient then sends an enquiry. You could then send them a series of emails about how you treat the kind of pain they are experiencing and let them know why you are the best option for them.
When you employ email marketing, you have a perfect opportunity to educate your potential patients. Before they even come to you for their initial consultation, they are already aware of the benefits of seeing you, making it easier for them to become patients. You can even use email marketing for existing patients to help them get the best results from their care.
While setting up your email marketing system can be a bit complicated, as soon as you are up and running, it will be completely automated. Your patients and potential patients will get interaction from you that is tailored to their needs, without you having to do anything.
Which System Should I Use?
The systems I’m about to recommend aren’t simple autoresponders like MailChimp, Aweber, or Constant Contact. These are good systems that have their place, but tend to be stripped down and lacking in functionality for what we want to accomplish. The systems I suggest offer significantly more power without costing a lot more.
There are many email marketing systems currently available, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s narrow it down to the top three. These are Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and ActiveCampaign. Prices are all listed in US dollars.
Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is a giant among automated email marketing software. It is immensely powerful with a huge range of functionality, features, and option that most business will never use. For all but the largest of clinic chains, Infusionsoft is overkill, to say the least, and has a price tag to match. At $4,000-5,000 initial setup, plus $500 per month, the cost alone is out of reach for most clinics.
Ontraport.
Ontraport is both less expensive and less complicated than Infusionsoft. That said, it offers plenty of features and options to meet the needs of most practices. It’s worth mentioning that the interface can be a bit difficult to navigate. It will cost you about $250-500 per month.
ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign is fairly new to the world of automated email marketing, but is proving to be an excellent system. It doesn’t have the power of Infusionsoft, but has plenty of features and options to meet the needs of most practices with an interface that is quite a bit simpler and more user friendly than the other systems. Starting at $9 per month, the price point is also user friendly.
Summary
If you’ve been thinking about growing your practice with email marketing, it’s well worth going directly to a system capable of advanced automated marketing. Infusionsoft and Ontraport are insanely powerful systems, but they are both quite expensive and offer many more options than most practices will ever use.
It is for these reasons that we highly recommend ActiveCampaign. It’s the system we use and the one we use when helping our clients set up and manage their own systems. If you could use a little help getting your email marketing set up for your practice, you can request a free Strategy Session now by clicking here.
