Cosmetic Surgery Advertising Success and Your Patient Email List

Part 1: The Magic of Building a Profitable Patient Email List

Stagnation. It drums up visions of green, mucky water that smells bad and sits around gathering bugs; the water isn’t going anywhere…and that’s the problem. Stagnation in your cosmetic surgery practice is as destructive to the inflow of patients as stagnant water is to our freshwater drinking water supply. In order to get your practice to grow and move past the negative effects of the stagnant economy, you’ll need to give your patients some TLC. Here are some pointers on how to accomplish this growth through a patient email list.

Existing Patients Come First

First and foremost, make a schedule for contacting your existing patients. They should not receive the exact same email newsletter as other people on the list. Why? Because they have already put their trust and investment into you and your practice. As a result, reward them with special offers only valid for existing patients. Be sure to also check in with them from time to time with personalized postcards, handwritten by your staff. Tell them something like "We've been thinking about you and hoping that you're enjoying the results from your (procedure name here). If you have any health concerns or questions, please call us anytime at (phone number here). We look forward to speaking with you soon." This goes above and beyond just effective cosmetic surgery advertising; you'll make an instant reconnection with your patients!

Next, Concentrate on the Rest of Your List

On your website you should continually gather a list of email addresses. Your website should have an easy-to-find opt-in area where you clearly state the advantage to your visitors for signing up. These incentives can include special discounts on cosmetic surgery procedures as well as being the first to receive cutting-edge patient education information. Have a page on your site dedicated to explaining what they will get with each newsletter and give them an example screen shot of one of the newsletters. This will show them what they will be receiving and better qualify your email list so that only those who really want to hear from you will opt in.

Use Face-to-Face Contact to Your Advantage

Within your physical practice you and your staff should be gathering both email addresses and mailing addresses from your in-person consultations and patients. Be sure your staff asks for permission for this, have the person fill out a short form giving you permission, and have a printed card ready to hand them in case they know anyone who they think would also like to receive discounts on services. To manage your email list in-house, be sure that you have an automatic program in place that can opt-in patients as they choose and can opt them out if they want to unsubscribe. These programs, such as Aweber, will comply with federal CAN-SPAM laws...and that's the best way to do your cosmetic surgery advertising - complying with requirements for business-related email .

How Often Should You Email? 

These lists are invaluable to your practice and vital to its success! You should aim at providing 2-3 email newsletters per month to the people on your email list. Providing them with valuable, educational information and resources online (with links back to your website, of course) will get them interested in your services and cause them to click through to your site. You can have your webmaster or web designer create a special “landing page” or “squeeze page” for each offer you are promoting. Then, you can better measure the success of each of your email campaigns.

To read more, please see part 2 of this two-part series on the value of building a patient email list.

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