Using direct mailing as part of your healthcare marketing strategy in hearing healthcare
Direct mailing can be an integral and effective part of your healthcare marketing strategy, if done correctly. It can be disastrous for your Practice and your brand if done incorrectly. But what is correct, what works and what doesn’t?
When it comes to Patient mailing, you should have a communication policy set. Any mailings that you do to your mailing lists should fall within this policy. The policy should cover mailing frequency and mailing content. Don’t forget that call back letters are Patient communications and should be factored into your frequency calculations.
This is really important, people get irritated by endless communications that they feel have no value to them. In our modern world we are constantly bombarded by junk mail in all its forms. You do not want your communications to be placed in this bracket. Because your brand will quickly be damaged by that perception. In order to avoid this each communication needs to be customised.
I believe that all communications to your Patients should hold value to them. I think that if you assess every communication with the question, does this hold value to this Patient? You will never go far wrong. You assess this by querying your mailing list for each campaign. In this way you can customise the mailings to the Patients needs. That brings us to the mailing list, how will you quantify the mailing list?
The best way is by some sort of Patient profiling on your database. In this way you can tailor each mailing list to the specific offer you are deploying. If you clearly and intelligently profile your Patients it will make your life easier. The profile terms are up to you, there is no set list of profiles. By that I mean you set those terms, such as top of the range, High Technology, Technology driven, Value driven, etc. This approach ultimately allows you to define and target your mailing, to customise it to each Patient group.
In a recent blog post from GN Resound, they talked about direct mailing and the keys to success:
When it comes to Direct Mail, there are three keys to success:
- The quality of the mailing list
(Your own list is better than purchasing a list from a third party)- The compelling reason to act now (the offer)
- The creative approach
That first point is crucial, the quality of the mailing list, you can and should control that for success. If you do so and do it well, you will see real return on investment for your Practice.
Regards
Geoff
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