Ophthalmology Practice Management - 5 Ways to Build Your Email Database

Building an email database for marketing purposes can be an area of great challenge in ophthalmology practice management. Using email to communicate with patients and potential patients is a powerful marketing tool, but how do you build your initial list, and how can you make it - and your practice - grow?

Start With Your Patients

Begin by using email as part of your day-to-day routine. Let patients contact you via email for non-urgent questions. Use it to schedule and confirm appointments. Many (though not all) people find email more convenient than using the telephone for this purpose, as long as communications are timely. Consider including a real-time electronic scheduling system integrated into your website that allows your patients to schedule visits any time of day or night. Patients will need to provide you with their email addresses in order to take advantage of this.

Word-of-Mouth

If patients love your practice, they'll let others know about it. Make it easy by sending them educational information that they will want to forward to other people in the community -friends, families, and neighbors. People want to provide useful information to people they care about, and this is a way to facilitate that.

Your Website

Your website will showcase your practice -your experience, philosophy, and style of interacting with patients. Your website is also a good tool for building your email database. Include a simple opt-in form so that potential patients can sign up to get relevant eye health news and information from you. Sometimes just asking is all it takes.

Incentives

Offer an incentive for potential patients to opt to receive your emails. Incentives can take many forms. You can offer people a newsletter or other useful information that they want to receive, for instance. For those who are interested in a specific eye condition, you can offer information on current research in that area.

Marketing in Tandem

Clearly, no matter how effective it is, email won't be everything you do to market your practice. You still have brochures, yellow pages listings (whether online or on paper), business cards, and professional partnerships that bring you patients. Be sure that your website is clearly listed on all of your other promotional materials, and you have just given potential patients an easy way to find out more about you.

Ultimately, building an email database as part of your ophthalmology practice management has the same goal that all of your marketing does: building a relationship with your patients. Marketing your practice in this way becomes a public health service rather than a sales strategy -and your patients will reap the benefit.

Most doctors use less than 20% of the potential of their website for gaining new patients. A great looking website is only one part of getting patients from the internet. Are you getting as many patients as you can from yours? You may find the free expert guide, “7 Mistakes Doctors Make When Getting Their Website Done,” a valuable ophthalmology practice management resource.