A healthcare newsletter is all about building a sense of community with your patients. Keep reading for tips on how to make your newsletter one that your readers will look forward to receiving.
Fill your healthcare newsletter with value
Digital healthcare newsletters are wonderful at connecting providers with their patients and families. Compared to other types of communication, email marketing is easy to create, inexpensive, and has the best ROI at a rate of $36 for every $1 spent according to Constant Contact.
You can use your healthcare newsletter to build trust among current patients and to develop relationships with prospective ones. To maximize the percentage of recipients who open your newsletter (known as your “open rate”) and engage (known as your “click through rate”), you will need to find ways to get noticed.
The dos and don’ts of a strong healthcare newsletter
To make your newsletter stand out in a crowded inbox:
- Do present readers with health-related information they can actually use in their everyday lives. Now is not the time to get technical.
- Do showcase your practice or organization as a leader in specialized healthcare issues. Make your newsletter stand out with information they won’t find anywhere else.
- Do not inundate readers with obvious marketing messages, such as asking for donations or signing up for services. People will stop clicking if that’s all you offer.
- Don’t write your articles like press releases. Announcements about new staff members or programs, for example, should sound as exciting as you feel about the news. Just because it’s written doesn’t mean people won’t feel authentic excitement.
- Do not use medical jargon that non-experts (almost all your readers, basically) will have to look up, or that could just drive them away in frustration.
5 tips for creating making your healthcare newsletter a star
- Focus on your audience
The best healthcare newsletters appeal to specialized groups, rather than try to provide something for everyone. For example, parents will prefer to see articles about kids in their child’s age group and people with an autoimmune condition will prefer to consume content around autoimmune issues instead of general healthcare content.
- Offer content your audience (most likely) can’t get anywhere else
Patients and families with ultra-specialized health issues (for example, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, fragile X syndrome, chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and others) might struggle to find relevant and trusted information from general consumer websites. Further, the amount of misinformation available online can leave them confused and concerned. Your expertise matters and providing high quality content matters. Your newsletter can show potential and current patients that your organization’s providers are experts on topics that matter to them.
- Address readers directly
It’s good to get personal with patients when creating a healthcare newsletter. Readers can connect with your practice or organization more easily and naturally when you use friendly, second-person language – almost as if you’re writing a letter to someone you know. This means using verbiage such as, “you,” “we” and “us.”
- Use newsletter articles to drive readers to your blog
Link to your website articles from your newsletter to increase click through rate and drive traffic to your website. Use short sum-ups in your newsletters to invite readers to learn more, where they can potentially get much more in-depth information. Patients and families who don’t know about your blog might become regular visitors (and improve your web statistics in the process).
Note: If you don’t have a blog yet, it is probably time to start one! A blog on your website lets you address a wide variety of topics in deep detail and improve SEO with consistent keyword-rich content.
- Create balanced content
Your readers, like everyone else, are often on the go in countless different directions. But what sleep-deprived new mom wouldn’t want to know about the health benefits of, say, power napping? Grab readers with topics that pique their interest, provide answers they’re hungry to know, or simply surprise or delight them. Keep it fresh and mix it up so your audience has a lot of options.
The best healthcare newsletters are consistent
Patient communication is one of the most important things a healthcare provider can do to build and maintain relationships with patients and grow your bottom line. Unfortunately, it can be tough to find the time to do them consistently. If this is your struggle, Watch Media Group can help. Our staff are highly experienced in writing healthcare newsletters, blogs, and related communications. When you’re ready to discuss your communications needs and delegating the valuable time that could be spent on patient care, just send us a message!
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