It was my second meeting with Dr. Leighton. A potential buyer had asked if there was a systematized approach to growing the practice. Sadly, there WAS an email-based system but it had been discontinued because of declining results. Fortunately, our team includes an expert in email marketing and with Dr. Leighton we crafted a process to take the best parts of the old system and fold them into a new strategy that has proven results.

First, we ditched the old "@gmail.com" email address. Spam is a huge problem for receiving email servers and commercial emails coming from platforms like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others are subjected to far more scrutiny than "branded" email addresses. We chose Google Workspace because of the robust features it offers, reasonable cost, and ease of setup. The technician also set up all of the security protocols to allow the receiving mail servers to verify that email from Dr. Leighton could be verified as "from Dr. Leighton".

Second, we ran a "please verify your email address" campaign and within the campaign, we added a request for patients to "opt in" and authorize his office to communicate with patients by email AND text messaging.

Third, we took Dr. Leighton's patient list and started to "tag" each patient with the information we had on them. Initially, this was just rudimentary information like age and gender but it did allow Dr. Leighton to send offers only to those patients most likely to respond. For example, no one over age 50 was targeted for pediatric dentistry and no one under 40 was targeted for dental implants. 

With Dr. Leighton, emails were crafted and sent to the patients that would be most likely to respond. This resulted in a significant jump in open rates and also a significant uptake of the offers being sent. This not only boosted revenue for the practice, but the systematized approach to marketing with email also gave the buyer the confidence they were looking for and the deal proceeded smoothly.

Obviously, this is very basic but it is still surprising to me how few dentists perform and follow even basic list segregation. As a result, they email offers to patients that have zero interest in a procedure and as a result, the emails do not get read and end up in the spam folder.

If you've been contemplating selling your practice but are being held up by concerns over ineffective marketing, give us a call at 703.298.1690 or click here because we can help!