The Fortune’s In Your Follow Up

When was the last time your patients heard from you? While many dentists realize the value of referrals, few communicate with their patients on a regular basis. This results in lost referral opportunities, and also affects case acceptance.

Many of your patients are regularly receiving generic postcard offers from neighboring dental practices, each promoting a new special service, new technology, or better location. The best way to ensure your patients are loyal, motivated for treatment and actively referring is to keep in touch with them. Once or twice per year during office visits is not enough. Here are a few effective ways to follow up throughout the year:

  1. Email - Hopefully you are collecting email addresses and using them. While not every patient will elect to receive email from you, many will and this will allow you to communicate with patients inexpensively and quickly.
  2. Tangible communication - Hardcopy newsletters and postcards can still be effective. In fact, according to a leading email service provider, their average medical service email open rate is approximately 16.7%. Plan to alternate your email and tangible communication for maximum reach.
  3. Social media – Facebook is a great way to keep your name and face in front of patients. Remember to keep the word “Social” in social marketing and avoid overt advertising.
Rita Zamora is a relationship-focused dental marketer, specializing in referral marketing, patient relations, case acceptance and social media for general and specialty practices. Rita developed her referral marketing expertise working hands-on in specialty and general dentistry practices. With over sixteen years experience in dentistry, Rita has trained, coached and motivated dentists and teams in marketing, patient relations, communication and social media.

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