Posted on October 29, 2018 in General
When a prospective patient fills out a contact form or calls your practice to schedule a consultation, they’re still learning about your services, team, and overall reputation. They are doing their research so they can make the best healthcare decision for themselves.
How can you get them to stay active in your sales funnel? Through lead nurturing.
Lead nurturing is often the weakest link in the overall sales and marketing strategy, mainly because it can be hard to manage and keep up with all the leads. Some practices might not even think it’s necessary.
But lead nurturing, when done right, can actually improve your overall lead to patient ratio, decrease the amount of time spent as a lead, and create long-time patients and referrals.
To stay top-of-mind, you can send that prospective patient a series of emails on the service they are interested in, patient testimonials (remember to stay HIPAA compliant!), and any monthly specials or discounts. You’ll always want to follow-up with a phone call, but the emails allow consumers to learn more about you and hopefully move towards scheduling a consultation.
3 Tips to Improve Your Nurture Process
Calling a lead and establishing that personal contact, or calling to follow up after their consultation is always best practice, but you can automate some of the work for your staff by creating a nurturing process. Using marketing automation tactics, you can send emails to your leads based on the actions they take. Your staff can also set up tasks for themselves so they will know when to do something based on your leads’ actions.
1. Set a goal for each email in your nurture sequence
Each email you send should have a goal or action that you want the recipient to take. The goal can be to schedule their procedure or next appointment, watch a patient testimonial, direct them to information on financing, or fill out a form to get more information on a new service you’re offering. By setting a goal, you’re able to start measuring the success of your nurture process.
2. Use action-oriented language in your call-to-action
The point of your call-to-action is to get someone to do something. So to help them do what you want, go ahead and tell them using action-oriented language. For example, “Call to schedule….”Contact us”….”Make an appointment”…
3. Measure the results of the emails/tasks
You won’t know how successful your nurture campaign is if you aren’t tracking the results. This is more than just the open and click-thru rates of your emails. You want to know how many people are moving forward in the buyer journey based on your nurture sequence. Which email is producing the best results? Do they get all the emails in the sequence before converting? Having this kind of information can help you improve the campaign and hopefully get better results.
If leads don’t schedule, your nurture campaign is not lost! Add them to your monthly newsletter list so they can still receive news, highlights, and specials from your practice. They might be ready to move forward at a later date and you don’t want to miss out!
Need Help Nurturing Your Leads?
If you need help managing your lead nurture program, MDprospects can help. The software can help you capture leads and turn them into patients more efficiently. You can also automate tasks and emails, giving your staff more time with patients in your office while giving your leads the info they need. Schedule a free demo by calling 207-464-0283 or contacting us here.
