Better together: Direct mail and email marketing

Plenty of chiropractic practices are using email marketing campaigns, but adding direct mail to your marketing strategy is often more effective than email or mail alone.

Increasing your marketing return on investment is as simple as understanding your marketing audience and combining multiple outreach strategies.

Direct mail is still effective

Consistent communication with your patients and prospects is key to bringing them through your door. Direct mail benefits from a higher open-rate than email, according to the Harvard Business Review.ⁱ While both forms of marketing are highly efficient at converting prospects, a study involving over 100,000 prospects who received direct mail alone, email alone or direct mail and email together found that the combined approach of direct mail and email was measurably more effective than either strategy alone.ⁱ

Remember, though, that each form of marketing may appeal to particular groups within your audience. Finding out who your current patients are and how to reach your ideal patient should significantly boost your return on investment.

“Direct mail is not dead…About half our practice members are age 50+ and they still enjoy receiving updates and specials via direct mail,” says Dominic DeMaria, marketing director at The Drugless Doctors, a chiropractic practice with offices in Ohio.

Create a coordinated strategy to use both email and direct mail

DeMaria says their practice uses email marketing to reach patients, blog readers and other clients who live outside of their local area and add in direct mail for local patients, sending another mailer four times per year.

These forms of communication all work together with a consistent schedule, so patients know when to expect a message from the clinic. All of the marketing is tied together with the same branding so each message matches the logo, colors and look of other clinic messages.

“I would invest in branding and giving your practice a visual identity to build recognition,” DeMaria says, “Oftentimes having a well-rounded branding, public relations and design strategy is well received if the end user can tell effort was given to its presentation.”

This brand consistency makes it easier for patients to recognize your marketing materials when they arrive, whether by email or in the mail. As they see your brand more frequently, patients begin to build familiarity with your clinic. The more memorable your marketing is, the more effectively you can make a positive impression that will drive new patients to you.

Create a quick, comprehensive marketing plan

Now that you know who your patients are and who you want to reach with your marketing, you can start making a strategy and begin marketing. According to DeMaria, the keys to effective marketing are commitment and consistency. If you make a plan and get started, you can have a smart marketing strategy for the whole year.

“I would register your practice with one of the email marketing companies, view what they offer, and create your entire year’s strategy: A theme for the year, what day you will send it out, what will it include,” DeMaria says.

If you want to introduce direct mail, using it alongside email allows you to create a quarterly newsletter or provide a web address link that prospects can use to find your website or a special offer page. Whatever you do, creating a marketing plan will increase your opportunities for success in marketing your practice.

Harvard Business Review. “Why Email Marketing is King.” https://hbr.org/2012/08/why-email-marketing-is-king/. Published August 2012. Accessed October 2015.