Communicate With Your Patients the Right Way

[Elliot Pearson]

Dental practices must realize that the best source of new business is actually their database of not just current but also past patients. Finding a new patient is not just time consuming but also extremely expensive especially since chances are that you need to lure them by offering discounts or running expensive ads. If you could get more patients to opt for treatment without you having to cold call, send out direct mail or purchase leads, wouldn’t you be extremely eager to get started with this campaign? Chances are that you most definitely would.

Simply taking the time to reach out to your past and current patients will help your practice grow immensely. Not only are you strengthening your relationship with them and paving the road to patient loyalty, but you can also increase referrals to qualified prospects and build a list of leads.

But all of this is better said than done. Chances are that you’re already complaining mentally with how keeping in touch with past patients takes too much time and costs money. But when you factor in the return on investment, then you would think otherwise. The important part of keeping in touch with previous patients is to find a way which is time efficient as well as inexpensive and still effective.

According to studies, you should keep in touch with your patients at least fourteen times for each year in order for them to continue to remember you. You can touch base either through email, phone, snail mail or in-person meeting. Snail mail may include sending a postcard, holiday and anything else in between for that matter. All of these methods are useful in communicating with your patients.

But among those methods mentioned, which one is the most effective and successful? According to studies, there is no specific method to communicate with patients. On the other hand, the most successful “method” makes use of a couple of communication formats.

It’s easy to send out 14 emails annually, or make 14 phone calls or send out 14 postcards. But a constructive campaign makes use of a combination of these formats. You can probably send out four postcards for each year and then send six emails and then throw on two snail mail letters. Cap the year off with one phone call. Make sure though that you communicate with your clients approximately once for every three weeks throughout the entire year.