How to Target Your Audience in Email Marketing

It is easy to get caught up in the details, especially when writing email newsletters. As tempting as it is to tell your readers every update about your practice in large blocks of text, it simply won’t help your ultimate goal: to gain repeat patients and new leads.

Define Your Audience

All you need to do is keep your audience in mind when writing. In order to get in the mind of your audience, answer the following questions:

• Who are they?You are writing your email blasts to patients who a) are repeat patients b) will follow your calls-to-action and recommend your practice to friends.
• What will catch their attention?Remember, your email blast is not originally seen as the content/images you painstakingly created. It is nested in an Inbox as a subject line with hundreds of other subject lines. People are inundated every day by emails demanding their business. What are you going to do to attract interest, and then build up a following with your audience to routinely open your emails? As mentioned in yesterday’s post, 70% of people read emails for promotions or discounts. If you have a special, mention it in the subject line, it will help increase your open rate.
• What do they need to know?Not only are attention spans limited, many emails are being read on cell phones with tiny screens. Keep this in mind when writing the content of your email. Choose just a few topics that you think would educate or entertain in order to accomplish your goals of bringing back patients or generating leads. Leave out anything that is not 100% necessary.

Deliver

Once you have an idea of who your audience is, strip away any fluff in your newsletter and focus only on what your readers will respond to.

• Stand out in the inboxAsk yourself “If this email appeared in my Inbox, would I open it?”
• Be simpleAsk yourself “Would I read all this content?” Write short sentences and make each word count. Do away with paragraphs and use bullet points to highlight ideas. Break up text with simple, small images.
• Keep it shortMany of your readers will be using phones to read your email. There shouldn’t be so much content your readers have to endlessly scroll to get to your message.
• Make it easyYour readers are busy people and the easier it is to complete your call-to-action (CTA) the better your results will be. If your goal is to advertise a new procedure to encourage your patients to book an appointment, make that message your entire email. Don’t bury it under fluff. Place the most important topic on the top and prominently show your appointment contact form link. If your call-to-action is complicated ie, “click this, like our page, fill out a form, and tweet us all at once!” you’re going to lose out on patients who were potentially ready to engage with your practice.

When creating your practice email newsletters, it is easy to want to share everything with your readers. Sometimes you have to get out of your head and into the minds of your audience to be the most effective. By keeping in mind who your audience is and how they read emails, you can accomplish your goals of bringing back customers and generating new leads.

For help writing to your audience and creating streamlined emails with interesting subject lines, contact us.