Healthcare Digital Marketing

Did you know that 69% of Canadians search for medical-related information online?

But not all of them trust online resources to make healthcare decisions. They need more credible resources to ensure their medical providers can help them! Hence, many organizations seek ways to improve their healthcare digital marketing strategies to establish trustworthy relationships.

For example, imagine a patient searching “cardiologists near me” online and getting a thousand results. They can be easily confused and overwhelmed. Also, they may doubt contacting the ones they shortlist because they don’t know them personally.

It is when digital marketing in healthcare fails. Hospitals, dental offices, clinics, pharmacies, daycare centres, and other organizations need a personal channel to make people trust them. One excellent example is direct mail!

You may combine online channels with direct mail to improve outcomes and reach a broader audience. 

But how? 

Also, which channel should get more priority? 

Let us find out below!

Institutions should urge their medical marketing agency to draw up plans to identify and reach the correct audience. Many companies only focus on generic advertising and hope for positive results. But it can waste their budget, effort, and time.

Consider this—Imagine you run a laser treatment clinic on 8th Avenue in Calgary. But you launch a mass email campaign targeting thousands outside the city. What happens when only a few people within the locality get your email? 

Yes, you guessed it right! The campaign will fail because you didn’t focus on your targeted audience. Though you can use location targeting techniques and improve your campaigns, you can still not guarantee your recipients will read or reply to your messages. 

Direct mail marketing helps you combat such issues that healthcare digital marketing poses. You can fine-tune your targeted prospects and patients via mailing campaigns. It lets you speak to them directly without relying on whether they open your email or see your online ad.

Reaching customers at their doorsteps to communicate a message is still a powerful communication form. People love getting mail because it feels more personal and engaging. It creates a nostalgic effect and helps you leave an everlasting impression. 

Also, you can compile targeted mailing lists to connect with your relevant audience. PostGrid’s print and mail API helps you conduct result-bearing marketing campaigns using custom lists based on your prospects’ age, gender, location, medical history, and more. 

Therefore, healthcare digital marketing strategies can reach hot leads faster. You can also manage your budget better by only mailing prospects most likely to complete your calls to action (CTAs).

 Also Read: Bulk or Mass Mailing Services

Healthcare customers see online advertisements daily. But do they remember these brands? Mostly, no!

It is hard to remember something they see in bulk. Hence, ensure your digital marketing in healthcare plans helps capture your audience’s attention and motivate them to contact your organization.

For example, you can conduct an online contest inviting people to follow you and tag their friends. Or you may collaborate with successful influencers to interact with people through your social media pages and create a positive impression.

Please remember to maintain consistency and quality when using these digital tactics. Also, focus on converting leads into customers rather than just creating online visibility.

People may follow you online for entertainment and knowledge. But let your healthcare digital marketing agency work on driving sales through it.

But it might face an issue when working on your goals—tangibility. Since online ads aren’t tangible, customers or prospects might easily forget you. They might remember a few posts or emails but need help recalling your brand.

Luckily, direct mail can help fill this gap!

You may send a postcard or letter to your targeted patients to give them something tangible to hold onto and refer to whenever they need your services.

Many save mailers for future reference, primarily if they carry crucial information, like health-related tips. Thus, this offline channel improves your chances of getting calls or enquiries compared to your healthcare digital marketing strategies.

At a recent roundtable with our healthcare clients, we discussed how tangibility matters in marketing. Most of them are leading industry players who tried to focus on healthcare digital marketing until a few years ago.

But direct mail has a separate charm! It ensures people see and remember your messages. Hence, they started using mailing campaigns to break through the digital clutter and address their audience’s needs one-on-one.

 Also Read: Healthcare Direct Mail: Best Practices for Medical Mailing Services

If you don’t know which digital marketing channels to use, answer this question: 

Which channel can make my targeted customers feel special and prompt them to take action? 

You can discuss your medical services online and mention how you treat patients. But so do others! So what makes you different? 

Personalization! 

You can ensure your readers pay attention to what you say by personalizing your messages. 

Consider your audience’s preferences, medical conditions, age, gender, family history, and other factors to curate a custom message unique to every prospect. 

Personalization can make your healthcare digital marketing efforts successful by making readers feel appreciated. 

But there are specific limitations! 

For instance, you can customize your emails to carry the prospect’s first name. But you cannot do the same with social media marketing or SEO. 

Many of our clients faced a similar challenge. And they solved it by using direct mail. 

Offline mail provides you with unlimited personalization options. You can modify everything, from the heading to the offers, making a broad difference to your campaigns. 

PostGrid’s direct mail services enable you to add variable data to your mailers, so every recipient gets a postcard or letter that addresses their issues and offers relevant solutions. 

 Also Read: Best Direct Mail Marketing Services

Your medical marketing agency may provide you with many digital advertising options. Select the ones that most suit your brand’s message and enable you to contact your prospects and existing patients.

Your organization’s marketing mix must empower you to form a medical community of members, healthcare customers, and patients. And your goal must be to engage them and get high responses.

Direct mail has a response rate of 2 to 4%! It is higher than most healthcare digital marketing channels—something most clients agree to after getting first-hand experience.

Editor’s note: High responsiveness is directly proportional to your message’s resonance and interactivity. Online channels fail to deliver your desired results because they fail to communicate with your audience directly and offer personalized solutions. 

 Also Read: Latest Healthcare Marketing Trends

Digital marketing helps you establish an online reputation. And direct mail lets you win your customers’ trust and drive sales.

Thus, it is best to combine them instead of debating which is better and losing the battle to your competition.

Here are seven ways to integrate your healthcare digital marketing strategies with direct mail:

#1 Personalized Mailers with Online Consultation Reminders

Send personalized postcards or letters to your patients to thank them for choosing you after booking an appointment.

Or you can send printed reminder cards with their consultation’s date and time. It can help you reduce no-shows and get more patients to walk into your clinic or hospital.

Also, include a custom QR code or pURL to redirect people to your website, where they can view or reschedule their appointments digitally. This healthcare digital marketing and direct mail combination allows you to reinstate your message and make an impact.

It also enables your patients to reschedule whenever needed or have a copy of their appointment to remember visiting you. Either way, it is a win-win!

#2 Send Direct Mail Containing Digital Medical Education Resources

Educating your patients about medical conditions, treatments, home remedies, and precautions is your first step toward converting them. It helps people look up to you as a credible resource! This step also allows you to showcase your healthcare expertise and develop confidence among your targeted audience.

You can boost your digital marketing for healthcare and direct mail strategies by interlinking them. Provide snippets about your health conditions in your mailers using bullet points, infographics, images, and tables. Then, ask your recipients to visit your blog or online portal for more details and prompt them to create an account for regular updates.

It is the best way to get more website signups and add more people to your community. Make them curious, provide valuable information, and convert!

#3 Follow-Up With Existing Patients

Mail your existing patients, enquiring about their health and motivating them to schedule a follow-up consultation. You can send a small-sized postcard with a heartfelt message. Provide options on how they can contact you to schedule an appointment.

Improve your direct mail and healthcare digital marketing campaigns by sending emails on the same day your postcards arrive. Aligning your programs can impress your recipients and increase your chances of getting replies!

But how can you align your direct mail and email marketing campaigns?

The answer is simple—use an automation system!

You can integrate PostGrid’s direct mail API into your marketing or CRM software! It lets you streamline and personalize your campaigns using your existing patient records.

#4 Encourage People to Follow Your Social Media Pages. 

You may use your direct mailing campaigns to spread brand awareness, strengthen bonds, and increase profitability.

But one lesser-known use case is driving online traffic.

It may sound bizarre to some people that you can use direct mail to gather an online following. But it is a tried-and-tested method to expand your outreach and convert more patients.

For example, one of our clients, who owned a dental clinic, wanted to do something different than its healthcare digital marketing campaigns. They didn’t have many followers or subscribers online, so they tried a varied approach.

They sent custom letters to their entire patient base, asking them to follow the organization on social media. Also, they offered a free consultation to everyone who followed them and sent the screenshot via direct message (DM).

Of course, most millennials and Gen Z recipients completed the challenge without hassles. But many senior citizens also took it to social media and DMed the organizations in large numbers, which was shocking!

The clinic offered many offers for senior citizens and promised to post helpful content online.

What is the moral of the story? Take a chance and experiment with your healthcare digital marketing and direct mail combinations. Your audience might love it, and you may get many valuable leads!

#5 Introduce New Services

You can leverage direct mail to introduce your digital services, like telehealth or video consultations. It is an excellent way to make more people aware of your offerings and encourage them to sign up.

The direct mailer could highlight the advantages of telehealth services and mention a unique promo code that recipients can use for a discount.

Recipients can also use the mailers for signup instructions to experience remote healthcare. It is one of the best examples of combining healthcare digital marketing with direct mail to help people and promote your solutions.

#6 Invite Patients to Register for a Medical Seminar Online

Direct mail works well for invitations! Send small cards to your patient base, inviting them to a medical seminar and asking them to register online.

Provide the date, venue, time, names of all guest speakers, and other information. Also, add pURLs to track RSVPs and simplify the online registration process for your recipients.

You may send thank-you and reminder letters after a person registers online. Or print and mail the registration details they can carry to the event. This mailing and digital marketing in healthcare integration lets you get high foot traffic at seminars and helps you boost brand visibility.

#7 Welcome New Patients

Send onboarding kits to all patients who sign up on your website or book online consultations. You can use their provided data to mail them, making data collection a breeze. Also, they already know your brand, increasing your response and engagement rates.

Why does it work? 

Sending welcome kits to your healthcare customers denotes you care about them! It also positively affects your branding and helps retain patients for a long time.

Healthcare organizations benefit from our all-inclusive direct mail automation solutions by sending transactional, marketing, and compliance mailers online.

They can use our platform to send medical documents like test reports, discharge summaries, consent forms, post-surgery instructions, and more. But they can also leverage it to send invoices, bills, and marketing postcards.

Also, PostGrid’s API integrations help you conduct healthcare digital marketing with direct mail online. You can integrate our solutions into your favourite hospital management software or tools.

Maintain PIPEDA and HIPAA Compliance

PostGrid complies with PIPEDA, HIPAA, SOC-2, GDPR, and other data security laws. Hence, you can ship your mailers with us confidentially and accurately.

We also help you store the correct records for compliance or legal purposes. You can log into your dashboard and access information about your past orders whenever needed.

Conduct Triggered Campaigns

Triggered direct mail campaigns allow you to send mailers at the correct time. For instance, you can set action-specific triggers to ship patients whenever they book an online appointment, comment on your social media posts, or share their feedback digitally.

You can use triggered mailing as a healthcare digital marketing and direct mail integration campaign.

Your patients can complete an action online, triggering automatic mailings to save time and effort. Also, it increases your conversation ratio because you connect with people when you are fresh in their minds.

Send Mail to the Correct Addresses

PostGrid’s direct mail solutions have an in-built address verification feature. Before every campaign, we standardize and validate your mailing addresses to prevent mail returns and lost items.

You cannot get this feature with your healthcare digital marketing strategies. Our client used to face the issue of bounced emails daily. But PostGrid helped them send marketing messages to the correct recipients with a high deliverability ratio.

Track and Test

You can track your sent items in real time to stay updated and follow up with your recipients using PostGrid. Also, you can access detailed campaign analytics and insights to improve your upcoming programs and see what works best for your organization.

You can consult your healthcare digital marketing agency to improve your strategies for better outcomes. The key is choosing the ideal channels that best suit your brand and allow you to speak to your targeted audience.

Include direct mail in your online marketing mix to add a personal touch to your programs.

But many healthcare organizations hesitate to use direct mail because it is costly, time-consuming, and untrackable to do in-house.

However, PostGrid’s automated direct mail services enable them to draft, print, and ship mailers online. They can automate every task, helping them cut expenses, improve efficiency, and get better results.

Do you want to learn more about combining healthcare digital marketing with direct mail? Sign up here to get started!