For years, direct mail has been a mainstay in the dental industry to obtain new patients. Every summer my own home is flooded with glossy postcards, tri-folds, and hand addressed mailers all from my neighborhood dentists.
Preston and I recently got a quote from a popular direct mail company for just under $4000 for 10,000 mailers. But what does one mailer do? According to the bulk of companies we’ve talked to (and it makes intuitive sense), you need to have repeated mailers for the ROI to rise.
Branding vs. Marketing
In my mind, marketing is a way to build a brand. A brand is the way that customers perceive you. Marketing is how you shape that perception into something that is appealing and worth spending money on.
Maybe the most familiar brand people think of is Apple. Apple has been able to clearly establish its brand in the mind of customers. The words that come to mind are beautiful, clean and user friendly. I love their products. Are they the best products on the market? No! But it doesn’t matter. They have done such a convincing job marketing that the Apple brand has built up relationship equity. Little by little they have (through social proof, scarcity, authority and consistency) made deposits into my relationship equity account with them. Consequently, I buy their products and pay a premium for it.
So, that said, lets get back to direct mail.
Direct Mail
Direct mail is a way to make deposits into a relationship equity account for people within your defined radius, oftentimes within a defined demographic. So you pay a company to create a beautiful piece of paper to convey this message. You send this piece of paper to all homes in a defined area. Sounds great, right? The huge problem is that you are marketing to people who haven’t necessarily expressed interest in what you have to offer. There is something to be said for marketing to the masses, but your ROI is going to suffer. And as previously mentioned, it takes repeated deposits into a person’s relationship equity account to change thoughts and feelings (shape your brand). So you send these mailers every month of the spring and summer (like all the other dentists in your area). According to the recent pricing we got, that is about $12,000 for 10,000 mailers for 3 months.
Now, I don’t want to be all doom and gloom about direct mail. It clearly has a place in dental marketing and I personally know dentists who feel they have had a decent ROI from it. But, what we will get into next is how to do this a better way.
An Email List—The Better Way
If direct mail is marketing to the masses, then building an email list is marketing to people that are in your store.
As a dentist you probably have heard about or are spending money on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Google adwords and Facebook ads are common platforms used to place an ad on the screen of someone who has specifically expressed interest in what you have to offer. They have typed into a google search “dentist” or “dental implant” or “cheap dentist” or something along those lines. With the sophistication of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, customer information is more readily available then ever.
An email list is the best way to capitalize on the systems that other huge companies have built and drive new traffic and increased production to your dental office.
Here’s how you do it:
Imagine your family has just moved into a new home in a new town. You need a dentist. It’s summertime and you gotta get your kids in for a checkup before school starts and things get really crazy. You also know you had a root canal a couple weeks before moving and the Endodontist said you’d need a crown on that tooth. So, you do what everyone does in this situation. You open your computer and search “city name dentist” in google. A couple of ads pop up at the top of the screen and you click on the first one (it’s the first one after all). You see a really nice looking website that has a picture of a smiling family that has had successful dental treatment. There’s a nice picture of the doctor and staff and they all look very friendly. There are testimonials on the site and 5 star reviews by happy patients recommending the doctor and staff.
You don’t want to just go with the first one you clicked on, though, so you get ready to leave. As your mouse is motioning toward the back button a page shows up. It offers “free tooth whitening.” That offer really throws this place over the top and you enter your email address to have the coupon emailed to you. You feel the buzz of your phone telling you that you have a new email (which releases dopamine in your central nervous system) and you go to your email to get your coupon for free whitening. You print out the coupon and sit it on your desk (where it will serve as marketing material).
However, things get hectic in life and you forget about needing to go to the dentist. A week later more dopamine surges when you feel the buzz of your phone in your pocket. It’s the dental office. The email has a video of the doctor and staff inviting you to their office and telling you how excited they are to meet you. They seem really nice and you decide to call to schedule an appointment so you don’t forget. When you call, the staff is just as friendly as they were on the video and you talk to Diane, the pretty receptionist you just saw in the video! She feels like a friend already. You set up an appointment for Thursday. You keep that appointment because you get an email reminder on Wednesday. When you go to your appointment on Thursday, you show up on time and are ready to buy…
Influence
An incredible book that should be required reading for anyone with a business is Influence by Robert Cialdini. He walks you through extensive research on what influences people to buy, act, volunteer or change behavior. There are six main ways that this happens: Social Proof, Consistency, Authority, Scarcity, Reciprocation and Liking.
You can get a copy on Amazon by clicking on the book.
The Email list works on these mechanisms of influence so when you go to their appointment you are ready to buy:
- Social Proof. You’ve seen the testimonials and visited the Facebook page where happy patients rave.
- Consistency. There has been a consistent message across the branding and you anticipate receiving that same consistency in your treatment as well.
- Authority. This is clearly a professional. You trust this Dentist.
- Scarcity. The offer for free whitening is only valid this week.
- Reciprocation. You’ve received something free from the Dentist and feel obligated to reciprocate.
- Liking. You’ve met the staff in the video, you’ve spoken to Diane on the phone. You feel like friends.
Creating an email list is one piece of a larger puzzle but a critical one in targeting an audience of buyers with a very high return on investment.
How do you Start?
We use a very intuitive and easy to use platform called ConvertKit. It’s a very simple tool that even someone as technologically naive as me can easily navigate. The story I described above can all be managed through their platform. Check them out by clicking the banner below:
