Email marketing can be incredibly powerful when done right.
In fact, when Litmus surveyed marketing professionals, 94% of them named email as one of their three most effective marketing channels.
We would go as far as to say that it is the most effective marketing channel out there. But how can you use it to grow your medical practice?
Today we are going to discuss how to build an email list and monetize it with winning email marketing campaigns.
- Attention: Consult With a Lawyer Before Doing Any of This!
- How to Build a Sales Funnel For Your Medical Practice
- How to Create a Winning 6-Email “Indoctrination” Sequence
- How To Use Email Segmentation To Sell Products and Services
- How To Start a Weekly Email Newsletter
- Build A Sales Funnel For Your Medical Practice with ClickFunnels 2.0!
Attention: Consult With a Lawyer Before Doing Any of This!
Medicine is a heavily regulated industry which is why you need to be extremely careful about the claims you make, the marketing tactics that you use and the products and services that you sell.
Please consult a lawyer before you start implementing the advice in this article.
How to Build a Sales Funnel For Your Medical Practice
Email marketing doesn’t exist in isolation – it should always be viewed in the context of your overall sales funnel.
That’s why it makes sense to design your sales funnel first. But how should it look like?
What Is the Value Ladder Sales Funnel?
We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.
It was created by our co-founder Russel Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).
This sales funnel has four stages:
- Bait. You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
- Frontend. You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
- Middle. You offer the customer a more expensive and valuable product or service.
- Backend. You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.
Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.
We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross-sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.
The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:
- Start the relationship with that person by offering free value.
- Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email.
- Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage.
Here’s how Russel explains it:
Of course, this is just the general structure of the Value Ladder sales funnel – the implementation of it is going to vary from business to business.
So how can you build a sales funnel like that for your medical practice?
Case Study: Dentist’s Value Ladder Sales Funnel
When Russel went to his first appointment with his new dentist, he wasn’t prepared for this conversation:
“Are you a smoker?”
“No, I’ve never smoked in my life. Why would you ask?”
“Well, I noticed your teeth are turning a little yellow and I wasn’t sure if you were a smoker or maybe you drink coffee?” the dentist asked.
“No, no coffee either,” Russel replied. “My teeth look that yellow?”
“Yeah, they are. But don’t worry. If you want, I can make some custom teeth-whitening trays for you. You’ll have to use them for a few weeks, but if you follow the system, your teeth will be white again soon.”
Needless to say, Russel’s response was:
“Yes, please! I don’t want yellow teeth.”
A little while later, the dentist said:
“So, did you have braces when you were a kid?”
“Yeah, I did. How can you tell?”
“Your two bottom teeth are shifting pretty bad, and that usually happens to people who had braces.”
“My teeth are shifting? Seriously? What can you do about that?”
“If you want, I can build a retainer for you, which will help keep your teeth in place, or we can try Invisalign and get them straight again,” the dentist said.
“Yes, please!” Russel replied.
When he walked into the dentist’s office that morning, he had come in for free teeth cleaning.
And in less than an hour, he walked out having paid over $2,000 for a whitening kit and his new retainer. But how did that happen?
Here’s how Russel explains it:
This dentist had strategically taken me through a powerful process that I call…
A VALUE LADDER.
First, he had created bait (free teeth cleaning) that would attract his dream client (me).
Second, he provided value to me by cleaning my teeth, and while he was helping me, he noticed that my teeth had become yellow.
Because I had received value from him at this point, I naturally wanted to move forward and get additional value from him.
He then found another way that he could provide value to me – the retainers – and again, I naturally took him up on that offer as well.
Oh, it gets even better…
On my way out, the secretary scheduled me for another appointment six months later, adding me to their “continuity” program.
Continuity is where you continue paying on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis until you decide to cancel.
This dentist had a perfectly executed value ladder!”
You want to create a similar sales funnel for your medical practice.
What Is the Role of Email Marketing in All This?
In Russel’s story, the dentist got him to come in by offering free teeth cleaning, then sold him on teeth whitening + retainers + regular checkups in person.
Selling medical products and services can’t be completely automated as it all depends on the needs of a particular client.
However, you can use email marketing to build trust at scale as well as let your patients know about various offers that might be relevant to them.
This can help you significantly increase the revenue of your medical practice.
How to Create a Winning 6-Email “Indoctrination” Sequence
So what should you do when a potential customer gives you their email address in exchange for your lead magnet?
We don’t recommend hitting them with a sales pitch the moment you get their contact details.
Send them this 6-email “indoctrination” sequence instead:
- Email #1: Who Are You? Introduce yourself to your new subscriber.
- Email #2: Where Did You Come From? Share your origin story. Why did you decide to become a doctor?
- Email #3: What Do You Do? Explain what exactly it is that you do.
- Email #4: How Did You Gain This Expertise? Explain what makes you qualified to do it. Mention your education, credentials, accomplishments, etc.
- Email #5: Who Do You Do This For? Explain who your ideal customers are + share a case study on how you helped such a person to get the results they wanted.
- Email #6: How Can You Do It For Me? Either pitch your Frontend offer or provide a rundown of your entire Value Ladder.
You want to send one email per day so the entire sequence should take six days.
This email sequence is designed to build trust at scale and should help you increase the email subscriber to paying customer conversion rate if implemented correctly.
How To Use Email Segmentation To Sell Products and Services
Are you running any promotions in your medical practice?
Then you should be using broadcast emails to announce them to your email list.
However, something to keep in mind here is that people don’t like getting emails that aren’t relevant to them.
That’s why it makes sense to use email segmentation to ensure that your emails are as relevant as possible.
To continue with Russel’s example, if you just sold someone a teeth whitening product, then you don’t want to send them an email promoting that same product they just bought.
You can avoid this by creating a segment for customers who have already bought that product and then excluding it from the recipients of your promotional email.
Alternatively, you can create a segment for customers who you believe could benefit from teeth whitening products and then remove them from that segment once they make a purchase.
Also, if your medical practice offers a wide variety of services that cater to different demographics, it might also make sense to create segments based on demographic traits such as gender and age.
Also, you can use automated email workflows with behavioral triggers to automatically segment your email subscribers by their behavior.
Say, if you send someone a promotional email offering a discount on a teeth whitening product but they don’t open it, that might indicate that they aren’t interested in it at all.
However, if they do open it but don’t buy it, that might indicate that they are interested but are either on the fence about it or can’t afford it at the moment.
In that case, it might make sense to send them 2 more promotional emails for that same teeth-whitening product.
And if they don’t buy it, you might want to add them to a segment of customers that might be interested in teeth whitening products so that you could email them about it in the future.
Email segmentation can help you increase the revenue of your medical practice so don’t hesitate to take advantage of this functionality!
How To Start a Weekly Email Newsletter
Everyone who uses email marketing has to deal with this conundrum:
On the one hand, you need to email your subscribers regularly to stay top of mind with them.
On the other hand, they are probably already overwhelmed by the amount of emails that they get every day, so they won’t be amused if you start bombarding them with endless sales pitches.
So how can you stay in touch with your email subscribers without alienating them?
The best solution here is to start a weekly newsletter where you provide:
- Original content.
- Useful tips.
- Interesting links.
This can help you build trust and stay top of mind with your email subscribers.
You might want to consider hiring a freelance writer to help you produce this newsletter.
You should look for someone who has the relevant background to create the kind of content that you have in mind.
Make sure that everything in each newsletter issue is factually accurate and backed up by credible sources before you send it out.
As we have mentioned at the beginning of this article, the medical industry is heavily regulated, so you should consult a lawyer prior to launching a newsletter in this space.
Build A Sales Funnel For Your Medical Practice with ClickFunnels 2.0!
ClickFunnels 2.0 has everything you need to build a sales funnel for your medical practice:
- Sales funnel and landing page templates.
- Visual editor that you can use to customize those templates.
- Email marketing functionality that allows you to send broadcast emails, set up automated email sequences, and create email workflows with behavioral triggers.
What’s best is that we have a free trial which means you can check out our software without any risk.
So why not start building your sales funnel today?