How to collect email addresses from your clients

Knowing that email marketing is important is a great start. This blog post from INC.com gives 5 reasons why it still works as a marketing tool and this one from Impactbnd.com gives a compelling list of 25!

Coming up with content, although time consuming to write it down, should also be relatively easy – you’re in a practice full of interesting stories and seasonal tips. Your content is so good it is even worthy of the BBC’s homepage, like this story was. Couple that with special offers, staff news and announcements and your emails will be jam packed and fun to read. We can also help with this bit – see our email packages.

So the final piece of the puzzle…people to send it to! You need to collect your clients’ email addresses. So we’ve popped together some tips to help:

Add a sign up form to your website

This is really common on company websites now and people often sign up unprompted because they’ll want to know your news and hear of any offers. Here’s ours!

Have a sign up sheet at reception

A classic tactic! Have a sheet and a pen at the reception desk, making it easy for people to sign up right there.

Ask online

Ask on your social media channels and ask frequently. Not everybody will see every post (post exposure depends on all sorts of factors, not least of all time), so try posting about it weekly. Post exposure also relies on the ‘weight’ of your post, and picture posts ‘weigh’ more, so post your message alongside an engaging image.

Incentivise

Give people a reason – 10% of a dental check up, a free sample of a product, a free nurse check of their choice…

Request it when updating their details

When your clients come into your practice and check in for their appointment, ask them if you can update their contact details – email is part of this (it’s also very common to request this now so people will usually not think twice about giving it).

Put a (clean!) dog bowl at reception for business cards

Another common tactic, this one will work well with a draw, something like “We pick a winning card every month, this month the prize is…Congratulations to last month’s winner… who won…”

Add a sign up form to your Facebook page

You can build a tab on Facebook which houses an online email sign up form.

Run Facebook ads directing them to your online newsletter sign up form

Facebook ads are a low cost, highly targeted way of advertising. Create ads that link straight to your sign up form on your website or straight to a sign up form tab on your Facebook page. We can help with this.

Add a sign up form to your blog

If you write a blog post (and if you don’t yet, here’s why you should), add your newsletter sign up form there too.

Incentivise your team

Probably one of the most important ones (note how I’ve bolded it)…your team are collectively in the best position to ask for email addresses (using some of the suggestions above). Incentivise them with shopping vouchers, a lie in, a day off tea duty, etc, to whoever collects the most email addresses every week!

Once you’ve got this list of email addresses, make sure you put them to good use with regular email campaigns full of interesting content, calls to action and reminders. We can also help here, with our flexible email marketing packages. Contact us and we can talk you through how we can help your practice.