Making the most of good ‘old-fashioned’ email

Email still matters, especially in light of research¹ showing that as a promotion medium, it can give the best return on investment of any digital marketing activity. 

At the SPVS/VPMA Focus on Technology Day in Daventry, I shared my top dos and don’ts when it comes to email communication.

First and foremost, to run a successful email promotion, you need a good, reliable and clean database of email addresses. All veterinary practices have a database of clients and most are electronic and reasonably up to date, but it is amazing how few records include accurate email addresses.

Rule one

So rule number one is to make capturing and/or checking email addresses an automatic reflex in every contact with a pet owner by every member of the practice team.

Reception staff need to be trained to check the records every time they speak to someone on the telephone or face to face and if there isn’t an email address, ask for one.

Vets should check email addresses when looking up the pet’s records during a consult, and if it isn’t there, ask for it. If you have a newsletter, invite anyone visiting your website to sign up and give you his or her email address. Also try running offline competitions where emails can be gathered, but always bear in mind data protection law when doing so.

Once you’ve got your emails, it is worth segmenting them according to species, age, health problems, date of last visit, date of next vaccine and so on. Most practice management  computer systems have the facility to dovetail your email marketing plan into other marketing activity.

You should also be able to cross reference so you can avoid overloading individual clients. Experience suggests people will respond to sales messages in an email much more readily than from social media sites, but don’t forget you are their trusted vet, so keep sales emails to a sensible level and concentrate on products or services that are directly relevant.

Tailor your message

The more tailored the message, the more likely clients are to respond positively. If you send an email to all owners who have dogs more than 10 years old, inviting them to a free senior health clinic, it is more likely to receive a good response than a blanket email to all pet owners offering a 10 per cent discount on dog food.

You should always offer clients the opportunity to unsubscribe from emails, but try to word this in such a way that you can still send them individual reminders for vaccinations, worm and flea treatments. If the message is always appropriate and targeted, it should keep the number of unsubscribes to a minimum.

Also, think about who and where the email comes from and how it appears in the recipients email inbox. For instance, Smith’s Veterinary Hospital is much better than [email protected] as the sender. It is also essential it is sent from an email address the recipient can reply to and that replies go to someone who has the time to send a prompt and personal response.

Ownership

In my experience, the most successful email strategies are those where one individual within the practice assumes ownership. Everyone in the practice should be engaged in thinking about capturing emails, but give one person overall responsibility.

Most importantly, allow this person an oversight and control over how many emails are sent out and when, so owners are not receiving several emails from different people in the practice on the same week day – or even the same day.