Can you show me where it hurts? This simple question is asked in hospitals, clinics, and doctor’s offices every day, so perhaps it’s not such a bad way to start a conversation about marketing automation in the healthcare industry.
It’s only when you understand the pain points in your marketing strategy that you can truly understand how a technology like marketing automation can make everything better. So, let’s ask that question one more time.
Healthcare Marketing: Where Does It Hurt?
Marketing automation technology can alleviate many different pain points in healthcare marketing. If you work in the healthcare industry, here are ten “ouchies” that might need urgent attention. Let’s check your symptoms.
1. High Patient No-Show Rates
Patient no-shows disrupt the entire healthcare process—clinical staff end up with schedule gaps, and other patients miss out on timely care. But this can be easily avoided. Marketing automation helps reduce no-shows by sending automated, timely reminders via email or SMS. These reminders keep appointments at the forefront of patients’ minds, increasing the likelihood that they will show up as planned and keeping schedules full and care flowing smoothly.
2. Inefficient Patient Communication
In a busy healthcare setting, managing patient communications, whether it’s scheduling appointments, sending follow-up reminders, or providing patient education, can quickly become overwhelming and disorganized. This often leads to mistakes, diminished patient experiences, and lost opportunities for meaningful engagement. Marketing automation streamlines these processes by automating routine communications, ensuring that patients receive timely and accurate information without overburdening the staff, leading to smoother operations and enhanced patient satisfaction.
3. Lack of Personalization in Patient Outreach
Healthcare providers often struggle with personalizing communication due to the manual effort involved. Generic messages can feel impersonal, leading to lower patient engagement. Marketing automation solves this by enabling segmentation and personalization, making communications more relevant to each patient’s needs.
4. Difficulty Managing Patient Retention
Many healthcare providers face challenges with patient retention, especially when patients don’t receive or miss timely reminders for annual check-ups, vaccinations, or post-care follow-ups. Marketing automation can ensure that patients receive regular, personalized communications, helping maintain strong relationships and improving retention.
5. Limited Staff Resources for Marketing Efforts
Because healthcare staff are typically (and quite rightly) more focused on patient care than marketing, this leaves little time for manual marketing tasks. Marketing automation alleviates this burden by handling repetitive tasks like sending emails or SMS text messages, managing patient feedback, and nurturing new patient leads.
6. Inconsistent Follow-Up on New Patient Inquiries
New patient inquiries (it seems a little crass to call them leads) can easily slip through the cracks if they’re not followed up quickly and consistently. This can result in missed opportunities to grow the patient base. By using automation, you can efficiently identify and prioritize new patients while ensuring timely, personalized communication every step of the way.
7. Difficulty Scaling Marketing Efforts
As healthcare practices grow, manually scaling marketing efforts can become overwhelming. Handling larger volumes of patient communications, lead generation, and nurturing without automation can result in delays or errors. Marketing automation allows providers to scale their marketing efficiently without sacrificing quality or consistency.
8. Poor Tracking of Marketing ROI
Many healthcare providers struggle to track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns or calculate the return on investment (ROI). Without clear insights, it’s difficult to know which strategies are working. Marketing automation platforms provide detailed analytics, making it easier to track patient engagement, campaign performance, and overall ROI.
9. Challenges in Managing Online Reputation
Online reviews are critical for attracting new patients, but managing and soliciting reviews manually is time-consuming. A lack of systemized reputation management can lead to missed opportunities for improving the practice’s online presence. Automation can streamline the review request process, helping providers gather more positive reviews and address negative feedback promptly.
10. Difficulty Staying HIPAA-Compliant
Handling patient information for marketing campaigns and other communications requires strict adherence to healthcare privacy regulations, such as HIPAA. Manually managing communications increases the risk of errors and non-compliance. Marketing automation platforms that are HIPAA compliant, like the emfluence Marketing Platform, ensure the secure handling of patient data and reduce the risk of regulatory violations.
Your Prescription for Better Marketing Automation
Once you’ve identified your symptoms, it’s time to consider a treatment plan.
The emfluence Marketing Platform is a comprehensive and HIPAA-compliant solution that helps healthcare marketers automate and streamline essential patient communications. It can centralize and automate routine tasks such as appointment scheduling, follow-up reminders, and patient education, reducing the risk of disorganization and errors.
The emfluence Marketing Platform allows healthcare marketers to segment patient lists for personalized engagement, ensuring patients receive relevant, targeted communications tailored to their health needs. Additionally, its lead nurturing tools automate follow-ups with potential patients, turning inquiries into appointments without adding extra work for staff – enabling them to spend more time caring for their patients.
Book an Appointment with a Healthcare Marketing Expert Today
To learn more about how the HIPAA-compliant emfluence Marketing Platform can help your healthcare organization streamline its patient communications and marketing campaigns, schedule an appointment with one of our healthcare marketing experts today at expert@emfluence.com.
