When it comes to the business of physician referral management, the game has changed. While physician outreach teams used to rely on face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and occasionally fax or direct mail for marketing communications, today’s physicians now prefer lightweight and digital communication in real time.
Nowadays, 73% of physicians prefer to receive communications via email. If you’re not sending effective email campaigns, (and you may not be, as 92% of providers say they could improve their referral management tactics) you’re missing out on the ultimate way to engage physicians.
These email campaigns can be pre-programmed to auto-send with a marketing automation platform. There’s room for the entire healthcare industry to improve in this regard, as 43% of health systems still don’t use marketing automation platforms.
If your organization is among the 57% of health systems that do use marketing automation, here are 7 types of emails that can take your physician referral management program to the next level!
1. WELCOME EMAIL
Example: Sign-Up Thank You
When a physician signs up for your referral program, it’s essential to drop them a line right away to formally introduce your brand and give them more information about your services. Welcome emails are a key part of every email marketer’s toolkit, across every industry. You can set them to be tailored specifically to individual physicians based on how they first interact with your brand, and personalize their experience even from the earliest points along their customer journey.
2. CONFIRMATION EMAIL
Example: Newsletter Sign-Up Confirmation
If a physician completes a transaction or signs up for an event with your organization, it’s important to auto-send a confirmation email. That way, they’ll feel confident that their action was processed, and they’ll have an easy reference point if they ever want to check back on what happened. You can even add extra CTAs to the email, tailored to the recipient, to inspire them to engage further with your brand.
3. LEAD NURTURING EMAIL
Example: Physician Educational Email Series
Once you’ve decided that a physician in your audience is a lead worth nurturing, you can set up a lead nurturing email campaign. This consists of a series of connected emails featuring relevant and personalized content, auto-sent through your marketing automation platform. These emails should be designed to educate your customers about the services you offer, and to help keep those services at the forefront of their minds.
4. NEW CONTENT ANNOUNCEMENT
Example: Thought Leadership Blog Post
Got something fresh to share with your physician audience — a new blog post, ebook, or webinar, perhaps? That’s when you send new content announcement emails. They’re for publications, releases, and updates that are relevant to your entire audience. You’ll want to keep your email brief, focus on what’s new and why it matters to the reader, and provide a clear call-to-action to take them straight to the content in question.
5. DEDICATED SEND
Example: Event Invitation
Need to narrow down your audience a bit and send out an announcement intended just for a select group? That’s what dedicated sends are for. They’re great for event invites and updates, or for when you want to market a particular service to a more specifically-tailored audience.
6. CO-MARKETING EMAIL
Example: Joint Event
Sometimes, you may collaborate with another company or health system for an event or service offering. When you advertise this collaboration to your physician audience via email, it’s called a co-marketing email. It’s important for the visuals of this email to make your relationship with the other organization clear by including their logo alongside your own, and explaining the partnership — and how it stands to benefit physicians — in the body content.
7. SALES (OR “PHYSICIAN LIAISON”) EMAILS
Example: First-Touch Physician Liaison Outreach
This is less of an email type, and more of a great email strategy. First, work with your sales team to identify the most common types of emails they use. Then, work with your physician liaison team to develop best-in-class templates. You can add these templates to a sales productivity solution like Salesforce Engage, so reps can access a library of pre-built emails with a single click. This makes it easy for your liaison team to stay on-brand and on-message, and helps drive productivity by reducing the amount of time spent creating new emails.
You can build all of these emails — and so many more! — for your physician referral management program with a marketing automation platform. To discover how Pardot can change the game for your physician referral management program, check out the following resources:
- Guide: What is Marketing Automation?
- Webinar: Pardot for Healthcare: Driving Engagement in Life Sciences
- Webinar: The Secrets to Effective Lead Nurturing in Life Sciences
- Blog: Three Keys to Successful Physician Referral Management
- Blog: 3 Digital Marketing Strategies to Better Engage Healthcare Professionals