Marketing to physicians should be a cornerstone of any imaging center’s overall strategy.

Effectively marketing to physicians comes down to professional relationships. Building and maintaining relationships with both current and prospective referring physicians is the name of the game. Email is an effective and surprisingly personal method for doing just that.

But what should your radiology email marketing convey? When should you send them? And how do you determine what’s working and what’s not?

Needless to say, setting up automated email funnels for various groups can be tricky. Today we are here to help you build your roadmap to email success.

But before we dive in, remember, your marketing is only as good as your reputation.

If your reviews are less than stellar, not only will patients look elsewhere for care, physicians will look elsewhere when sending referrals.

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Writing physician emails to increase patient referrals

First and foremost, your focus should be on your physician emails. Since doctors are the ones referring patients to your facility for diagnostic tests, they need to be your focus. As a diagnostic center, one of your most valuable relationships is with referring physicians.

There are three groups of physicians to consider here.

1. Potential relationships: Doctors who have not referred anyone to you, but that you would like to build a relationship with. (Cold leads)
2. Previous relationships: Doctors who have referred patients in the past, but not within the last few months. (Warm leads)
3. Current relationships: Doctors that have recently referred patients. (Hot leads)

Each of these groups needs to have their own automation funnel which we will go over next.

If you’re new to email funnels, this article will get you up to speed on the basics.

New Physicians: Using a radiology newsletter to build relationships

Gaining traction with a provider that has never referred to your center is the most difficult group to engage so it’s very important that you are selective with the content you include in your radiology newsletters to these offices.

For radiology email marketing, the most important question you can ask yourself here is:

How can I best provide value to the person I am reaching out to?

Here are some proven tactics to use:

• Personalize each email by medical specialization. By targeting the physician’s specialty you can provide information that is specific and therefore most useful to that office.
• Let them know you researched them. If you’re sending cold emails you don’t want people to think you’re emailing every doctor this side of the Mississippi, but that you chose to reach out to them for a reason (which should be the truth anyway). Tell the referring provider exactly why you chose to reach out to them. These reasons could be:

• • • Their location is close to your imaging facility
  • • They are new to the area
  • • Their specialty is also your specialty
  • You have a relationship with one of their partners
    

• Introduce your facility. Let them know who you are and why they may be interested in building a relationship with your radiology center. This is your chance to focus on your strengths.
• Ask them a question. Give them an opportunity to tell you what they are looking for or what they are having trouble with. You can send out a survey asking things like:

• • • What difficulties do you face when referring patients to a diagnostic facility?
  • What are the biggest factors you consider when choosing a facility to refer patients to?

Important note: Always be respectful and courteous of their time. When marketing to physicians that you have not worked with previously, make it very clear that they can choose to stop receiving your radiology emails marketing at any time and make it easy for them to do so.

Winning back physicians who have referred patients to you previously

There could be a number of reasons that a physician who has previously referred patients to your imaging center is no longer doing so. Marketing to doctors in this category means striving to understand what caused them to stop referring and what you can do to make them interested in sending patients once more.

Here are some strategies to use when reaching out to this group:

• Update them on what’s new with your facility. If they haven’t talked to you in a while, they likely aren’t up to speed on any new equipment, software, and referring guidelines you may have. Letting them know what they missed could mean you’ve already resolved the thing that made them leave in the first place.
• Remind them of your referral process. Sometimes reminding people of how easy it is to work with you makes a big difference.
• Let them get to know your staff better. Did you hire a new office manager? Let people know who to contact to get in touch with you. Giving everyone the chance to learn who’s who on your team will help strengthen relationships with physicians. Putting faces to names also helps make your business memorable.

Maintaining relationships with physicians who are currently referring patients

Making sure you’re fostering strong relationships with currently referring physicians is vital. The content you send to this group is highly dependent on the nature of your current relationship. So, always be sure you’re only sending emails to these doctors if and when they are wanting to receive them. If you have determined that these providers are interested in getting emails from your imaging center, here are some tips:

• Tell them something they don’t know. Do some research so they don’t have to. Maybe there is a new imaging technology that is being developed for their specialty or maybe there are some new findings in how to interpret the results of a scan. Find the information that is most valuable to show them you care about their interests.
• Make every email personalized. Maybe you have a doctor that is interested in hearing about new medical technology, and another doctor that is interested in hearing about upcoming community events. Ask people not only if they are interested in getting your emails, but also, what they are interested hearing about.
• Learn how you can help them. It may be that there are ways you could help your referring providers out that you don’t know they need. So why not ask them? Finding out how you can best help people means you will understand what you can do to provide value to them.

Effective email marketing to referring physicians takes time

Maintaining mutually beneficial relationships doesn’t have to be hard, but it does take work. With these tactics, you can write effective radiology email marketing to your referring physicians that provide value to your referring partners. Every physician’s office is unique and research is an ongoing process. Measure your progress often to find what emails are best for your diagnostic imaging center.

In need of effective and professional email marketing centered on increasing provider referrals?

Click to learn how the Radiant Referral Growth System can help!