Email can be an effective marketing method for imaging centers. Whether you’re currently sending out emails, or not, this article will explain exactly what you should write about, who you should send to, and much more.
Should Email Be A Cornerstone Of Your Diagnostic Imaging Marketing Strategy?
Is your diagnostic imaging marketing plan not producing the results you want? We all get emails in our inbox, but sending emails out isn’t so easy, especially for an imaging center. There are plenty of resources out there that detail how to sell products through email, but not many that are specific to the medical field, much less email marketing for an imaging center.
But don’t be discouraged, email can certainly be an effective marketing method for imaging centers. Whether you’re currently sending out emails, or not, this article will explain exactly what you should write about, who you should send to, and much more.
Remember, even though email can be an effective marketing option, it should be one of many tools in your marketing toolbox. Your diagnostic imaging center reputation should have a management plan to keep your audience, patients and physicians alike, interested in doing business with you.
Don’t Let Your Competition Win Over Your Patient Base!
Email Marketing to Physicians for Referrals: Do it Right and You’ll Easily Get More Patients
Healthcare providers are obviously people you want on your side. If you have a designated Physician Liaison they have likely delved into this to some degree. However, marketing to physicians for referrals is a tricky business. Monetarily, it seems providers offices wouldn’t have much to gain by sending patients to any particular imaging center since it doesn’t directly impact their bottom line. Upon closer inspection, however, it’s clear that when patients are happy with an imaging center, and their doctor, everyone benefits.
It’s up to you to show providers not only that you are interested in their referrals, but that you are taking stock in their practice and the well-being of their patients. Your center’s diagnostic marketing emails to physicians should reflect this.
Provide value in every email you send
Like most of us, doctors don’t have time or patience for emails that are generic and salesy. People want to open emails that are chock full of useful information that is specific to the problems they are facing. This is important to keep in mind when incorporating emails into your diagnostic imaging marketing plan for gaining new referrals. Here are a few ways you can provide valuable information in your emails to referring providers. Help them help their patients. Anything from scheduling advice to training tips on staff and patient interactions, to the delivery of test results can be good information. Do some research to find what your specific providers would find most valuable. Help them help their practice. With healthcare, there are always new medications on the market and treatment options being developed. Help doctors stay up to date with recent research and popular topics related to their specialty.
Pro Tip 1:Don’t include a request in your emails. Instead, include key information about your imaging facility to help providers see the value and quality care your radiology center offers.
Pro Tip 2:Do your research. Take the time to learn as much as you can about each provider you’re reaching out to. It’s also important to research their specialty to better understand what value you can provide. For example, you might find articles that are of particular interest to Orthopedic Surgeons.
Get More Patients Through Radiology Email Marketing
Your diagnostic email marketing strategy is incomplete until you are sending effective emails to your existing patients. You may wonder how sending emails to current patients will help you get more patients coming in the door. The answer is community awareness.
When people read about something interesting, have a great experience, or save a ton of money, they tend to tell their friend, family, and coworkers about it. Here are a few ways to encourage your patients to spread the word.
Remind them how much money they saved. Find out how much the local hospital charges for the same exam and let patients know how much they would have spent elsewhere. Send patients interesting and actionable health information. There are countless article topics that people may find interesting. Find some articles that really help people understand their health, risk factors, and symptoms. Ask patients to like your imaging center on social media. If you’re confident that a patient was happy with their experience (you can find out with a satisfaction survey) there’s no harm in asking them to like or follow you. Just make sure you’re providing useful information on your social media sites to keep your followers engaged.
Pro Tip 1:Personalize and segment your patient emails. What is true for provider emails, is also true for patients. Generic emails are always a no-go in diagnostic imaging marketing.
Pro Tip 2:Track your results. The goal is to increase patient volume. If you don’t track your results, you will never know what emails are engaging and how many new patients are coming into your imaging center due to your efforts. Track your open and click rate for each email and be sure to ask new patients where they heard about your radiology center.
Pro Tip 3:Make sure you’re staying HIPPA compliant and that patients you email have agreed to be emailed. Of course in your email marketing for your imaging center, maintaining HIPPA compliance is a must. You may want to utilize an email opt-in selection on your patient registration forms so you know who to send emails to.
Email marketing to patients is an effective way to build a following and empower your patients to take an active role in their health care choices. Well informed and empowered patients also are more likely to schedule follow up exams when their doctor recommends them.
Build and Nurture Relationships With Emails
Email is not only a great marketing tool, it can also help you nurture your existing relationships with physicians and patients. Maintaining and increasing patient retention should always be a top priority and paying attention to what your patient need and want is key.
Keep people in the know by using emails to send out:
Appointment reminders and follow up reminders
Updates about new additionals or processes at your imaging center
Invitations to any events your radiology group is sponsoring or hosting in the community such as free health screenings.
If you’re already sending out emails to patients and physicians, and you are not getting the response you expect, it could be that your emails are not being received due to spam filters. In other cases, it may be that your emails are not being opened because your subject lines need some work. If you’re seeing low open rates, especially with your email marketing to physicians for referrals, you should address the issue before implementing new strategies.
Admittedly, marketing to physicians for referrals isn’t easy, even if you are an experienced email marketer. But, the rewards are well worth spending the time to craft your messages carefully. Always strive to give more than you ask in return and to respect the time and wishes of everyone you send to.
Analyzing your results regularly will help guide your future efforts. It’s crucial to know your open and click rate on each email so you can fine-tune your approach to marketing your imaging center. A/B or Split Testing is a great way to test out various content or subject lines to find what is most popular among your readers. Most email marketing services such as MailChimp offer an easy way to set up an A/B test.
Email is an effective approach to diagnostic imaging marketing if you do it right
Sending out emails without a clearly defined strategy is like cooking for dinner guests without a recipe. It might start out great, but once you get going you’re bound to run into some problems. And serving a burnt casserole at your party is not so impressive.
With some research, individual consideration, and careful planning, you will find that email is a very useful tool for gaining new business and nurturing existing relationships.
Taking a step back to assess what your patients and referring physicians really want and need from you will help you effectively incorporate email into your diagnostic imaging marketing plan with a solid path.
How would you like to market your center to referring physicians with Medical Practice Growth Tips and Doctor to Doctor articles?
Diagnostic Imaging Marketing Strategies & How to Make Them Work for Your Practice
The healthcare scene is constantly changing, and diagnostic imaging is no different. To put your business ahead of other local facilities, you need to be in front of your referring providers, patients, and employers in ways that your competitors aren’t.
Did you know? Healthcare is second only to hotels and restaurants as the industry with the most read online reviews.
One of the fastest and most effective ways to market an imaging center is to have excellent reviews and community trust and that means being proactive about your reputation. Even with 10 or 20 good reviews, your average star rating could plummet with just a couple of unhappy patients.
With these simple strategies, your diagnostic imaging center can rise above the competition and automate a lot of that work!
1. Get Ranked on Google to Grow Your Radiology Marketing
From a digital perspective, one of the MOST important things for your diagnostics center’s online marketing is to be ranked on Google Places when people search for you or for diagnostic imaging in your area. Remember, patients, providers, and employers don’t think about the technical terminology the same way you do. Make sure to help them by using layman’s terms on your website so you rank for what they are searching for. For more information on how to set up your Google Places for a diagnostic imaging center take a look at this article.
If you want to know if you are showing up properly, just go to Google and search for the following terms:
MRI exam
CT exam
Cat Scan
Ultrasound
MRI in my area
Best MRI near me
At the top of the page, you should see a map of local companies providing imaging services. Getting to the top of this list can be the difference between success and failure. Remember, Google is going to show what is most RELEVANT, so make sure you have the right content on your site to get to the top.
If you’re not at the top, make sure to click the ‘More Places’ link at the bottom and see if you’re on the full list. There are a lot of resources online to show you how to reach the top of this list.
Contact us if you’re interested in getting to the top of Google Places and growing your referrals!
2. Keep Your Radiology Marketing Focus Local
Make the biggest impact on your medical imaging marketing by focusing on what you can impact the most. We all know that diagnostic centers support their regions. By tracking exactly what zip codes people are coming from, you can tailor your marketing efforts for maximum effectiveness.
The big question we so often hear is, “How do I do that?”
Sponsor after-school events for the top school or schools in the area.
Run Facebook ads to the businesses in the specified locations.
There are tons of ways to target the right people once you know who they are. If you’re interested in learning about new ways to do this, some of our other blog articles go into specifics.
Grow Your Diagnostic Imaging Referrals
I know what you’re probably thinking, “Of course I should grow my referrals! That’s why I’m here reading your article!” So let’s get right into it! Here are a few of the many methods of growing your imaging center’s referrals:
3. Consistent Diagnostics Patient Outreach
The easiest way to get new sales is to sell to existing customers. So why are you letting your customers go to another diagnostics facility? Keeping in front of customers is simple. Sign up for an email marketing tool such as MailChimp or Drip.co, put together an automated set of emails that go out to new customers or patients starting a week after their visit and STAY IN FRONT OF THEM!
4. Educate Your Patients
A lot of people won’t come back for another exam because they won’t need one. But their friends will. So send them important information about their health, interesting articles about what is going on with the amazing technology involved in diagnostic imaging, as well as specials and coupons to be shared with friends, and you could be looking at a pretty substantial ROI pretty fast.
Another simple tactic is to send a canned email out to each new patient with a link to a video about their exam. Use videos that other diagnostics facilities have done that are not in your region. No one is going to notice a logo from a company in California if you are in Georgia. But if they have great videos, your patients, and your company should benefit.
5. Make the Rounds
One of the very best and most important things you can do to promote your diagnostics center and grow your referrals is to make the rounds to your referring providers.
Maintaining and improving relationships with referring providers is probably the number one way to keep your diagnostics center growing. While you’re out saying hello, make sure you remember the Stark Laws and know what you can and can’t do!
If you’re nervous about giving something physical to a provider or their office at all, how about just something intangible, like knowledge? Education such as emails, links to Youtube videos, and emailed PDFs. to help providers learn how to grow their practices is never illegal as far as we know.
6. Stay in front of your diagnostics customers
Another simple way to improve your diagnostics marketing is to stay in front of your diagnostics customers with some simple modern technology. If customers have opted in and agree to receive educational emails from you, then you can send out:
Surveys – find out what you did right and wrong, but also use these to stay in front of patients!
Educational Emails – Instead of talking about radiology and promoting your diagnostic marketing, how about going into your customer’s day to day lives? Education on how to avoid injuries could be more helpful than learning how to scan for injuries that they have.
Let your patients refer one another – There are no laws against patients referring one another, and there are a ton of ways to do that. Just reach out to patients online or in person and ask if they know anyone that needs help.
7. Stay relevant by showing your personality
Your business isn’t made up of robots. The people at your diagnostics center or centers are loving, kind, good people that want to help. So many companies do group lunches, the Thanksgiving pie making contest (Julie won last year, but I was in a close second), learning events, and training.
Showing your customer base that you are real people creates a story and personality. The easiest way to show everyone is through social media, and particularly through Facebook and Instagram.
Adding to Facebook is super simple. Just create a business page on Facebook, log in, and start adding posts. Some things that you may want to show the world:
Customer testimonials as text and pictures or as videos.
Employee of The Month
Office events or parties
Provider testimonials
A diagnostics center walkthrough, showing all the rooms with all the modalities. You can just do this on your iPhone or Android, it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.
While you’re setting everything up, make sure to add to your Facebook page:
Address – it will automatically show a map to your location for your audience here.
Website Link
Hours – A lot of people look at Facebook first to check business hours
A picture of your facility – Showing the front of your facility as the main image can make it a lot easier for people to find you.
Links to other important information such as pricing, other locations, the patient and provider portals, pre-exam forms, etc.
8. Know your neighbors!
You have the greatest impact in your immediate area. The easiest way to start drawing in new patients and referring providers is to get out and knock on some doors or send direct mail to your neighborhood businesses and residents. Forming relationships with people is key to keeping your business running, and who better to start with than the business next door?
9. Majority of referrals comes from 20% of providers
If you haven’t already, know who the top 20% of referring providers are, and KEEP THEM HAPPY! We don’t have to tell you the best ways to do that. But is easy to forget who keeps the business running and treat someone sending you a lot of patients the same as someone sending in just a few per month or year.
Not everyone is the same, and some providers deserve more attention than others. So, how do you do that?
Know who they are – if you don’t already, you should be able to look into your RIS system and check the top providers right away.
Make a list of your top providers and post it up for your team to see.
At your team meetings go through this list and read off the list to everyone.
Make sure that if a provider on this list is having some difficulty, you can get them special treatment or a higher level person to handle their needs.
Consider a concierge-level service team just for these providers that calls regularly to check in with everyone, makes sure they are always ordering the right exams, and caters to their needs.
10. Don’t tell, ASK!
So often, marketing reps making calls on referring providers want to talk all about the facility, the new magnet they just installed, and what they can do for the providers’ offices. What these reps so often forget to do is ask the right questions then let the office manager or provider talk.
If you ask the right questions, they will tell you how you can meet their needs. Remember, the one thing that everyone wants to talk about is themselves. So, ask open-ended questions and let them talk!
Some questions to consider asking:
How is business going?
Any issues with getting your exams recently?
What can we do better?
How are things changing in your practice?
What are some of your biggest problems right now?
If they don’t feel like talking, that’s another story. But most people do.
11. Find your strengths, know your weaknesses
Some questions you may want to ask yourself and your team:
What advantages does your diagnostics center have over your competition?
What makes your team unique?
What are the major areas you can improve upon?
What are your biggest obstacles to growth now? In the future?
These are all part of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. Putting together a bi-yearly SWOT analysis for your diagnostic center marketing plan as well as for your company and team as a whole, then comparing it against the previous analysis can provide great insight into your team’s growth and failures.
Use These Techniques to become a Diagnostic Imaging Marketing Pro
In the face of lowering reimbursements, Stark Law, dropping industry profits, and an overall difficult business environment, reaching out to your providers, customers/patients, and local employers is absolutely key to success.
Now that you’ve got some marketing ideas on how to grow your diagnostics imaging marketing plan and business, we would love to know what you liked and didn’t like from our list.
What did we miss? Are there any tactics you want to share that have worked well for you? How about some advertising methods? Post what you’ve got in the discussion below.
Diagnostic Imaging Marketing Strategies & How to Make Them Work for Your Practice
The healthcare scene is constantly changing, and diagnostic imaging is no different. To put your business ahead of other local facilities, you need to be in front of your referring providers, patients, and employers in ways that your competitors aren’t.
Did you know? Healthcare is second only to hotels and restaurants as the industry with the most read online reviews.
One of the fastest and most effective ways to market an imaging center is to have excellent reviews and community trust and that means being proactive about your reputation. Even with 10 or 20 good reviews, your average star rating could plummet with just a couple of unhappy patients.
With these simple strategies, your diagnostic imaging center can rise above the competition and automate a lot of that work!
1. Get Ranked on Google to Grow Your Radiology Marketing
From a digital perspective, one of the MOST important things for your diagnostics center’s online marketing is to be ranked on Google Places when people search for you or for diagnostic imaging in your area. Remember, patients, providers, and employers don’t think about the technical terminology the same way you do. Make sure to help them by using layman’s terms on your website so you rank for what they are searching for. For more information on how to set up your Google Places for a diagnostic imaging center take a look at this article.
If you want to know if you are showing up properly, just go to Google and search for the following terms:
MRI exam
CT exam
Cat Scan
Ultrasound
MRI in my area
Best MRI near me
At the top of the page, you should see a map of local companies providing imaging services. Getting to the top of this list can be the difference between success and failure. Remember, Google is going to show what is most RELEVANT, so make sure you have the right content on your site to get to the top.
If you’re not at the top, make sure to click the ‘More Places’ link at the bottom and see if you’re on the full list. There are a lot of resources online to show you how to reach the top of this list.
Contact us if you’re interested in getting to the top of Google Places and growing your referrals!
2. Keep Your Radiology Marketing Focus Local
Make the biggest impact on your medical imaging marketing by focusing on what you can impact the most. We all know that diagnostic centers support their regions. By tracking exactly what zip codes people are coming from, you can tailor your marketing efforts for maximum effectiveness.
The big question we so often hear is, “How do I do that?”
Sponsor after-school events for the top school or schools in the area.
Run Facebook ads to the businesses in the specified locations.
There are tons of ways to target the right people once you know who they are. If you’re interested in learning about new ways to do this, some of our other blog articles go into specifics.
Grow Your Diagnostic Imaging Referrals
I know what you’re probably thinking, “Of course I should grow my referrals! That’s why I’m here reading your article!” So let’s get right into it! Here are a few of the many methods of growing your imaging center’s referrals:
3. Consistent Diagnostics Patient Outreach
The easiest way to get new sales is to sell to existing customers. So why are you letting your customers go to another diagnostics facility? Keeping in front of customers is simple. Sign up for an email marketing tool such as MailChimp or Drip.co, put together an automated set of emails that go out to new customers or patients starting a week after their visit and STAY IN FRONT OF THEM!
4. Educate Your Patients
A lot of people won’t come back for another exam because they won’t need one. But their friends will. So send them important information about their health, interesting articles about what is going on with the amazing technology involved in diagnostic imaging, as well as specials and coupons to be shared with friends, and you could be looking at a pretty substantial ROI pretty fast.
Another simple tactic is to send a canned email out to each new patient with a link to a video about their exam. Use videos that other diagnostics facilities have done that are not in your region. No one is going to notice a logo from a company in California if you are in Georgia. But if they have great videos, your patients, and your company should benefit.
5. Make the Rounds
One of the very best and most important things you can do to promote your diagnostics center and grow your referrals is to make the rounds to your referring providers.
Maintaining and improving relationships with referring providers is probably the number one way to keep your diagnostics center growing. While you’re out saying hello, make sure you remember the Stark Laws and know what you can and can’t do!
If you’re nervous about giving something physical to a provider or their office at all, how about just something intangible, like knowledge? Education such as emails, links to Youtube videos, and emailed PDFs. to help providers learn how to grow their practices is never illegal as far as we know.
6. Stay in front of your diagnostics customers
Another simple way to improve your diagnostics marketing is to stay in front of your diagnostics customers with some simple modern technology. If customers have opted in and agree to receive educational emails from you, then you can send out:
Surveys – find out what you did right and wrong, but also use these to stay in front of patients!
Educational Emails – Instead of talking about radiology and promoting your diagnostic marketing, how about going into your customer’s day to day lives? Education on how to avoid injuries could be more helpful than learning how to scan for injuries that they have.
Let your patients refer one another – There are no laws against patients referring one another, and there are a ton of ways to do that. Just reach out to patients online or in person and ask if they know anyone that needs help.
7. Stay relevant by showing your personality
Your business isn’t made up of robots. The people at your diagnostics center or centers are loving, kind, good people that want to help. So many companies do group lunches, the Thanksgiving pie making contest (Julie won last year, but I was in a close second), learning events, and training.
Showing your customer base that you are real people creates a story and personality. The easiest way to show everyone is through social media, and particularly through Facebook and Instagram.
Adding to Facebook is super simple. Just create a business page on Facebook, log in, and start adding posts. Some things that you may want to show the world:
Customer testimonials as text and pictures or as videos.
Employee of The Month
Office events or parties
Provider testimonials
A diagnostics center walkthrough, showing all the rooms with all the modalities. You can just do this on your iPhone or Android, it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time.
While you’re setting everything up, make sure to add to your Facebook page:
Address – it will automatically show a map to your location for your audience here.
Website Link
Hours – A lot of people look at Facebook first to check business hours
A picture of your facility – Showing the front of your facility as the main image can make it a lot easier for people to find you.
Links to other important information such as pricing, other locations, the patient and provider portals, pre-exam forms, etc.
8. Know your neighbors!
You have the greatest impact in your immediate area. The easiest way to start drawing in new patients and referring providers is to get out and knock on some doors or send direct mail to your neighborhood businesses and residents. Forming relationships with people is key to keeping your business running, and who better to start with than the business next door?
9. Majority of referrals comes from 20% of providers
If you haven’t already, know who the top 20% of referring providers are, and KEEP THEM HAPPY! We don’t have to tell you the best ways to do that. But is easy to forget who keeps the business running and treat someone sending you a lot of patients the same as someone sending in just a few per month or year.
Not everyone is the same, and some providers deserve more attention than others. So, how do you do that?
Know who they are – if you don’t already, you should be able to look into your RIS system and check the top providers right away.
Make a list of your top providers and post it up for your team to see.
At your team meetings go through this list and read off the list to everyone.
Make sure that if a provider on this list is having some difficulty, you can get them special treatment or a higher level person to handle their needs.
Consider a concierge-level service team just for these providers that calls regularly to check in with everyone, makes sure they are always ordering the right exams, and caters to their needs.
10. Don’t tell, ASK!
So often, marketing reps making calls on referring providers want to talk all about the facility, the new magnet they just installed, and what they can do for the providers’ offices. What these reps so often forget to do is ask the right questions then let the office manager or provider talk.
If you ask the right questions, they will tell you how you can meet their needs. Remember, the one thing that everyone wants to talk about is themselves. So, ask open-ended questions and let them talk!
Some questions to consider asking:
How is business going?
Any issues with getting your exams recently?
What can we do better?
How are things changing in your practice?
What are some of your biggest problems right now?
If they don’t feel like talking, that’s another story. But most people do.
11. Find your strengths, know your weaknesses
Some questions you may want to ask yourself and your team:
What advantages does your diagnostics center have over your competition?
What makes your team unique?
What are the major areas you can improve upon?
What are your biggest obstacles to growth now? In the future?
These are all part of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. Putting together a bi-yearly SWOT analysis for your diagnostic center marketing plan as well as for your company and team as a whole, then comparing it against the previous analysis can provide great insight into your team’s growth and failures.
Use These Techniques to become a Diagnostic Imaging Marketing Pro
In the face of lowering reimbursements, Stark Law, dropping industry profits, and an overall difficult business environment, reaching out to your providers, customers/patients, and local employers is absolutely key to success.
Now that you’ve got some marketing ideas on how to grow your diagnostics imaging marketing plan and business, we would love to know what you liked and didn’t like from our list.
What did we miss? Are there any tactics you want to share that have worked well for you? How about some advertising methods? Post what you’ve got in the discussion below.
Healthcare providers are obviously people you want on your side. If you have a designated Physician Liaison they have likely delved into this to some degree. However, marketing to physicians for referrals is a tricky business. Monetarily, it seems providers offices wouldn’t have much to gain by sending patients to any particular imaging center since it doesn’t directly impact their bottom line. Upon closer inspection, however, it’s clear that when patients are happy with an imaging center, and their doctor, everyone benefits.
Like most of us, doctors don’t have time or patience for emails that are generic and salesy. People want to open emails that are chock full of useful information that is specific to the problems they are facing. This is important to keep in mind when incorporating emails into your diagnostic imaging marketing plan for gaining new referrals. Here are a few ways you can provide valuable information in your emails to referring providers.
When people read about something interesting, have a great experience, or save a ton of money, they tend to tell their friend, family, and coworkers about it. Here are a few ways to encourage your patients to spread the word.
Email is not only a great marketing tool, it can also help you nurture your existing relationships with physicians and patients. Maintaining and increasing patient retention should always be a top priority and paying attention to what your patient need and want is key.
Sending out emails without a clearly defined strategy is like cooking for dinner guests without a recipe. It might start out great, but once you get going you’re bound to run into some problems. And serving a burnt casserole at your party is not so impressive.
