How to improve your email open-rate for physiotherapists

Email Marketing For Physical Therapy Clinics

Email marketing is one of the most affordable, simple, and effective type of digital marketing that lets businesses to connect with their target audiences in the most direct manner. This marketing type still has one of the highest engagement rates and returns on investment of any marketing strategy. But email marketing can be successful only they are opened and read. To improve the email open-rate for physiotherapists simply said, that is – to make sure people open the emails, is an art that most independent physiotherapists and clinics should learn.

If you are also looking for ways to elevate your email marketing efforts and improve the email open-rate for physiotherapists, you must read the tips mentioned below carefully. The following tips can become your handy guide to get the most out of your emails.

Image source: flickr.com/photos/132604339@N03

Send as a Person

There are three things that are visible when you receive an email in your inbox – the sender’s name, subject line, and message preview or preheader. The name of the sender is the very first thing that helps your recipients take a decision. When you send emails to your existing or potential physiotherapy clients, they will first check from where is the email coming from. They prefer receiving emails from a known person or a human at least. An email from a company or clinic can be assumed to be an ad and can:

• Go to spam

• Not be opened

• Or, worse, be deleted.

Therefore, in order to improve the email open-rate, the first thing you need to do is send emails from your name and not your clinic’s name. Change your “From” name to your or one of physiotherapist’s name as your recipients will feel that a person is trying to connect with them. And this isn’t just an assumption. Hubspot discovered that emails coming from a person have a higher open rate.

Craft Your Subject Line Smartly

After the sender’s name comes the subject line of an email. The subject line is an important factor that helps your past clients, existing patients and potential customers to decide whether they should open the email or not. Craft a line so that it interests your recipients and compels them to open your email. For creating compelling subject lines, you can consider the following aspects:

Image source: flickr.com/photos/132604339@N03

Personalize Subject Lines

Personalizing email subject lines with the recipient’s name is a traditional method but still has very high chances to improve the email open-rate for physiotherapists. An email is much more likely to be opened and engaged with if your recipient feels it’s been written for them. This can be a little time consuming but personalize your subject lines for your existing and potential clients. Create a subject line as if you were talking to one person. To personalize the subject line, use their first name in the subject line and let the main text of your subject line revolve around their name. For instance, if your email body talks about the summer discounts on the physiotherapy services, you can write your subject line as:

‘George, Here’s the Summer Discount Exclusively For You!’

Ask A Question Or Give A List

Good subject lines have higher open rate chances. But, there are other kinds of sentences that have better results. One such way is asking questions. Asking a question in your subject line is a great way to make a more personal connection and directly connect with your recipients to make them think. Another good way of tweaking your email subject lines is by giving a list or numbers to your clients. Lists make it easier for people to consume the information you’re sending out. They also give you the chance to demonstrate your points in a more compelling way. Using a list makes your recipients curious about knowing more and directly compels them to click on your email. A list can be given using numbers. For instance, if wish to tell them how they can get rid of their hand sprain at home, you can communicate as: ‘5 Ways to Get Rid of Hand Sprain At Home.’

Keep It Limited

You can surely use longer subject lines for your emails. However, having up to 50 characters is the general rule of thumb for an ideal subject line length. Also, the emails you send will be seen on both, desktops as well as smartphones. Long subject lines work well on desktops. But, a lot of mobile email applications and websites cut off subject lines at 25 characters. Therefore, it is best to keep them as short as you can.

Avoid Spammy Words

Email filters are becoming more and more sophisticated these days, and a number of factors can make your emails go to the Spam or Junk folder. So if you want to improve the email open-rate for your physiotherapist services, avoid sending emails that look like spams. Emails with subject lines in all caps or that have words like “cash,’ “help,” “save,” “sale,” “free,” “rich” or “deal” look like trigger the spam filter. This means your email will end up in junk mail folders instead of inboxes, and people don’t generally open emails that are stored in the Spam or Junk folders. Thus, read once again and see if your subject lines look spammy.

Think About The Preheader

When you see an email in your inbox, the text that fills up the line after the subject line called a preheader. Preheaders in smartphones appear just below the subject line. This preheader tells an extended story of the subject line and prompts your reader to want to know more about it. The text in preheader may or may not be entirely visible in he inbox. It can either be a short sentence or a long one that continues in the email and is visible when you open the email. If you want to gain the trust of your clients, you must have a preheader text. A blank space after the subject line forces your recipients to feel that it’s spam or promotional email. Make sure the preheader line flows logically and in regards to your subject line and also describes your email body the best. Talking about the length of the text, it corresponds to the length of the subject line. The subject line and preheader together have a fixed character space. For example, Gmail gives you 100 characters to work with. If you want to make the most of preheader, keep the subject line to maximum 50 characters. This way, you get 50 characters for preheader.

Make Emails Mobile Responsive

A large number of people use their smartphones to access the emails they receive. Reading emails on mobile phones is easy when your recipients are on-the-go. Today, mobile makes about 51% of total email opens. By the end of 2018, worldwide mobile email users are expected to be over 2.2 billion. Therefore, make your emails mobile responsive to improve the email open-rate when people use smartphones. Remember, if your clinic’s emails don’t read well on mobiles, you are missing out on many of your existing and potential clients. For doing so, you must consider all the points mentioned above. Along with the subject line, preheader, and sender’s name, other things that you must stress on to make your emails mobile-friendly are speed, readability, and usability. You need to ensure your emails load quickly and that the content is easily readable. One of the best ways to meet both these purposes is by using attractive and informative infographics. Next, make sure the clickable links and buttons in your email body are sized correctly so that people of all thumb sizes can click. Optimizing your emails for your mobile users won’t directly improve your email open-rate, but will ensure that when they try to open emails on their smartphones, they have a positive experience.

Image source: flickr.com/photos/132604339@N03

Segment Your Email List

There are high chances that not all your emails will be meant for all of your existing patients and potential clients. Your target audience can be different for various emails, and not all emails you send might interest all the recipients. Only interested people will open the emails and others may simply delete them, resulting in a loss for you. Email marketing allows you to target a specific set of people based on various factors. For this, you must segment your email list based on the demographics, audience interest and for whom the services are meant. For instance, if you provide special physiotherapy only for athletes, segment your email list accordingly. So you only select the segmented people on in your address book and send emails to relevant people. Same way, if you want to send service offers or discount coupons for Women’s Day, segment your list based on the gender and only send emails to the women list. This way, you make the most of your email marketing and only connect with the right audiences.

Choose The Best Time

Timing plays a significant role to improve the email open-rate for physiotherapists and when it comes to email marketing as a whole. If you are wondering “When is the best time to send my email,” there is no shortage of answers. To find out the best time to send your informative emails or emails with an offer, you will have to tackle the challenge yourself and identify the best time. You can find the best time of sending emails and ensuring higher open rates through testing. You can do an A/B testing to get a better answer. Based on who your target demographic is and what kind of email you are sending, you will be able to find the best day and time of the day to expect highest open rates. Or, you can also conduct research and find out how other physiotherapists and physiotherapy clinics function. However, in general, numerous studies have been done, and one common thing noticed in most of them is that emails sent on Tuesday-Thursday have the highest open rates. Some of these studies come from credible sources such as HubSpot, Experian and Customer.io, Wordstream and MailChimp, and so on. Additionally, emails sent early morning or late night have some interesting levels of engagement too.

Image source: flickr.com/photos/132604339@N03

Review your recipient list from time-to-time and remove inactive subscribers or emails with a hard bounce. Remove recipients that got nothing good to you or your clinic and won’t even do in the future. It is simply a waste of effort and money to focus on these people. Next, focus on your email body, the content as well. Once your recipients open the emails you send, they would expect a quality email. Hence, make sure you focus on the content of your email as well. Send them interesting, engaging and informative emails. You can include multimedia content with infographics, videos or an audio file as these kinds of emails appeal people. Another important thing to consider for your email’s body is the call-to-action (CTA) button or link. Once your existing and potential clients open their emails, they should have an option to take the next step. This CTA can be anything, such as “Click to Read More” button or a “Book Your Appointment Today” link.

Email marketing is quite simple and cost-effective as compared to other digital marketing types. You can use the best free email marketing tools to run your marketing campaigns and improve the email open-rate. If this feels like too much to do for you, you can hire an email marketing expert. An expert will help you save time and craft the most functional emails that not only compel your audiences to open your email but also interests them.

Other blogs on Physical Therapy clinic marketing:

2018 Physical Therapy Clinic Marketing – Attracting Patients for your Physiotherapy Business

How Physiotherapists Can Use Social Media Marketing To Grow Their Business

Ali Salman

Ali Salman is an online marketing strategist who have worked with Coca-Cola, Extreme Pita, Mucho Burrito, KIA, Honda and other Fortune 500 companies. Ali Salman now heads Rapid Boost Marketing – Canada’s fastest growing search marketing agency. RBM clients include Fortune 500’s and medium size businesses across North America. Ali as RBM CMO leads his team in building and managing quality, high-performing and cost-effective interactive campaigns and programs for our company’s customers and partners. In his career, he has significantly improved campaign performance for large brands such as Government of Alberta, Liberal Party, Workopolis, Cathay Pacific, as well as medium to large retailers and high-tech B2B-enterprise niches.
Ali and his team develop online promotional concepts that spark viral growth through search and social media for RBM clients, devising strategies that use search engines and more to reach key demographic segments in the ways they’re most likely to be receptive. Ali Salman also oversees corporate marketing initiatives for Rapid Boost Marketing, including strategic communications counsel, public and analyst relations and client education programming.

http://www.rapidboostmarketing.com