Email newsletters remain an effective way to inform your target audience, pull in business, and attract a new and existing customer base. This is a great complement to any well-rounded marketing campaign because it can showcase the other efforts you’re investing in. You can even promote and link your newsletter through other mediums, such as social media. Providing your customers with a newsletter can keep your home care agency top of mind, highlighting the services you offer as well as promoting any upcoming events your audience should be a part of.
Remember, your online marketing strategy includes a wide variety of actions that have one purpose: generating more calls for new service. Email newsletters are one way in a long list of ways to achieve that.
According to the Houston Chronicle, an email newsletter can be a cost-effective medium for building relationships and maintaining regular contact with customers and prospects.
What to Include?
Well, as we said above, newsletters provide a practical purpose showing what your agency does. But more than that, they can help you achieve client retention through communication. In a world where everyone is on the go, it can be nice to provide a weekly, monthly or quarterly update for your clients’ family members to keep them informed about the activities that are available to their loved one. Newsletters can also provide much-needed updates on what their loved one has been doing, such as participating in therapy, exercise classes, crafts, movie nights and more. This is much appreciated especially in the case of family members who live far away and can’t always visit.
One big plus for email newsletters is that constant communication with your clients’ families can do so much more than inform: it can establish your home care agency as credible, valuable and trustworthy.
Some have said that email is dead. We know it’s not. As the NY Times puts it, people like newsletters because they have grown tired of the endless stream of information online and crave something finite and recognizable to appear in their inbox and keep out all the noise.
Why Include Them?
In addition to keeping families informed, email newsletters also provide upsell opportunities. Use this tool as an effective way to present add-on services. Just make sure you’re not going for the hard sell. Your upsell approach should balance nicely with informative, entertaining content. Keep your sales pitches short and sweet. Nothing turns off a potential client more than an aggressive car salesman approach.
Increased referrals are also another positive of email newsletters. Offering incentives to your readers to send referrals your way can come in the form of a discount, freebie or something equally as enticing. Reward your readers for sending you potential clients, and they will be happy to do so. Boosting the flow of referrals to your home care agency should be one of your main priorities.
How Often to Send Them
While email newsletters are all well and good, there is validity to the statement “too much of a good thing.” The last thing you want to do is turn off your recipients because they are feeling inundated with newsletters too often. Keeping just the right balance between timing and content is key. If you can get that right, the chances of your newsletter being opened are greater. According to Forbes, there has been a 500% increase in the percentage of emails opened on mobile devices, which increased from 8% in 2011 to 53% in 2014.
Navigating that fine line between emailing your clients just enough to pique their interest and going overboard to turn them away can be tricky. This is one area in which your online marketing company can help you out. Bottom line is, you need to have a certain level of mutual respect for your clients and families. That means sending newsletters on a consistent basis yet not too close together. Send them too often and readers will get de-sensitized, deleting them all. Make sure you have something important to say and keep the calls to action to a minimum.
Knowing exactly how often to send them starts with research. Gather information over the last few months and figure out how often you’ve been sending mailings. Have they been sporadic or evenly spaced? What are your open rates? These rates will tell you if recipients are actually opening the emails you send or just trashing them.
Once you have this information, you can make a better decision as to how often to send your email newsletters. Once a month is a good rule of thumb, but depending on how large or small your agency is, you may feel that bi-weekly or quarterly newsletters would be better suited to your needs.
In the end, email marketing is an important element of your overall marketing strategy. In a 2014 survey of 2,500 global marketers, it was found that email marketing was a core business driver for 68% of marketers, with 42% saying it indirectly impacted their business performance in a positive way, says Forbes.
Contact A Servant’s Heart Web Design and Marketing
Coming up with relevant newsletter content and presenting it in a way that your readers will appreciate can be tricky. That’s where we come in. Newsletters are just one way we help you communicate with your clients and promote your home care agency. Call us now at (760) 227-2720 to learn more about our online marketing approach that includes everything from email newsletters and social media to content creation and advertising.
