Get Your Long Lost Patients Back in the Chair
One of the most common problems dental practices have around the country is losing patients due to inactivity. You’ve likely seen this before in your own practice. You see a patient a few times, but then they just stop answering your calls, never schedule another appointment, and seemingly disappear. And at this point, many dental practices just give up and never see or hear from that patient again. But that doesn’t have to be the case. With a patient reactivation campaign, you can bring even the oldest of patients back into your practice and pick your relationship up again where it left off.
What is a Patient Reactivation Campaign?
This dental marketing approach is designed to recruit older patients who no longer visit your practice. This is important to your practice because these patients once trusted you and are likely to trust you again. Many times, these returning patients actually end up spending more money because they have been neglecting their dental care for months or years. The patient reactivation campaign works through a series of specially crafted emails, texts, and phone calls. This communication is designed to be compelling to the patient, and really encourage them to reach out again.
How to Set Up a Patient Reactivation Campaign
Step 1: Identify your patients that have discontinued communication with you. You should have a record of all these patients, along with phone number and email. Without this information, a dental reactivation campaign can’t even begin.
Step 2: Create an email drip campaign that is designed to slowly reintroduce yourself to the patient, convince them that their oral health needs attention, then invite them back to the practice. These emails are uniquely designed to work closely off the last one and are expertly crafted to entice action. Often, email drip campaigns can be up to 8 to 10 emails in length!
Step 3: Start texting the patient again. You don’t want to seem pushy, but just send friendly texts to remind them that they haven’t been to the dentist in a while and that you’re still here to help them. By maintaining a constant and friendly communication this way, you are ensuring they at least see the texts and will eventually respond.
Step 4: Perform follow up calls and make schedules as soon as you get a response. Once your old patient responds to a text or an email, it is important to follow up with them ASAP! This response means they are actively thinking of you and your services, so reaching out to them right away is the best time to get results.
Need Help Setting up a Patient Reactivation Campaign?
While this may sound simple at first, all the steps in a campaign like this take hours upon hours of work to finalize before it’s ready. Then, if you don’t have a marketing platform to manage it, everything will need to be sent out by hand from one of your staff. That’s a major time-sink. With mLive™, we can help set up a patient reactivation campaign almost immediately. With this dental marketing platform, mLive can help bring back old patients to your practice again and help get your practice as busy as you want it to be.
