As a healthcare provider, scheduling consultations, sending targeted messages, and converting first appointments into paying patients are just a few ways that implementing an SMS marketing strategy can increase your ROI.

Simple and effective is the name of the game when it comes to building a healthcare SMS strategy. According to Business Wire, text messaging is the number one communication method for patients, and with consumers ignoring more phone calls than they're accepting, your practice must invest in its SMS patient outreach strategy to succeed.

What is SMS Marketing?

Improving communication is crucial to turning leads into loyal patients, and incorporating SMS into your healthcare marketing strategy can help you reach customers in a direct and personalized way. SMS marketing at your medical office can increase acquisition, improve patient satisfaction, generate positive reviews, and increase appointment attendance rates. SMS can be cost-effective, budget-friendly, and well-received if you have an experienced team managing the strategy.

SMS marketing is a type of direct marketing that involves sending promotions, updates, and news. It is a quick and convenient way to communicate with customers due to its deliverability and high open rates.

Healthcare practices also use SMS marketing to share time-sensitive reminders like sales (botox, fillers, body contouring), appointment reminders, delivery updates, and personalized discounts. Using SMS in this manner helps build a strong customer rapport.

SMS can offer so much more to your marketing strategy, including:

• Targeted: SMS messages can be targeted to specific groups of customers, allowing businesses to send relevant messages to the people most likely to take action.
• Personal: SMS messages are personal. This makes them more effective in building relationships with patients and customers.
• Timely: SMS messages can be sent and received quickly, making them a timely way to communicate with customers.
• Measurable: SMS campaigns can be tracked and measured, allowing businesses to determine their effectiveness and adjust their strategy as needed.
• ROI: Compared to other forms of marketing, SMS is one of the most affordable forms of marketing, and the ROI on SMS is also the highest.
• Open rates: 95% of all business SMS messages are read by customers. Compare that to the average open rate for email (20%-30%), and it seems like a no-brainer to put marketing dollars toward a solid SMS strategy.
  

SMS in Healthcare Marketing and Increased Response Rates

Don’t be left on read.

Patients are much more likely to interact with their providers' messages if they receive them via SMS. 90% of people open and read text messages within three minutes of receiving one. SMS allows essential information like billing issues, appointment changes, and reminders to be delivered directly to the patient with a much higher view rate than email or phone calls.

SMS can boost appointment attendance rates at your healthcare business and convert lookers into clients.

1. SMS is a quick and easy way to send reminders about upcoming appointments. This can help patients remember to attend their appointments and reduce the number of no-shows.
2. SMS also allows healthcare providers to send personalized messages to patients, making them feel seen as individuals and building relationships with them. This boosts customer rapport and increases the effectiveness of appointment reminders. For example, a provider can send a message to a patient referring to them by name and reminding them of their appointment time, location, and any necessary preparations, such as bringing shorts to a vein consultation.
3. SMS is a convenient way for patients to confirm or reschedule appointments. This can help reduce the number of missed appointments due to miscommunication or last-minute changes.
4. SMS can be automated, which means that appointment reminders can be sent out automatically at a predetermined time before the appointment. This can save time and resources for healthcare providers and improve the efficiency of their appointment scheduling process.
5. VenatorPM’s SMS software is integrated with patient scheduling software. Our SMS strategy includes a link to online scheduling, or the recipient can respond to the SMS directly and receive an immediate response from a live person in our response center. 
   

Is Your Company Ready to Implement an SMS Strategy?

So you read the above and are thinking, “SMS sounds great; I’m going to start texting customers right now!” Think again. Unless you or your team has experience building, launching, evaluating, and measuring an SMS strategy, the process and implementation are harder than you think.

Marketing SMS and Legal Issues

There are many legal issues to consider when developing an SMS strategy. First, businesses are required to obtain permission from consumers before sending SMS marketing messages. This usually means consumers must opt-in to receive marketing messages. 

Second, do you know if what you’re sending will be considered spam? Businesses are not allowed to send spam messages to consumers. This includes any messaging a consumer may consider misleading, deceptive, or false information. 

Cost per Message

Although SMS can potentially have a high ROI, the initial cost is not free, and surprisingly, the cost per text message sent is higher than e-mail. Like other forms of advertising and marketing, if you don't have a well-oiled machine in place, you will operate at a loss.

Limited Characters

Have you ever tried to convey a sales message with a character limit? The SMS character limit is 160—this makes Twitter's limit of 280 look generous. Your message must be short, impactful, and grab your audience's attention. What will you say?

Targeting Difficulties and Deliverability

After you’ve built a database of clients who have opted-in, and nailed down a 160-character message, it’s time to blast everyone in your database with the same message, right? Wrong. If you send the same message to your entire list, you risk getting marked as spam, negatively impacting your open rates, and ruining your chance to build a relationship with trust and confidence.

To have a successful SMS campaign, you need to narrow your audience to those you are confident will respond to your call to action. VenatorPM’s audience expertise uses proprietary data, and custom algorithms allow us to build an audience that matches your ideal customer. We can then use that audience data to curate a customized message, significantly increasing SMS open rates.

Managing Responses

Now you’ve sent your first SMS to your database and are receiving so many responses that you can’t keep up! That’s a good sign, right? Not quite. It’s vital that you can respond while your customer is engaged, and the longer the lag in the response time, the less likely your customer will be to act on your message.

Venator Performance Marketing’s call center, SignatureResponse, is continually available to lend its expertise with lead handling, including SMS.

Ready to implement an SMS strategy but not sure where to begin? Fill out the form below to get a free quote for our SMS marketing services.