You’d be hard-pressed to find a veterinary clinic without a Facebook page. However, how many send a regular email newsletter to their clients?
While creating an email newsletter may seem like a lot of work, the effort you put in pays off.
Marketing your vet clinic via email newsletter vs social media
While social media is a great way to communicate with your local community – of both current and potential clients – it’s important not to forget about email.
According to HubSpot, the average open rate for an email newsletter is around 21%. Compare this to social media, where the organic reach (i.e., not paid advertising) for a post on Facebook is around 5.2%.
This means you are four times more likely to have someone read your newsletter than a Facebook post. Click-through rates (the number of times someone clicks on a link to visit your website) are also higher for newsletters than for social media.
Aren’t people overwhelmed with emails?
While we all receive a lot of emails every day, the numbers show that people do open and read emails that interest them. When you send an email newsletter, you are only sending to people who are quite receptive – they are either current clients, past clients, or someone who has opted-in to receive emails from your vet clinic. This means you are communicating with a community that wants to read what you have to say.
Should I stop using social media and just send emails?
Social media and sending a regular email newsletter are both great ways to communicate with the local community.
Like all marketing, it’s important to use multiple methods to connect and engage with people. For the most effective way of communicating with your clients (and potential clients), you should pair email and social media together rather than focusing purely on one or the other.
But aren’t email newsletters a lot of work?
The best newsletters integrate with your social media content, which means they won’t take as long to create as you may think.
If you’re posting on social media each week, then you have plenty of content for an email newsletter for your vet clinic. Even though you may think that this content is “old,” the reality is that many people on your email list will have scrolled by without paying attention or not even seeing your post. And for those who have, it’s a great way to reinforce your brand.
By collating the social media content you have posted over the past few weeks, along with a personal introduction from you as the owner of your vet clinic, you will have a content-packed email newsletter to send each month.
Don’t have the time for social media or email?
The VetDigital team takes the hard work out of communicating with your local community so you can concentrate on what you do best—looking after your patients.
We can develop personalised social media content, blogs and email newsletters for your vet clinic.
Want to learn more? Contact us today.
This post first appeared on the VetDigital blog: Why your vet clinic needs an email newsletter
