I’ve been saying it for years, like here, here and here, but never has it been more obvious than now. It’s critical that you grow your email database for future email marketing. And in these pandemic times when patient activity may be down, you need a way to communicate with current and future patients and drive new business.

Grow your email database

Sure, you can pay for advertising during this potential economic slowdown to let the public know you’re still open for business. But patients may be more reluctant to come in for a non-surgical or surgical procedure. Which means you’ll need to advertise more aggressively to capture the folks that are interested. But is that really what you want to do now? Increase your expenses with costly advertising? I mean, you potentially have fewer patients coming in, less revenue, belt tightening…so you’re gonna increase your spending during a time of less cash flow? No, of course not.

That’s why, moving forward, you need to grow your email database during the good times. Remember the Ant and the Grasshopper? In one of Aesop’s classic fables, the grasshopper sings the summer away and the ant stores up for the winter. And what happens when winter comes? The grasshopper is SOL and the ant is well prepared. In this analogy, the business that has built their email database over time will be able to market to their email database at a much lower cost than traditional advertising, especially when funds are tight. Have you seen how cheap email marketing is lately?! You just need a robust email database to utilize its power.

Building a robust email database

Be well prepared for the next crisis or economic slowdown, recession or whatever they call it at the time. To do that, ensure that all marketing efforts are focused on generating leads, Regardless of where they are in the sales funnel. By collecting names, email addresses and phone numbers, you’ll build your email database for future email marketing. So how can you do a better job capturing leads? Give the patient something they want.

Instead of offering a patient an ebook in exchange for their contact info, or the opportunity to sign up for your lame email newsletter, give them pricing! That’s right, allow them to check pricing on a service or procedure they’re considering, but only after they enter their contact information! Just like this doctor, this doctor and this doctor do it with a Price Estimator.

By providing the consumer with a really tantalizing call to action button, like Get A Quote Now, you’ll capture more of the traffic on your website or social media page. And you get a better return on your marketing dollars. And when that next black swan event occurs, you’ll be prepared! So what are you waiting for, go grow your email database!

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Be the ant: Grow your email database now! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Dr. Kaplan, owner of Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery (aka Real Dr. Bae on Instagram) is also founder of BuildMyBod Health. A price transparency platform. Dr. Kaplan continues his US speaking tour in San Diego this weekend at the AAFPRS 2019 International Symposium of Facial Plastic Surgery. This meeting is put on by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery – the AAFPRS. He’ll be giving two talks and serving on two panels.

Talks at the AAFPRS 2019

Dr. Kaplan will speak on improving the patient experience with price transparency. This is an oldie but a goodie! He’ll discuss how doctors fear the complexity of price transparency but don’t realize what a huge patient satisfier it is.

With price transparency prior to the consultation, the patient is prepared. And therefore less likely to experience sticker shock. That’s an improvement to the patient experience!

The power of email marketing

In his second talk, Dr. Kaplan will explain why building your email database for marketing is so critical. He’ll talk about how his Google traffic dropped 62% but his revenue actually increased. That was because he had a strong social media presence and also because he built an email database of over 9,600+ people. That way, whenever he was ready, he could market directly to his target demographic for way less than digital advertising.

If you’re a doctors and want to learn more about BuildMyBod Health, click here. If you’re a patient that wants pricing information from a doctor near you, click here.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post BuildMyBod Founder Speaking at AAFPRS 2019 first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

An email database can be more powerful than Facebook and Google!

As the image below shows, when you create a Facebook ad, you start with a large audience. The city of San Francisco in this example. Then you narrow that search to include people that are most interested in things related to your services (plastic surgery). So you focus on women, age 23-64, that pay attention to beauty, fashion, fitness etc. I think it’s reasonable to assume that women in that demographic with those interests would be interested in cosmetic services. However, it would be much better if you knew they were interested in cosmetic services, not just related interests.

What if you could create an email database of people that want the exact services you offer, without having to rely on Facebook’s educated guesses? Well, there’s a way. You can use a Price Estimator on your medical website so consumers can check pricing for your services but only after they provide their contact info. That way, they get accurate estimates on your services, something they can’t find anywhere else, and you get a lead (an email address) in the process. You could offer an ebook or some other “carrot” other than pricing to convince someone to leave their contact info but I’ve found pricing is by far the most effective in getting visitors to leave their contact info behind.

How to build your email database quickly

But a few leads aren’t enough. As the image above shows, Facebook can advertise to 3,600 to 9,600 people in the example demographic with the example daily budget shown. By using a Price Estimator on my website, I’ve created an email database of over 6,500 consumers. Not only that, I know they are considering my services, not just related services.

So while I may not have access to 9,600 people like Facebook, I have a very substantial database whom I can email once a month or more (or less) if I choose. In other words, I own my marketing because I now have a large email database. As I develop that database, I can reuse it over and over again. Facebook isn’t giving you their database for your own use! And I can say with certainty that my database contains people that are more assuredly interested in cosmetic services. Facebook doesn’t really know for sure.

Get started. Build your own email database. With a Price Estimator and every consult you ever see, get their email address. Then you can educate your patients on a regular basis and know you’re interacting with people that want to hear from you. How do you know they want to hear from you? Because they checked that box when they signed up to see your pricing!

To learn more about how BuildMyBod Health can help you improve your interactions with your patients, email us at info@buildmybod.com

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Build your email database and own your marketing! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.