Part 4 of a 4 Part Series
on Veterinary Hospital Email Newsletters

If You Send It, You Can Measure It.

After you have sent out your hospital’s email newsletter, you need to see if you have accomplished your goals. A spike in your hospital’s website visits might be enough to consider it a success. If phone calls increase significantly or you notice more appointments being scheduled, it is obvious that your have launched a successful email newsletter campaign. If you have promoted or introduced a product in your email newsletter and an increase in sales has resulted, this should also be considered successful. Whatever your goal was, you need to see if you accomplished it.

If your veterinary hospital’s email newsletter campaign did not measure up to your expectations, you need to figure out what went wrong. The most common error is not having a good Call to Action. If your recipients did not take the action you requested, your Call to Action may have been confusing or weak. Another common error is not providing relevant information. If you are telling them what you want to hear and not what they want to her, they are not going to bother reading your newsletter.  You also need to carefully consider your audience and write for them. If your practice is located in a very rural or remote area, your clients may not have the same educational background as clients in a university town or a more urban area.

One of the advantages of sending out an email newsletter is the tracking feature. We use the services of iContact and Constant Contact for sending and tracking the veterinary hospital newsletters that we manage. Both services are excellent and both provide useful statistics. Some of the most important statistics provided by these services include:

• Total Number of Emails Sent
• Number of Bounced Emails
• Number of Emails Opened (Open Rate)
• Number of Clicks – This measures the number of clicks that have occurred inside the newsletter.
• Number of Forwards to Other Email Addresses

Along with a numerical amount, a list of every email address in that particular category is provided.

If your email newsletter’s Open Rate is low, your recipients are not even opening the email newsletter that you have sent. If this is the case, you should consider improving the Subject Line of the newsletter (every email has a subject line). Your recipients need to know that it is from you and not just another ad.

Try changing the day and time you send out your email newsletter. In our experience, we have found that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days to send out an email newsletter. On Friday, most people are busy preparing for the weekend and on Monday, people are busy planning their week. It is also best to send out your veterinary hospital’s newsletter in the late morning, after your readers have already had their coffee.

Your Email Newsletter also needs to have a recognizable name in the From heading. Put the name of your veterinary hospital in the Fromheading, not the name of the employee sending out the newsletter. Your email newsletter may get deleted if an unrecognizable name is used and not something familiar.

If you are sending your email newsletter on a weekly basis, you may want to consider sending it monthly. If you are sending it twice a year, try sending it quarterly or monthly. If you are sending it too often, you may be regarded as a nuisance. If it’s sent too infrequently, you may not be recognized. In our experience, a quarterly newsletter gives the best overall results.

By reviewing and tracking your veterinary hospital’s email newsletter, you have the benefit of knowing who is interested in what you are offering. If you have a high Open Rate but few conversions to appointments or sales, you are not providing the right information in your newsletter. If you have a low Open Rate, you may need to be more creative with your email newsletter’s Subject Line. Whatever results you get, they are measurable and should be considered before sitting down to write your next email newsletter.

Thanks to cell phones and ultra-portable laptops, today’s pet owners are constantly connected to their email. Because of this, email newsletters have become an increasingly valuable, versatile marketing tool.

VetNetwork has the knowledge and technology to manage all aspects of your veterinary hospital’s email newsletter. We can design your newsletter, write your articles and send it to your database of subscribers. We offer a turnkey marketing solution for all veterinary hospitals. All you need to do is collect email addresses from your clients.

Call VetNetwork today (603-743-4321) for a price quote and for additional information.
VetNetwork – We do it all for you!  It’s that simple.