Topics, titles & tricks for effective holiday newsletters for dentists

Good news! The holidays may threaten to do some damage to your bank account on a personal level, but they can have the opposite affect on your practice. Regardless of how many of you choose to celebrate–or not celebrate–the winter festivities, the season can be a great opportunity for promoting your services and engaging (or even incentivizing) your patients.

Holiday-themed patient newsletters can help you have a profitable winter season.

Of course, there are factors that will determine exactly how effective your newsletters are. Read on to learn the easy, but important, tricks you need to know for sending engaging newsletters over the next couple of months.

Have a Plan

Before you begin, take a few minutes to sit down and create a schedule. Whether you decide on something like the 12 Newsletters of Christmas or institute a Weekly Dose of Holiday Health, determine a frequency you can commit to sticking with.

Use Engaging Topics and Titles

The one thing to keep in mind is this: If your patient newsletter doesn’t offer information or incentives that are beneficial to your patients, they won’t read it.

However, even a newsletter that offers the most valuable and engaging content will go unopened if you don’t grab their attention with a great subject line. And remember to keep your subject lines to 50 characters or less so that your ready can see the entire subject line in their inbox.

If you need some ideas for holiday-themed newsletters topics and titles, try elaborating on some of the examples below.

1.         Give the Gift of Dental Health

Using e-newsletters to give your patients some dental health education is a great way to keep them mindful of their oral health, but it’s also a great way to keep them connected and engaged with you.

You can almost taste the sugar in the air, so offering tricks for combatting cavities for kids and adults alike will be a great attention-grabber. This is especially helpful when your patients are parents.  Parents are desperate to keep their little ones as healthy as possible despite the season. Use that to your advantage!

Here are some title ideas:

Educate them!

• Why is Sugar so bad for my Teeth?
• The Sour Truth (the Detriments of Acid Compounds on your Teeth)
• Stay Away from Sticky!

Give them sugar-free tips

• Delicious Gift Ideas (Without the Sugar!)
• Sugarless Stocking Stuffers
• Teeth-Friendly Treats

Plan for the Sweet Tooth

• Recovering from the Sugar Craze: How to Clean Off the Sweet! (Brushing tips)
• When is Sugar Hour? (After meals!)
• Chew Chew Chew! (Saliva is produced when you eat, which neutralizes harmful acids)
• Rinse, Before you Repeat! (Take 20 seconds to rinse after eating acids)
• Slow Down (Take breaks to let your saliva repair enamel, drink from a straw, etc.)

Tip: As you’re imparting your wisdom: Don’t lecture. Most of your patients won’t be avoiding sugar simply because they know they should. Try giving them some guidelines that can be used even if they aren’t willing to go sugar-free.

2.         Encourage End-of-Year Appointments

The end of the year means that patients deductibles are probably resetting, so it’s an ideal time to get them in for a cleaning and some protection from the sugar-bugs.

As always, capture them with the perfect subject line:

• Start the Season with a Sparkle!
• Jump-Start your New Year’s Resolution for a Healthy Smile!
• Picture-Perfect Teeth – Hurry In!
• Guard Your Teeth from the Season

 3.         Make the Most of Shopping Season

Patient newsletters are an excellent tool for dental marketing, and the holiday season is an excellent time to offer promotions on services or products. We are more money-minded during the holidays, so throw in some incentives that you don’t usually offer. Everyone loves a great deal. Offer your patients something like a discount on whitening (to be picture-ready, of course). Here are a few example subject lines:

• We have a gift for you!
• Celebrate with us!
• From us to you – Happy Holidays!

Choose the Content

If you don’t use a service that helps you manage your patient communication, creating the content for your newsletters may be a little more time consuming, but it is still doable and definitely worth it. Here are a few tips for creating your own content for your dental patient newsletters.

 1.         Use your staff. And Google.

You could create an article with expert advice, because you are the expert, but educational newsletters can be created even if you don’t have time to write them yourself. With a small bit of searching on the web, your staff can quickly come up with plenty of options for content. You can give it a quick once-over, and away it goes!

 2.         Stick to a simple format

For the easiest to read (and create), stick to something like this:

• Small intro summary
• 3-5 bullets
• Small wrap-up
• Personalized sign-off

 3.         Use pictures!

Not only should you put an image that goes along with the content of your newsletters, you can boost the personal touch by adding a custom image that depicts your practice. For seasonal themed newsletters, grab their attention with a shot of your staff in front of a tree or just you holding a pumpkin.

Use Technology

No matter the effort, patient newsletters are worth it. However, the right technology can make the process seamless and essentially effortless, while optimizing the reach, quality, and effectiveness of your newsletters. The Solutionreach platform, for example, includes remarkably easy-to-use newsletter tools that allow you to automate your patient newsletters.

The service has you covered when it comes to content, too. The service includes a huge newsletter library of pre-written, engaging articles already formatted into professional templates that can be personalized with a couple of clicks.

Their patient messaging technology allows you to define criteria and automatically create a patient group (parents, elderly, etc.) so your newsletters can more effectively engage each patient with content that is pertinent to them.

Get Going!

If you’re not already sending newsletters to your patients, this is a great time to get started.  The possibilities for engaging outreach are limitless, so pick a subject and get writing!

Photo Credit: mohammadali via Compfight cc