Choosing a marketing agency for a healthcare practice
What to ask a marketing agency before hiring them for a clinic or hospital, and why healthcare compliance knowledge should be a hard requirement, not a nice-to-have.
4 min read
Appointment reminders and health tips both travel by email and SMS, but they carry different consent expectations. A patient who agreed to appointment reminders has not automatically agreed to receive promotional health camp announcements, and treating the two the same erodes trust.
Separate operational and marketing communication
- Appointment reminders and results notifications: operational, expected, low-risk.
- Health camps, new service announcements, seasonal offers: marketing, needs clear opt-in.
- A visible, easy way to opt out of marketing communication without affecting appointment reminders.
What content actually helps
Reminders with clear appointment details and a way to reschedule reduce no-shows more than any other single change. Health tips relevant to a patient's own visit history — a follow-up reminder for a chronic condition check, for instance — perform better than generic seasonal health advice sent to the whole list.
A reduction in no-shows from better reminder timing often has more financial impact on a practice than any marketing campaign.
Frequency and tone
Keep marketing communication infrequent and genuinely useful — a monthly health tip relevant to your specialties, not a weekly promotional push. Healthcare patients are more sensitive to feeling marketed to than most other audiences, and over-messaging drives opt-outs quickly.
The takeaway
Get explicit consent for marketing communication separately from consent for appointment reminders — they are not the same thing.
Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.
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