Email Campaign Triples Medical Clinic Revenue Almost Overnight

PROBLEM One of the most frustrating scenarios for any kind of business is a low conversion ratio: Lots of high-quality leads are coming in but too few seem to be moving forward after the initial query.

An “aesthetic” (cosmetic) surgeon approached me recently under these circumstances, to rewrite his email “drip” campaign. His staff was following up diligently with the substantial number of leads being generated by his website but he had the strong sense that their efforts were not doing justice to the potential.

When they showed me the emails they had been using, it was easy to confirm the surgeon’s suspicions: The follow-up/drip campaign fell short in a multitude of ways. Given the costs of those medical procedures, typically in the thousands of dollars, the clinic had almost certainly lost millions during the years that this substandard campaign had been implemented.

SOLUTION The first part of the solution, as is usually the case, involved asking lots of questions: questions about the feedback they had been getting from people who did come in for appointments, for example, as well as anything they might have been hearing by phone and email. I needed to learn about their ideal patient profile(s) and what the major desires and fears were among that population. I also needed to educate myself about this physician’s practice: the equipment he used, for instance, and what distinguished him from the competition.

I watched the testimonial videos he had on his website and read through all of his reviews (the negative ones as well as the positive ones), on the various platforms on which they appeared. I read up on the mindsets and situations of people who typically seek out cosmetic surgery. I read first-person accounts of people who detailed their individual journeys in search of the physician they eventually settled on to meet their needs. I got inside their heads, so to speak, to figure out how they think and what motivates them.

With all that in mind, I sat down to compose several series of emails, organized by category (type of desired procedure: Brazilian Butt Lift, Mommy Makeover, Lip Flip or whatever). As is the case with nearly all the writing I do, I revise and edit extensively both as I go along and after a draft is completed. After that, I do any additional revisions called for on the basis of client feedback. It’s usually more a matter of answering questions (e.g., What is the rationale for writing something a certain way?), rather than making changes.

RESULT The same week that the new emails I had written for the clinic were implemented, the office manager announced with unbridled joy that their conversion ratios had more than tripled! The only “problem” was that they were now having trouble keeping up with the increase in appointments (a “high-class” problem, as a former boss of mine liked to say). From the links that follow, you can see a sample BEFORE and AFTER version of the first email in one of the series. Each of these has explanatory comments in the margins. (You should be able to easily increase the size of the PDF in either case, to make it easier to read, if you wish.) If you read through the comments in the AFTER version, you’ll get a sampling of the extensive theory that underlies every small part of an effective email such as this. It’s a lot like the duck you see that appears to be gliding effortlessly along the surface of the water, as if being pulled along by the wind and current, when in actuality there’s a tremendous amount of paddling going on below. It takes a high level of intelligence and a sophisticated skill set to be a surgeon. That’s testimony to the fact that a high level of intelligence and a sophisticated skill set in one professional arena does not necessarily translate into mastery of communication, written or otherwise. To skyrocket his conversion ratio, the Ivy League surgeon needed my skills in an entirely different domain, that of MarCom (marketing communication).

The bottom line as to what ultimately made my emails so effective is their high degree of persuasiveness. THE SAME GUIDING PRINCIPLE PROBABLY APPLIES TO WHATEVER PROJECT YOU MAY HAVE IN MIND AT THIS TIME: Regardless of the nature of the project, success will hinge upon effective messaging — PERSUASION of your audience, in other words, into believing what you are telling them. That’s the name of the game. It’s what I do and why they pay me the big bucks, so to speak.