Continuing medical education (CME) lets physicians brush up on their skills and learn the latest developments in the health care sector. Email marketing provides you with an effective way to target these prospects and increase enrollment on your CME courses. Here are some of the benefits of email marketing for CME.
[RELATED: 5 Steps to Marketing CME to Physicians]
1. Segment Your Audience
Email marketing lets you target physicians based on their skills and experience, so you can advertise the right CME courses to the right people at the right time. Research shows that segmentation targets groups of people who share the same interests. You can send personalized communications to physicians who want to learn more about neurology, for example.
Segmenting your audience in this way could prove lucrative. Every dollar spent on email marketing in the United States has a ROI of $44. If you want to increase sign-ups on your CME course, investing in email marketing could be the best thing you do this year.
2. Promote Your CME Courses
Email is a great medical marketing tool. Use it to advertise your CME courses and encourage physicians to sign up for your classroom-based or online programs. Yes, there are newer marketing methods out there — social media, SEO, PPC ads, etc. — but nothing comes close to the promotional power of email.
There are 3.7 billion e-mail users worldwide — and around 233 million of them live in the U.S. As a result, use email to market your CME courses to physicians across the country. Conventional marketing methods, such as direct mail, make it difficult to reach these prospects.
3. Measure Your Campaigns
Email marketing lets you track your prospects as they move through your medical marketing funnels. You can use the latest marketing software and discover how physicians interact with your emails. Open rates, read rates, click-throughs — track all of these metrics and more from your desktop, laptop or mobile device.
Email marketing provides you with unparalleled insights into your medical marketing campaigns. You can gather intelligence about physicians interested in CME courses and use this information to fuel your future marketing operations.
"Several online email marketing tools allow you to track and measure open and click-through rates," says the Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University. "This allows to you evaluate the effectiveness of your email messages and campaigns to make sure you are providing your supporters with the timely and relevant information that they want."
4. Reduce Marketing Costs
The great thing about email marketing is that it's cheap to use. Conventional marketing methods, such as direct mail, are far more costly — you'll need to pay for printing and postage costs, for example — and won't provide you with the same results.
Email provides you with real value, too. In a recent survey, three-quarters of people who use email marketing ranked it as 'good' or 'excellent' for ROI. Moreover, the survey respondents said email marketing was more effective than SEO, content marketing, paid search, and social media.
If you still haven't incorporated email into your medical marketing model, now's a good a time as any. When done right, email marketing is more effective than any other marketing method and provides you with a significant ROI. Use email to segment your audience, promote your CME courses, measure your marketing campaigns, and reduce costs.
Emily is the head Content Creator. She enjoys communicating complex ideas in an easy-to-understand way.
