Most veterinary practices have a large list of patients that can ethically be used for re-engagement and education on new professional services. Re-engaging existing clients by targeted text messaging is 10X more cost effective than trying to register completely new clients! Adding in targeted emails will make it even more effective because you can say a lot more in an email.
What’s more, this is a managed service, so the Profitdiagnostix team will do it all for you. You don’t have to run your own reports and import/export large lists of clients to other emailing software.
Here are just some examples of the types of text message marketing campaigns we can do for you:
- Lost patients: These are patients that were heavily engaged with your business in the past but have stopped visiting. They are classed as patients because some time in the past they have been ‘examined’. They represent a list of pet owners that potentially has a high value.
- Unexamined Pets: We don’t call these ‘patients’ because to be a patient you have to be ‘examined’. Veterinary practices have long lists of customers who purchase products but never seem to present their pet for an examination.
- Missed/Overdue vaccinations: This happens surprisingly often in practices where for example reminders are set inconsistently, or when there are vaccine supply shortages. These valuable patients then miss the or ignore the usual recalls and fall off the vaccination wagon.
- Dental promotions (and other promotions): Its so hard to get your team to consistently recommend dentals to all the old pets that they see. But Profitdiagnostix Revive gives you a completely automated system which is very customisable. For example you could send a dental promotion text message to all dogs over 8 years of age who have not had a dental treatment in the last year, 2 weeks after having been examined by a vet. This means that if the consultation did not work at converting them to a dental, you get another go at convincing them. Profitdiagnostix does this completely automatically by scanning all the consultations, histories and ages of the pets that have visited so your team does not have to remember to do anything different. We can then monitor if patients are returning because of the text message.
Frequently asked questions about veterinary reactivation and reminder campaigns
The cost depends on the number of patients that have disengaged, so this may vary from practice to practice. It also depends on the length of text message you want to send because SMS providers charge for every 155 characters. But to give you a rough indication, a 2 vet practice would pay about $250 per month (billed annually) for this service. This includes the cost of the text messages and for our team to do it all for you including sending the text messages.
Emails are cheaper and you can say a whole lot more in an email, however the open rate of emails is less than half that of text messages. To get the best of both worlds we can do marketing campaigns with both email and SMS.
To our knowledge we are the only company that can tell you very precisely if this exercise is making you money.
Using the data we collect from your practice, we actively monitor all text message campaigns and show you exactly how many patients returned and generated invoices at your practice after each campaign. We don’t focus on vague metrics like ‘open rates’ or ‘website visits’—we measure success by one clear standard: a re-activation is only real if it results in an invoice. We then use the profitability per patient of your practice and we can tell you precisely if what you are paying for a campaign is making you money or losing you money. If after a year the service has not given an adequate return on investment then you don’t have to renew it.
Below are 2 genuine examples of our completed campaign reports. As you can see it is not unusual to see a 10X return on cost.
We prefer to send messages from a mobile number that your practice controls. That’s why our service includes the rental of a dedicated mobile number used exclusively by your practice. In contrast, many other text messaging services rely on shared numbers used by multiple businesses.
This also means that if a customer responds to a text message, then we instantaneously forward the responses to you. Many other services do not do this.
We handle emails in a similar way by using a unique email address linked directly to your practice. In addition, if a customer replies to one of these bulk emails, we ensure their response reaches your mailbox. Very few services offer this level of integration, but we do.
We do not send messages to any patient or client that is flagged as ‘inactive’ on your system. In most cases this happens automatically when a patient is marked as deceased on your practice management system.
We also cross check your data against any patient that has received a ‘euthanasia’ fee. We do not send to these patients.
Yes you can customise the message to whatever you want. Bear in mind that the text messages cost per 155 characters and people prefer not to get very long text messages. Emails can be as long as you like and include images.
In theory it can replace vaccination reminders, but we never suggest that you use it this way. We know of other services that make you ditch your reminders, but it’s bad business practice. What happens if you change your practice management system? What happens if you stop using the third party reminder service? We’ve seen practices completely abandon their internal reminders, only to end up without any reminders at all. You can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result.
Instead, we recommend using this service as a safety net to catch missed opportunities and errors. It’s a smarter approach for your business and still delivers a strong return on investment.
Our service is very unique in the way it manages the number of messages customers get, for example:
-If we set a campaign to send 3 messages a month apart and a customer books an appointment or gets invoiced after the first or second message, subsequent messages will not be sent.
-If your business is running 2 campaigns concurrently for example Lost Patients and Missed Vaccinations: we prioritise which one is more important to you and if a client appears on both lists they only get messages from the one with higher priority
-Our system automatically examines any responses from customers. If their response implies that they no longer want to get these messages, we stop sending to that phone number. Our emails include an unsubscribe link that allows the customer to unsubscribe.
The most appropriate action is for you to inactivate them and their pets on your practice management system. This in turn will update our system in 24 hours. This will ensure that the customer no longer gets text messages or emails from us or from you.
There is the occasional case where a customer says that they intend to return, but not yet. In these cases we suggest you just invoice a zero dollar item. This will stop them getting the messages from us for over 1 year. Or you can just tell them to reply to a text message with the word STOP.
Yes. 3 days before any messages are sent out, we automatically email you a list of who will be contacted. You are also supplied a link that will allow you to ‘pause’ the send if you think there is a problem. However, after the first few months most practices stop checking the list – Profitdiagnostix is extremely accurate.
Alternatively you can log into your Profitdiagnostix system and view all historic messages, replies and all future messages that are due to be sent.