If you’re not texting your patients, 2024 is the year to change that. In today’s competitive healthcare environment where people have seemingly endless options, communication is a key tool for developing patient loyalty. What better way to stay top of mind with patients and get them to return again and again than sending short text messages that you can almost guarantee they’re going to see?
Digital communication solutions, like Solv Messaging — which incorporates pre-built messaging campaigns designed specifically for the urgent care setting — make it easy to seamlessly text patients whenever you need, without large marketing investments, or using up valuable staff resources.
Here’s what you need to know about adopting an affordable, EHR-integrated text messaging solution and deploying it as part of your urgent care marketing plan:
Enhancing Patient Outreach with Texting
Patients today are busy, stressed, and looking for ease and simplicity. With this in mind, text messaging can be an efficient, seamless, and well-received way to connect with patients who visit your urgent care. This might look like appointment reminders, post-visit follow-ups, or sharing information about prevenvative care / other service lines.
Text messaging offers significantly higher engagement rates compared to email communication, with research from layerrise showing that text messages have a remarkably high open rate that hovers around 98%, far surpassing that of emails, which sits at around 20%. Meanwhile, text messaging has a click-through rate of around 36%, which is far higher than the 2.5% click-through rate seen with email marketing.
Texting not only increases the likelihood that important healthcare information reaches your patients and improves patient engagement, but is also a cost-effective way to communicate with patients without large marketing investments.
Patient Retention Strategies with Texting
By maintaining regular communication, sending reminders, and soliciting feedback, you can foster closer relationships, which not only improves patient retention but may also contribute to better health outcomes.
Text messaging provides a direct channel for urgent care centers to re-engage with patients at various points throughout the patient journey. When executed effectively, text messaging offers a seamless and efficient channel to help patients schedule appointments, receive updates, and access important information. Overall, a total must to add your urgent care marketing strategy ideas this year, as it helps build loyalty and provides the kind of transparency and convenience that patients have come to expect.
Questions to Ask as You Implement a Text Messaging Strategy
Looking to incorporate text messaging into your urgent care marketing strategies in a way that improves the patient experience and encourages patient retention and loyalty? Here are some tips:
Who is Your Audience?
The first step is understanding your audience and knowing you’re going to have different use cases for texting your patients. You’re not going to want to send new patients the exact same messages you send to return patients, right? With solutions like Solv Messaging, you can make the most of pre-built campaigns that allow you to tailor your patient outreach to meet each patient’s unique needs and expectations.
What are Your Objectives?
To launch an effective text messaging strategy, you need clear objectives in place. Start by outlining your specific goals: Are you looking to communicate appointment reminders? Send health tips? Conduct follow-ups? Encourage patients to participate in a post-visit survey? Remind patients to take specific medication?
These objectives will guide you in crafting targeted messages that are clear, effective, and engaging, and help ensure that all of your SMS-based interactions meaningfully contribute to the patient experience and encourage patient retention. Additionally, having a solid idea of exactly what you’re setting out to do will help make sure your communications, patient care, and patient engagement strategies all align.
What Features Do You Need in a Platform?
As you’re shopping around for an SMS messaging platform, compare the different features of each and consider whether it’s compatible with your existing technology and marketing solutions, including your electronic health records (EHR). One major benefit of integrated solutions that consolidate vendors, like Solv Messaging, is that they allow you to simplify your tech stack and streamline your workflow with one tool that covers all aspects of patient communications — allowing for a much more seamless process.
What Messages Will Be Effective?
When you’re sending text-based communications to your patients, your messages need to be actionable, clear, and concise. Here are a few tips:
- Keep your messages brief, focusing on clearly communicating essential information.
- Use simple language that patients can easily understand, and steer clear of medical jargon.
- Make sure the purpose of each message is clear, and that you include specific instructions or calls to action to guide patients on what they need to do next.
- When possible, personalize your messages to create a sense of connection and encourage patient loyalty.
How Will You Ensure Compliance and Privacy?
When communicating with patients via text, it’s important to consider compliance with existing regulations and privacy concerns. Make sure you’re well-versed on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other privacy laws that might intersect with patient communications. Your text messaging strategy needs to align with existing regulations across the board, including (but not limited to) protecting sensitive patient data, making sure your messaging platforms are secure, encrypting communications when necessary, and gathering consent before sharing sensitive information.
What Will Be the Schedule and Frequency?
When you’re trying to encourage patient loyalty, the last thing you want to do is overwhelm patients with too many messages. It’s important to determine the right frequency and timing for sending text messages to your urgent care patients. Yes, you want to stay connected, but you also want to respect boundaries, which means not bombarding patients with messages. Before sending any message, make sure it’s relevant and necessary to that patient, and that you’re sending it at an appropriate time. Using a texting solution with automated scheduling features can help establish consistency and efficiency in your communications without irritating potential repeat patients.
How Will You Measure Success and Feedback?
You’ll also want to implement strategies to measure the effectiveness of your text-based communications, looking at factors like patient read rates and patient response rates. Products that incorporate analytics can help you communicate more effectively and ensure you’re sending the right messages to the right patients at the right time.
Key Takeaways
To encourage and maintain long-term relationships with patients who visit your urgent care center and drive patient loyalty, leveraging an automated SMS technology solution is an invaluable resource and a much-needed component of the urgent care marketing toolkit. In today’s economic climate where budgets might be tight, it’s crucial to find affordable ways to keep in touch with patients and establish meaningful relationships that drive repeat visits — and EHR-integrated text messaging solutions are just that.
Ready to transform your patient engagement strategy? See Solv Messaging in action today.
