3 Direct Mail Tips for Patient Education Seminars

If you search for “Is direct mail dead” you’ll find 172 million results in Google. Results from Forbes to Neil Patel encourage marketers that direct mail is not dead. Whether it’s the ROI or the engagement, getting a printed message into the hands of prospects seems to be gaining traction again. If you’re putting on events for patients, here are a few direct mail tips for patient education seminars.

Combine direct mail and digital

Let’s kick off your direct mail tips for patient education seminars with combining two unlike things – printed and digital content. Direct mail can work even better with a digital marketing strategy.

Of course you already know that great marketing strategies should use multiple channels.

Even in the digital sphere, Smart marketers wouldn’t run only Facebook Ads and call it a day. They’d probably run ads on Instagram, run a paid search campaign and still put organic SEO to work.

Don’t abandon digital and invest only in direct mail. Consider it part of a winning overall strategy for your patient events.

Read how one digital marketing agency did this by combining printed direct mail, digital assets like video and even social media. It’s point number 2 in Neil Patel’s article above.

Be real

You don’t need to be flashy. You need to be real.

Patient education seminars should be educational. You aren’t selling sports cars or tropical vacations. Creativity can still shine through, but the material needs to be real and set expectations.

Paint the picture of what the product or service offers, and entice… just don’t go at direct mail like you need to shout at people getting it.

Design, colors, writing and a call to action to register are all important to keep in mind when designing direct mail.

Use ZIP codes

The last of the direct mail tips for patient education seminars is this: Strategically use ZIP codes. Seems simple. But many marketers skip the step of researching demographics in ZIP codes and using a laser-focused approach for maximum impact.

If your doctors you’re working with focus on older patients, sending direct mail to homes in a college town where students live simply will not help.

At USPS.com, you can use their Every Door Direct Mail tool to send mail to different customers in different areas. In the tool, you’ll select up to 5 ZIP codes near your location.

Then you’ll get a map of the area, where you can hover your mouse over a route. You’ll see the number of residents, number of businesses, age range, average household size, and average household income of that zone.

It even calculates the approximate cost of postage to send a mailer to that route. Knowing the area helps as well, so work with your local practices and build a winning direct mail strategy for your educational patient seminars.

Mailbox photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash