In the digital marketing world, email reigns over all other platforms. In fact, the conversion rate for email is much higher than social media.

Email is profitable. For every dollar a healthcare business spends on email marketing, it can expect an ROI of $36.

Every practice should be using email as part of its healthcare marketing strategy. (If you’re not, let’s talk!)

When a person gives their email address to a healthcare business, they’ve given direct access to connect in a busy world. It’s up to smart marketers like you to use this access wisely. Your email marketing campaigns can build a personalized and trusted relationship.

Think about how and when people check their email. It’s everywhere a smartphone can go, and it’s available 24/7.

When your healthcare marketing contacts check their email inboxes, they are inviting you into their personal space — and they can kick you out with a single tap. That’s why you must keep a close eye on your email metrics.

In this post, we’ve identified four email metrics that will give your healthcare practice insight into just how well you’re communicating with each valuable member of your audience:

• Open Rate
• Click-Through Rate
• Unsubscribe Rate
• Bounce Rate

Open Rate for Healthcare Emails: 36.66%

Open rate is the first metric to examine. It’s the first opportunity for your recipients to engage with your email. If your audience isn’t opening your emails in the first place, you’ve already lost your chance to connect.

Open rate is the percentage of people who opened your email out of those who received it. Improving your open rate is the first step in improving your email success.

Constant Contact reports that the average open rate for healthcare emails is 36.66%. Sources like GetResponse report just a slightly lower average open rate of 30.85%.

You can improve the open rate of your healthcare marketing emails by testing the subject line, sender name, send time, or recipient list. For example, an email sent to a very small recipient list may have an unusually low or high open rate compared with one sent to a larger list.

Our email segmentation strategy and careful data management help us send relevant emails to the right group of people on behalf of our clients, resulting in above-average email open rates.

Healthcare Marketing

Click-Through Rate for Healthcare Marketing Emails: 1.72%

Next, we’re looking at click-through rate (CTR): the percentage of people who click on a link within your email out of those who open it. This is not to be confused with click rate, which is the percentage of those who click your email out of those who receive it.

CTR is an important metric because it tells you whether or not your email entices your audience to actually take an action in response to your message. It helps you identify whether your email is achieving its goal.

According to GetResponse, the average CTR for healthcare marketing emails is 1.72%, while MailerLit reports an average CTR of 5.65%.

Complemented by our high email open rates, 9 Clouds reinforces our CTR by focusing on engaging design, clear messaging and calls-to-action, and regular A/B testing.

Unsubscribe Rate for Healthcare Email Sends: 0.21%

Unsubscribes are not always a bad thing. After all, it’s a waste of your time to send an email to people who aren’t currently interested in your content or product.

Unsubscribe rate measures the number of email recipients who elected to no longer receive future emails from you. It’s normal to have a consistent, low number of unsubscribes. After all, that reflects the ebb and flow of the buyer’s journey.

GetResponse and MailerLite have benchmarks of 0.16% to 0.32% for an average unsubscribe rate of 0.24% for healthcare marketing emails.

Watch out for a sudden spike in your unsubscribe rate. This may reflect mismatched expectations between what you promised your recipients and what they received. If you see a spike, it may be time to restrategize your email marketing.

Before we send marketing emails for our clients at 9 Clouds, we take careful steps to exclude contacts for whom we know the message is not relevant. This results in a lower unsubscribe rate and facilitates a positive relationship between our clients and their customers.

Staying Visible with Email: Ways to Avoid Spam Folders and Unsubscribes

Bounce Rate for Healthcare Marketing Email Lists

Hard Bounce Rate Benchmark: 0.30%
Soft Bounce Rate Benchmark: 0.40%

Finally, bounce rate measures the number of emails sent compared to the number of emails delivered. There are two main types of bounces: hard and soft.

A hard bounce often indicates a permanent error, such as a nonexistent email address. Many email clients will exclude these contacts from future email sends. If yours doesn’t, you should manually remove them in order to protect your sender reputation. (You don’t want to end up in the spam folder, after all!)

A soft bounce indicates a temporary technical problem, such as one with the recipient’s email server.

MailChimp reports the average healthcare marketing email bounce rates at 0.30% for hard bounces and 0.40% for soft bounces.

There’s not much your healthcare practice can do to prevent hard and soft bounces, but it’s a good idea to clear out the contacts who aren’t receiving your emails because of bounces.

Engage Contacts and Schedule More Appointments With Email Marketing From 9 Clouds

Email marketing can help your healthcare business reach more people, convert more leads into patients, and fill your calendar with appointments. 

If you’re not sure where to start, we can help you find a good point of reference. Check out how we’ve helped healthcare professionals online, and see what services may work best for your practice.

grow your practice with 9 clouds »