4 Tips for Writing Effective Healthcare Email Subject Lines

Emails can be a cost-effective way to reach out to current and potential patients if your goal is to encourage engagement with your healthcare practice. But the cold hard fact is that most people don’t go beyond the subject line when checking emails. Increase your odds of getting past this hurdle with these four tips for writing effective healthcare email subject lines.

1. Don’t Be Overly Urgent

With anything healthcare-related, the last thing you want to do is create a false sent of urgency with your email subject lines. Sure, you want recipients to feel compelled to open your emails, but you don’t want to use scare tactics or cry wolf by over-stressing the importance of your content. Instead, use your subject lines to briefly sum up what your email is about – and make sure your subject lines match the content of your emails.

2. Be Relevant and Timely

Tap into trending topics related to your practice to make your emails more relevant to recipients. Another tactic that can be effective is to emphasize timely healthcare topics or concerns in your subject lines – e.g., flu vaccinations in the early fall or sports-related injury prevention when college and high school kids are likely to be back in the game.

3. Tell, Don’t Sell

You may very well be sending tips about back to school vaccinations because you want parents to schedule appointments at your practice for this purpose. Even so, slipping this fact into your email subject line gives the impression you’re not all that concerned about presenting useful information. You can always wrap up your email with a call-to-action, but your first priority should be sending something useful.

4. Personalize Subject Lines

When coming for in-person visits, patients tend to like being greeted by staff members and physicians who know and use their names. This is also true with emails. So, tap into your patient data to make your email subject lines personal by including the patient’s first name when it makes sense to do this. Even if you are essentially sending the same message to all recipients, the extra effort to personalize each one can definitely pay off for you!

As for the emails themselves, fine-tune your recipient lists based on data you have on file about existing patients. Just be mindful of HIPAA regulations. One way to do this is to use general information to determine what types of emails to send instead of details related to medical care provided. For instance, you might email tips about keeping kids safe during the summer to patients with younger children.