Engaging and growing a patient community through communications
Staying relevant and being sensitive to understanding the needs of your clients and patients is essential, as it can change at both a rapid and a slow pace, both of which can catch you off guard if you are not actively listening and paying attention.
At talkhealth we use a number of ways to monitor such engagement and activity so that we can deliver on what our community is telling us because either directly or indirectly, communication is mainly found via the indirect message rather than the direct, which is why it is important to continually re-evaluate your offering.
For us, newsletters have always been a very important focal point for our communications and over the years our two mainstays have been our monthly newsletter and our freebies, survey and trials newsletter each respectively sent out at the beginning and midway through the month respectively.
Both have served us well. Our members newsletter is successful and informative of the activity that is going on in a particular month at talkhealth, covering a full range of conditions and with a focus on our monthly clinics.
Our freebie newsletter also performs excellently, prompting people to take part directly in our offers, which has encouraged a lively and engaged community over a long period of time.
The above has inspired further direct communications to those that have indicated that they want to hear news on specific health conditions. This enables us to deliver a more tailored approach to communications, which is core as your contact rate increases with the community.
Making sure that you are only sending information that someone has requested and wants to read has never been more important, as the ease at which a community member can stop all communication is frankly frightening!
The mood for easy to understand, digestible self-care and health management guidance has now become increasingly popular, as witnessed by the rapid increase in the subscription and open rates across the board on all our talkhealth support programmes.
In support of this we have launched a new newsletter this month, simply called ‘Health Update’. It is sent out on a Sunday at 10am and is intended as a leisurely read on health issues that affect most of us, offering practical, evidence-based information.
If the results of our first newsletter are anything to go by, we have already established a good stablemate for our other newsletters, with high open and click-through rates.
If you are interested in featuring an upcoming article in this newsletter please contact us here and if you would like to receive this communication directly, make sure you are signed up as a talkhealth member and have ticked to receive our newsletters.
