Why Community Pharmacies Should Consider Building a Newsletter

February 24, 2023

Have you ever considered building a newsletter for your pharmacy to stay in touch with your patients?

Running your own newsletter offers many advantages. Tailoring the content to your patients creates a sense of personalization that patients are more likely to engage with when it comes from their pharmacist. Here are some of the many reasons why a custom newsletter is the best way to grow your pharmacy and build on your relationship with your patients.

1. Stay in touch with customers and foster loyalty within your community.

Patients love supporting their local pharmacist. Regularly communicating with your patients through a newsletter lets you keep them updated on the latest news and services offered at your store. You can also use your newsletter to share patient success stories, offer wellness tips, and provide educational content specific to their needs. Doing so can foster a sense of loyalty and build a strong relationship with your patients. This is important whether you’re located in a small community where patients often have a strong connection to their local pharmacist or even in larger communities where you can use a newsletter to help you reach a targeted group of patients, such as those living in a nearby apartment building. 

2. Increase customer retention by reminding them of you, your products and your services 

With a pharmacy on almost every block in North America, what makes your pharmacy different?

Hint: it’s you!

Building your newsletter will help you to remind patients of the products and services you offer, but also to highlight what makes your pharmacy unique and showcase your expertise as a pharmacist. Are you a Certified Diabetes Educator? A compounding pharmacist? Patients may not know you do these things if you don't go out of your way to mention it. Make sure your patients think of you first when they are in need of any pharmacy-related services. With Minor Ailments for example, many patients prefer to come to you because of how accessible you are to them, in terms of your hours, availability and proximity to their residence.

3. Build brand awareness and establish your pharmacy as a trusted source for their pharmacy needs.

In today’s digital age, building a strong online presence is crucial for any business. By building a newsletter, you can establish your pharmacy as a trusted source for your patients’ healthcare needs. You can also share articles, videos and other relevant content to educate your patients and keep them informed about various health conditions for example, heart health awareness or blood pressure management. By doing so, you can build brand awareness and ensure your pharmacy stands out from your surrounding competitors.

4. Drive growth by including special promotions and raise awareness for healthcare issues promotion 

A newsletter is an excellent platform to promote special promotions, discounts and deals. This helps to incentivize patients to choose your pharmacy and drive growth for your business.  Additionally, you can easily raise awareness for healthcare promotions such as flu shots and minor ailment services. You can even run clinic days for special services or in-person webinars at the pharmacy to talk about diabetes management and measuring blood glucose levels!

Offering healthcare-specific promotions in your newsletter, gives your patients a reason to keep coming back to your pharmacy specifically.

Building a newsletter for your pharmacy is a smart move to help impact your community with content that matters to them, for example knowledge about tick bites when camping season starts! It's a cost-effective marketing strategy that can give you great returns for every dollar you spend. A 2015 study by Direct Marketing Association found that an email can get you $38 back for every $1 you put in. That’s a return of $152 every year just for sending one email every quarter!

Important note: You’ll see the highest ROI when you build and maintain an engaged subscriber list, made up of people who want to receive your messages (and who opted in on purpose).

Etiquette and best practices

Abuse complaints happen when recipients click the “This is spam” button in their email programs or email clients (i.e. Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, etc). That usually means that subscribers don’t remember subscribing to your email list. Always remind subscribers how they were added to your email list with a simple recognition line in your email. MedEssist builds this into our newsletter tool so you are always complying with appropriate CASL laws, and proper email protection.

📨  Make sure your “From” and “Subject” lines contain your company name, so your subscribers will instantly recognize you. 

📅 Make sure you don't spam readers by emailing too frequently - once a quarter or once a month are typically enough.

But I’m a pharmacist who writes prescriptions, not newsletters!

Let MedEssist take some of this workload off your plate and introduce you to the built-in Newsletter product feature! 

✨ Pre-Made Newsletter Templates✨ 
MedEssist Newsletter Templates

MedEssist users have access to a library of pre-made templates that you can edit to your liking, including minor ailments promotions, flu season, and more templates that are being added every week!  This way, your pharmacy can reap all the aforementioned benefits of a newsletter without the hassle of writing from scratch. 

Still undecided? Talk to our Pharmacy Success team in the yellow chat box in the bottom right corner of your screen ➡️

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