Attracting and converting patients is just one part of your marketing strategy, and the next step is making sure they stay. Patient retention is integral to the success of your dental practice and vital to the efficiency of your further marketing efforts.
Loyal patients don’t just have a high LTV (Lifetime Value); they also turn into brand ambassadors who continuously stimulate an influx of new patients. Before going into retention strategies, it’s essential to understand the key benefits of these tactics.
Why Is Dental Patient Retention So Important?
Retention in dentistry carries immense value since it’s closely tied to revenue, reputation, and success.
Increased Lifetime Value
LTV is an important metric that demonstrates how much money a particular patient is likely to bring to your dental practice. The longer a patient stays with your clinic, the more revenue and profit they are likely to generate.
Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
Patients who stay with your clinic and continue taking advantage of your dental services increase the marketing ROI.
The resources you invest in the marketing campaign don’t just pay off because patients continue using your services. Thanks to word-of-mouth marketing, they also allow you to save money on further marketing efforts.
Word-of-Mouth Referrals
Positive personal recommendations are the top reason patients choose one practice over another. When you work on patient retention, you turn patients into brand ambassadors who recommend your practice to their friends and family.
Less Time and Money Spent
When applied to marketing, the Pareto Principle dictates that 80% of your future profits come from 20% of your existing patients. That’s why investing in existing patients is often more profitable than focusing all your efforts on lead generation.
Meanwhile, the retention cost is lower than the acquisition cost since you already have all patient data available and know which pain points to address.
9 Essential Retention Statistics
-
The average dental practice retains only 41% of new patients. (American Dental Association)
-
The average attrition rate for dental offices is 17%. (Henry Schein)
-
The top 10% of dental practices have an average attrition rate of 3%. (Dentistry Today)
-
Practices that do not preschedule hygiene patients lost 15% - 18% more patients. (Dentistry Today)
-
Automating appointment reminders reduces no-shows by 22.95%. (Dental Tribute)
-
30% of dental patientsprefer text messages for appointment reminders. (Software Advice)
-
65% of dental patients over 35 prefer e-mail reminders. (Software Advice)
-
53% of patients prefer appointment reminders 1 to 3 days prior. (Software Advice)
-
70%-80% of new patient referrals come from the existing active patient base. (Henry Schein)
9 Ways Dentists Improve Patient Retention Rates
Focusing your efforts on improving patient retention rates can directly affect your practice’s bottom line. Let’s take a look at patient retention ideas and strategies that work for dental clinics.
1. Segment Your Active Patient Base
According to retention statistics, demographics affect communication preferences. That’s why it’s crucial to segment your patients based on demographics. You may also need to prepare different communication channels for various procedures.
You can manually segment your existing patients according to demographics, procedures, and preferences. However, ensuring proper communication with each segment can be challenging without an automated email and text messaging system.
By segmenting the audience and automating communications, you can ensure a personalized approach that drives patient loyalty and retention.
2. Automate Appointment Reminders
No-shows don’t just hinder the efficiency of your practice; they frustrate your patients. To help patients keep their appointments, you can invest in healthcare marketing technology that includes automated email and text message communications.
With the right tools, you can send appointment reminders automatically and ensure a higher attendance rate. You need to personalize reminders with the patient’s name to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and drive loyalty.
According to statistics, you should send at least one appointment reminder one to three days in advance. If you want to send several reminders, warn patients about them so they feel safe with messages.
3. Preschedule Patients Before They Leave
Scheduling the next appointment before the patients leaves the clinic is a great way to increase their LTV. You can train staff to ask patients if they want to schedule the next appointment before leaving and stress the convenience of such an approach.
This is especially important for hygiene patients, who are likely to forget about the need to schedule an appointment in six months. The goal is to create a culture that involves rebooking almost all patients for subsequent visits.
4. Offer Online, Real-Time Scheduling
Self-scheduling is an excellent way to increase patient satisfaction while reducing the time your dental practice spends making appointments. Your website should allow a patient to see which spots are available while making it easy to book an appointment with just a few clicks.
Your scheduling app should integrate with EHR (Electronic Health Records) to ensure smoother appointment booking and a personalized approach to each patient.
5. Reactive Inactive Patients
Patients who last visited your clinic a while ago need special attention. They may not have kept their appointments for personal reasons but could be ready to return. To ensure you keep these patients, it’s essential to communicate with them regularly.
You need to implement a system that reactivates such patients through a combination of phone calls, text messages, and emails.
Instead of stressing them out with a shower of reminders, try to express care and concern. Provide valuable content about the benefits of preventative care and consider offering incentives.
6. Increase Online Visibility
To cement patient loyalty and outrun the competition, it’s important to maintain a dominant online presence. Besides attracting new patients, online visibility helps existing patients understand that they’ve made the right choice.
The success of your online visibility depends on the quality of your search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing (SMM) efforts. To ensure they yield the expected results, it’s essential to focus on local SEO for dentists and SMM tactics, such as boosted Facebook posts.
7. Build Trust and Credibility
Retention efforts begin as soon as the patient enters your clinic and continue through the patient’s lifetime. Since retention tactics are diverse and time-consuming, it’s essential to leverage healthcare marketing technology.
Healthcare marketing technology helps retain patients through automated solicitation and collection of Google Business Profile (GBP) reviews. Positive reviews on your GBP don’t just increase visibility; they contribute to the credibility of your practice.
Patients who come for hygiene and other basic procedures may need an additional push to trust your clinic with complex treatment, such as veneers or dental implants. Numerous positive reviews in your profile can drive both new and existing patients down the sales funnel.
Meanwhile, with good reputation management efforts, you can show existing patients that you care about their opinion, which can also power your retention tactics.
8. Adapt to Patient Feedback
An essential benefit of soliciting and managing Google Reviews is obtaining feedback. Patients who are unhappy with some aspects of your services can mention them in reviews. It’s up to you to analyze this feedback and adjust your approach accordingly.
Listening carefully to what patients need and want is the key to anticipating their needs and improving retention.
If you see a less-than-5-star review on your GBP, you should respond directly to the comment and follow up with a patient personally.
9. Measure Your Progress
To improve your dental patient retention strategies, it’s essential to figure out how well they are working. That’s why it’s necessary to use specific metrics that measure the progress:
- Active Patient Count
- Annual Patient Retention Rate
- Annual Patient Growth Rate
- Active Patients Overdue for Appointments
- Average Lifetime Value of Patients (LTV)
While most of these metrics are easy to track, calculating average LTV can be more complicated. However, it’s still an integral measurement of your retention efforts.
Automate Dental Patient Retention
Automation is the driving force behind successful patient retention. DoctorLogic uses healthcare marketing technology to automate the retention of existing patients while attracting new ones. To see DoctorLogic in action, request a demo today.