Homecare Newsletters | Home Care Newsletters

To stay competitive and gain - or even maintain - market share, home health agencies today need to consistently market to their referral sources and patient community. In fact, studies show that every month an agency doesn't market to a client, that client loses 10 percent of their interest in ever doing business with that agency again. To communicate with clients on a frequent basis, many agencies are turning to the newsletter as an effective marketing tool. Educational newsletters distributed to the community offer many benefits to the home health care agency. Newsletters create top of mind awareness of the agency and its services, serve as a delivery system for education, is a perfect vehicle to introduce new services and specialty programs, strengthen the agency's relationships with clients, and position the agency as an expert.

It may seem like a daunting task - heck, it is a daunting task - to create, print and mail out newsletters on a regular basis, but agencies can easily have it done for them with the help of home care marketing companies that specialize in producing and mailing out home health-specific newsletters.

The right newsletter automatically stimulates referrals, builds rapport, strengthens customer relationships, and - most importantly - creates an ongoing steady stream of referrals.

Newsletters should be created with not only the needs of the audience in mind, but also with what the home health agency wishes to promote. Newsletters ideally should contain an article that educates on a particular disease that is top of mind among the patient and medical community - along with tips on disease prevention and management. Newsletters should also contain "keeper pieces," to guarantee the recipient hangs onto it and refers back to it. Popular "keeper pieces" include crossword puzzles or other brainteasers (to work on later), recipes (to refer to later), and new product or resource spotlights.

In addition, there should be a spot in the newsletter for an agency to list its services and any other information it wishes to promote. For instance, some agencies may choose to include a spotlight on a referral source in article form or question/answer segment. A referral source spotlight offers great publicity for the agency and is guaranteed to boost referrals because when one referral source trusts an agency enough to refer to it (as evidenced by their feature in that agency's newsletter), others will follow suit. Patient testimonials and articles about employees going above and beyond for the patient are other popular promotional pieces to include in the newsletter.

Agencies shouldn't underestimate the impact of a newsletter, a simple marketing tool designed to build a fence around customers, ensuring that patients, clients, and referral sources revisit the agency over and over again.