Perhaps one of your practice physicians is ill and her patients need to be informed that she'll be out of the office next week.  Maybe a storm has affected your region and you need to reschedule hundreds of patients.  Or perhaps you’d like to invite thousands of your Medicare patients to book their copay-free Annual Wellness exam in an efficient, cost-efficient way.  Mass Messaging offers a secure HIPAA-compliant solution for all of these situations.

What is Mass Messaging?

Mass messaging or mass texting, sometimes known as a text blast, is the ability to text a consistent message to all or to a subset of your patients at one time.  As such, it offers a quick, easy way to reach your patients in a highly effective way.  Consider the following statistics regarding consumer responses to texts:

  • 90% of texts are read within 3 minutes of being sent
  • 99% of texts are read within 20 minutes of being sent
  • Emails enjoy only a 20% open rate
  • 85% of patients in 2023 prefer to receive text versus phone calls or email

Mass texting delivers the ability to communicate a message quickly — and in a form preferred by your patients. With Curogram, you get the best of both worlds as Mass Messaging will deliver BOTH text messages and email messages as long as patients have both on file.

Is Mass Messaging Cost-Effective?

Not only is mass texting much more likely to reach its target, mass messaging your patients proves to be highly cost-effective when compared to other communication methods:

Phone Calls

Attempting to phone large groups of patients is much less likely to reach your audience, diverts the efforts of your office staff and incurs labor and other costs.  Costs become even higher when the inefficiencies of phone calls and the time lag involved are considered.

Emails

While the cost-per-message of texting may be higher than the cost of sending an email, the relative effectiveness of the two communication forms may easily tip the scales.  We’ve seen how much more likely texts are to be read by your patients than emails.  This disparity grows when a response is desired.  Texting enjoys a response rate of 45%, while email’s response rate is just 6%.

Fliers and Brochures

When the costs of creating, printing and posting a flier or a brochure are considered, texting clearly is a less expensive method of delivering a short, targeted message to your patient — and a text won’t end up unread in the wastepaper basket. You can even include a link to a PDF in your mass messages so patients can view a printable document on their phone or computer. 

How does Mass Messaging Deliver Value? 

Mass messaging allows you to communicate with your patients through a preferred channel, their phone,  the one communication device that they keep close at hand.  This helps boost patient engagement and satisfaction — and your bottom line. 

Use mass texting to:

  • Promote new services or expansion of your practice
  • Alert patients of a provider’s absence from the office and the need to reschedule their appointments
  • Notify patients of a change in clinic hours, new location openings, or last-minute closures
  • Share information about upcoming health screenings, vaccinations or free services
  • Send critical health information during community health alerts

How to Reach Your Target Patient Group

Delivering your message to the right patient group is key to a successful campaign.  Curogram allows you to send customized messages to all of your patients, select patients based on various filters, or to specific Patient Groups which you identify, such as Medicare Patients or High Risk Patients.  Filters can be used to select patients by:

  • Age
  • Provider
  • Appointment Date Range
  • Appointment Time Range, including by date and time of day
  • Appointment Type, as defined by your practice
  • Appointment Status and
  • Location

These variables can be combined to allow you to deliver your message to just the patients you wish to reach. For example, if a provider in your practice will be unexpectedly out of the office next week, simply select the patients scheduled to see that “Provider” during that "Date Range".  Then send a text to those patients asking what day and time would be convenient for rescheduling. Since Curogram enables simple two-way texting, your patients can easily message back and let you know what works best for them.

Want to increase patient engagement and help keep your practice books full?  Simply filter patients by “Appointment Status”, and send a text blast to those who “Canceled” or “Declined” their appointments to invite them to reschedule.

This power to tailor a message for a specific group of patients is enhanced by the ability to personalize your message. Curogram’s mass text template includes variables such as the patient’s name, allowing you to insert these variables into your text and enhance the effectiveness of your message.  Add a link to additional information for extra promotional power!

Ready to get add mass messaging to your tool kit?  Contact Curogram.