PracSuite includes powerful communication and marketing tools built into the majority of the standard reports that allow you to contact patients in bulk. This article will explore using the Active/Inactive Client Report to create an SMS campaign targeting clients that visited the practice in the last two years but have had no recent activity, inviting them to book an appointment online.
Creating Your template
First, an SMS template needs to be created for this campaign. Below is an example, but you can customise it to your liking. Make sure you replace our example website with your own website or a link to your online booking system.
<<FirstName>>, My Health Practice is fully operational after recent COVID lockdowns with extra hygiene procedures to ensure your safety. Book your next appointment at www.myhealthpractice.com Reply STOP to opt-out of marketing messages
💡 Tip: If you need to include long URLs in your SMS, URL shortening services like Bitly are ideal.
Using the Active/Inactive Clients Report
After finalising your SMS template, go to Reports > Clients > Active/Inactive Clients.
If you don't have access to this report, contact your PracSuite System Administrator.
For our example shown below, we will target clients who had a transaction in the last two years but haven't had a transaction in the last 60 days. We will also exclude Clients with future appointments so that we aren't contacting patients who have upcoming appointments.
💡 Tip: If you regularly run this report, you can choose to save your selected filters so that you can easily load them next time. More information on Saved Filters can be found here.
Running the Active/Inactive Client Report
Once your filters are set, select Generate Report to find patients matching your selected criteria.
Using the Send Message button, we can contact patients that appear in the results by SMS.
Select the Use Template button to insert a saved template or compose a message ad-hoc.
🗒Note: Enabling an SMS Sender ID will not allow SMS replies to be delivered back into PracSuite.
SMS Marketing Opt-Outs and Editing Recipients
By default, PracSuite excludes patients that have an SMS marketing status set to Opt-Out from bulk SMS sent from reports.
Selecting Edit Recipients on the Send Bulk SMS window will allow you to include patients that have opted out of SMS marketing at your discretion. For example, this can be useful when the SMS you are sending is an important announcement and must be sent to all patients, such as a COVID-19 broadcast.
If the patient chooses to reply with STOP to an SMS sent from PracSuite reports, the SMS marketing status on their patient file will automatically be set to Opt-Out, excluding them by default from future marketing SMS sent in bulk from reports. Note that this does not affect the patient receiving future SMS appointment reminders. Additional opt-out trigger phrases can be configured in Settings > PracSuite Account > SMS.
Sending Your SMS
Once you have finalised the content of your SMS message and edited your recipient list, selecting Next will allow you to preview your SMS before sending it. The SMS can be sent immediately or scheduled to send at a later time. PracSuite will also calculate the approximate number of credits required for this broadcast, giving you the chance to go back and alter your template if required.
Select Send Now or Schedule to send your messages.
Scheduled SMS messages can be rescheduled or cancelled from the Scheduled SMS page.