Practice Welcome Pack

With the recent announcement of email attachments, Dentally has really opened up the possibilities of email in dental software.

In case you didn't know, the new email attachment release allows you to attach estimates, letters and invoices to emails and send them to your patients as a PDF. Of course, this is handy for helping your practice go further down the path of paperless but what can it do if we think outside the box?

The Welcome Pack

New patients are the lifeblood of any practice and how you orientate a new patient on their initial visits will determine your practice retention. Moving to a new practice is a stressful experience for a patient so why not help them become comfortable with the practice and the practitioners that they will come to know? A lot of patients have anxiety around the dentist so this can really help calm their nerves. This is also a great process to add to your practice marketing mix.

We think creating a welcome pack that welcomes patients to your practice and provides them with all the information that they will need to make the right decisions when it comes to treatment is a great idea for all practices and with the email attachments in Dentally, you can now make it a breeze to provide it to your patients at very little cost to yourself.

What's in the box?

Every practice is different and you will know best how a welcome pack will fit your new patient journey but here are some suggestions. These could be individual letters or you could amalgamate them. As our dental software is so flexible, there really is a million ways you could do this.

The welcome letter - This letter welcomes the patient to the practice and gives them some information about the practice. You could also use this as an opportunity to introduce them to key members of the team that they will be seeing throughout their lifetime in the practice.
Practice promise - Does your practice have a mission statement or statement of intent? Now is a great time to send it to your new patient and let them know what you stand for. A great way of immediately promoting loyalty with your patients.
Appointments - Help the customer to understand your appointment process and help them run smoothly. This helps them avoid delays and minimises loss of surgery time for you.
Treatment brochure - This gives you an opportunity to list the treatments you offer and their prices, as well as including some information on the treatments. You could highlight specific offers you have or upsell particular treatments.
Payment plans - Let your customers know what treatment plans you accept in your practice (Denplan, NHS etc.) and what each plan entitles them to. You can also let your patients know if you offer your own in-house plan or credit facilities.
Cosmetic brochure - If your practice offers cosmetic treatments, implants, teeth whitening etc. this is a great way of letting your new patients know about these services.
Testimonials & Case Studies - These let your new patient know what sort of service they can expect when in surgery. A nice little addition to help get rid of any anxiety and help build a sense of community within your practice.

Workflow

How do you organise something like this? We suggest that this task is delegated to whoever deals with new patients in your practice. This will normally be your front of house staff but some practices have dedicated managers for this type of task.

We recommend sending your welcome pack to a patient over a number of days. If your practice does welcome consultations with a new patient then this is a great time to include some of the welcome pack.

For best results, you should leave a few days between each email and gradually extending the time between emails until the new patient is fully onboard.

Here is an example of a possible workflow:

Day 1: Welcome letter + Practice promise, confirm welcome consultation

Day 3: Welcome consultation + Appointment and Treatment Brochure

Day 6: Payments

Day 10: Cosmetic Brochure

Day 15: Testimonials

This sort of workflow allows you to keep in the mind of the patient without being too spammy but you could extend or shorten that timeframe as needed.

But how do you do it?

Create your template in the Templates section of Settings.

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