Authorities on advertising say it takes seven impressions to get your message across to consumers. Most dental practices have two opportunities per year to interact with their patients and convey some message. This message might be that we are gladly accepting new patients, it might be that we do beautiful cosmetic dentistry, or it might be that we are state-of-the-art. Newsletters can be a great way to keep your message in front of your patients. Unfortunately, newsletters for dentistry can be time consuming and expensive to produce and distribute.

Over the years our cosmetic dentistry practice made numerous attempts to put together a newsletter. We had to come up with four pages of articles. This was easy at first, but gets to be a burden to keep fresh after awhile. For us, Microsoft Publisher expedited the process, but still consumed hours of layout time. Mailing labels needed to be printed and postage purchased. The process was expensive and time-consuming.

However, dental patients really enjoy getting your monthly newsletter. They like knowing what is new in dentistry and what is going on in the practice. The problem comes in when the very busy Ohio dentist, who has been doing the newsletter, becomes disenchanted by it and the work involved. He then passes the buck to a staff member, who has never done a newsletter of this size.

Where do you find interesting articles on things your dental patients would be interested in? How do you get those articles into your newsletter for cosmetic dentistry? There is no time in the office to get this newsletter done, so a staff member must do it at home on personal time. Soon what should be a really “FUN” and creative job becomes a burden. And we stop doing the newsletter. Sound familiar? Well that is how it was for our dental office, and many others I have talked to.

Enter the Internet.

We recently, however, discovered a way to construct our newsletter for cosmetic dentistry on line. We started, and are still collecting email addresses for our patients.

The on line service we use, Dentistry On Line, provides us with a large selection of featured articles about dentistry to select from each month. It allows you to have a customized section on your staff, doctor’s profile, continuing education, link to your web site, feedback, and office news.

Now, you can easily send a basic, professional looking newsletter with very little work on your part. Or you can take it one step further and really customize it for your practice. Get creative import pictures to go with your office news stories. Our dental patients really enjoy it. They ask about the SmileLink newsletter by mid-month if they haven’t received it yet.

It keeps your name in front of them at least one more time each month. It sets us apart from the rest and keeps our patients informed with what our dental practice is doing to be the best of the best.

Now Dr. Hedge and I fight over who is going to do the newsletter each month. He always does the cosmetic case of the month section, and lately has turned me loose with the rest of the newsletter. I love it! It is a terrific way to get a little more personal with our patient family.

Best of all it takes only about 30 minutes to do and it is SIMPLE and looks GREAT. One click of a button and its on its way to our patient family.

With the help of DentistryOnline and the Internet, we have a simple fast way to communicate with our patients and look good doing it.

DentistryOnline can be reached at 1-800-683-5409