Ideas for Your Patient Retention Rewards Program

For any healthcare practice, one of the most important ways to stabilize and grow your revenue is to avoid taking the patient base that you worked so hard to earn for granted. Don’t assume that they will remain loyal patients. You need to provide the best possible customer service, actively engaging them, talking with them, and listening to their needs as well as monitoring their habits and requests to show them that they made the best choice in staying with you. In addition to top-notch customer service, a patient rewards system is one of many techniques that can improve your patient retention strategy.

For your patient rewards system to be effective, it needs to be interesting and beneficial enough to catch patients’ attention. To make your loyalty program more powerful, try these ideas and incentives from our healthcare marketing experts at McCauley Marketing Services.

Exclusive VIP Events

Everyone loves to feel like part of a special group – including your patients. For those who reach a certain rank in your loyalty points program, consider offering special events that are exclusive to them. It could be a social meet-and-greet with your medical staff, for example, or an invitation-only discount event. For events that are open to all patients, you could set aside time before the event for a special VIP-only preview time.

Free Informative Resources

Your goal in healthcare is to give every patient the tools to improve their health. You might throw a health and wellness clinic, for instance, or a partnership with other medical colleagues for a patient event on Facebook Live or Zoom. For your services or treatments that are more cosmetic or elective, though, you can offer exclusive resources and informational opportunities for your top patients.

This could include free treatment demonstrations, for example, or free patient seminars about these elective procedures. Or, if you’re having trouble with encouraging patients to join your rewards program, you can make these resources available to all rewards program members as an immediate incentive for patients to sign up.

Tiered Discounts

Discounts on treatments, products, or services can be enticing for anyone, and they should be a core part of your patient loyalty program. To encourage patients to continue earning more points, consider offering tiered discounts or credits toward in-house services that get better each time a patient reaches a new milestone in their loyalty points.

Partnership Perks

The incentives you offer to patients don’t have to be limited to your practice. Consider setting up a partnership with other local businesses, offering discounts to each other’s rewards program members. Another option is to offer gift cards to certain local businesses as part of your reward incentives. Not only will you be engaging your patients, but you’ll be stimulating your local economy too.

Accessible Tracking

For your loyalty program to be successful, you want to always be encouraging patients to reach the next level or earn more points. They’ll feel that encouragement each time they see their progress.

Look for a way that frequently reminds patients of their loyalty program ranking. You might incorporate it into your patient portal so each time a patient logs in, they see their progress. You could also send targeted emails to patients who are on the cusp of reaching the next level to encourage them to make the jump.

Varied Earning Opportunities

The most common way to execute a rewards program is to award points to patients when they spend money. That doesn’t have to be the only way they earn points, though. Offer points for patients who take a feedback survey, for example. You can also use points to incentivize patients to refer friends, follow you on social media, watch informational videos, and so on.

Making Your Patient Rewards Program Effective

A well-executed patient loyalty program can be a valuable asset to any medical practice, but it takes skill and strategy to determine the best way to put your system together and to monitor its progress in order to determine what should continue and what should be tweaked. To make this process smoother and simpler, contact McCauley Marketing Services to discuss how our healthcare marketing specialists can help.