Blast Calls

Blast calls are a often under looked method at building your practice! Most doctors and therapist aren't using blast calls at all, and when they do, they aren’t doing it right!

So, what is a blast call? Its when you send a pre-recorded message to a large list of names and numbers. With the advent of new technology, you can call thousands of patients at the same time! It’s really amazing. Now, you don't just want to call them for no reason, and they are some rules with this.

1. You cannot call anyone, they are rules to this, and you must check with your state. Usually if they have been in your office within a set time period, say a year or two, that is consent to be contacted by you via mail and phone. But, your state may vary. Definitely do not call strangers, or buy lists or anything like that. With the do not call list, this is serious trouble!
2. Don’t call them too much, i would say between 1-4 times a year. If you call them 2, 3 times a year, they think its neat, fun, interesting, etc. Start doing it once a month, they will get mad.

So, what do you call them for? I call them for our patient appreciation day twice a year. I would definitely recommend that. You call them a few days before to remind them of the patient appreciation day.

You can do recall calls, just upload a list of patients that hasn't been in for a while.

You can call them for other events your doing, doctor with a heart, food drives, etc. I usually recommend doing them for the twice yearly patient appreciation day, maybe one other event.

So, when you are promoting say a patient appreciation day, send postcards maybe a month before, and do the call maybe on a Tuesday for the Saturday event.

Some words of wisdom,

People call back, they don’t listen to message, they just call back. Why they do this? I have no idea. So, when you schedule the call, make sure your staff can handle all the call backs, we try to do it a slower time in office so staff can manage phones. They wont all call but a bunch will.

Types of calls

1. For the answering machine
2. For live answer
3. Both

I send only one message for both, and we try to have it go to answering machine, you can have two messages one if someone answers, one if no one does. I just do one!

What do you say in the message? For the events, i keep it easy, Hi Its megan for docs office, i was just calling to remind you about our patient appreciation day this sat, 11-1, free food, free care, and live music, come on down!

This seems to be the best method in our office.

You can get really fancy with this and do impersonations, hire voice actors, and more. Which i don’t do, my staff do a great job!

There are a lot of sites out there that do this, we use voiceshot, it isnt fancy, but its easy, cheap and works!

GOOD LUCK!!!