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Increase Your Professional Referrals with Alert Newsletters

Alert newsletters are a form of inter-professional prospecting among colleagues—your target audience is other healthcare professionals. These are practitioners outside your specialty who could refer patients to you, and so could benefit by some knowledge in your area of expertise.
 
Alert newsletters utilize a simple marketing strategy to increase patient referrals from other professionals, and like internal prospecting packages, alert newsletters are mailed out to your target audience on a regular basis—four to six times a year.
 
Alert Mailings Accomplish Four Things
 
Alert mailings raise awareness of your expertise in four ways. They will:
1. Introduce you and your credentials.
2. Inform the reader about your services and specialty.
3. Provide leading edge information to your colleagues on a variety of topics relating to your services.
4. Repeatedly place your name in front of colleagues so that they remember you and your services when they have patients appropriate for referral.

Many practitioners have also reported that they are frequently invited to train others in a particular technique or are asked to be guest speakers on subjects presented in their alert newsletters.

An alert newsletter consists of a two-sided technical news sheet accompanied by a brief, one-page cover letter. The alert is designed to be placed into a 3-ring binder to encourage the recipient to retain and refer to the information it presents. An indirect “call to action” is typically incorporated into the alert and letter; however, the contents are not sales-oriented and are presented in a technical, professional manner to maintain your credibility and professional image.
 
The alert newsletter should contain practical, hands-on information that potential referral sources can use to improve the quality or scope of care or services they render to their own patients. By letting your colleagues know about you and how you can benefit them and their patients, you are doing them a service and helping to increase your professional referrals at the same time.