How do you continue to generate new patients in a crisis? Currently businesses are emailing new prospects, thinking that now, while staying home, their audience  will be opening up their emails more than usual.  While this is true, they are currently being bombarded from other businesses thinking the same thing. What will help to your emails get replies, is being writing something different than the other email pitches. Instead, show some value and reciprocity by giving them something they need right now in this uncertain time. You will stand out among your competitors and you’ll be on their radar when they need a service like yours.

According to The New York Times, Michael Wentz, the director of digital marketing at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., said companies that were sending out emails with facts about the pandemic, as well as their responses to it, were demonstrating great social responsibility.

That, he said, gives consumers “a better understanding or appreciation for that company because they felt the need, even though they’re not obligated to and it’s not in their purview to be giving me that information.”

But the message can be easily muddied, so businesses need to make sure their emails are cohesive and stick to one message, Mr. Wentz said. In other words, avoid dropping updates about your staff in the same email in which you send out a coupon code.

David Hagenbuch, a professor of marketing at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pa., said companies needed to do some soul-searching before hitting the send button.

If a restaurant, for example, has “very important health and safety reasons for sending the email then those motives are pretty legitimate,” he said, warning that customers know when a company sends an email just for the sake of sending one.

How to use email marketing effectively during the coronavirus_Consumers are increasingly savvy,” Professor Hagenbuch said. “As we read these emails, we can tell pretty quickly if one is being sent with the former types of reasons in mind, our health and safety, versus ones that just come across as kind of disingenuous. They’re just trying to roll with the tide.”