Smart Communication Strategies Every Practice Needs to Know

Smart Communication Strategies Every Practice Needs to Know

Pay attention to and cultivate your outreach to your patients, lest another practice rushes in to fill the gap.

Ashli Klingaman

After a busy day juggling school drop-offs, a full-time job, cooking for a family of six, and tackling cleanup, bedtime routines and showers, a mother finally sinks onto the couch around 9:30 p.m. to relax and scroll through social media on her mobile phone. Her feed is filled with Amazon products for organizing her pantry, heartwarming family moments from friends and a video from her children’s dental practice on preventing cavities during the holidays. Suddenly reminded that she needs to schedule hygiene appointments, she navigates to the practice’s website and quickly books the next available slot.

This picture highlights successful patient communication, but it doesn’t reveal the time and resources required to create that social post. Consistent and meaningful communication builds trust, loyalty and engagement, but without it, practices risk losing patients to competitors with stronger strategies or missing opportunities to secure appointments with existing patients. By using preplanned communication calendars, ready-made templates and automation tools, practices can save time while delivering impactful content. These approaches not only streamline workflows but also strengthen patient relationships, boost satisfaction and drive higher appointment rates, ensuring long-term success and patient retention.

Why Consistent and Engaging Patient Communications Matter

Patients are inundated with content from all different aspects of their lives. Consistent communication will ensure that your practice doesn’t get lost in all the content that patients consume and will strengthen trust and loyalty with you. Patients need to feel valued and connected with regular updates and consistent communication. Focusing on educating patients and encouraging compliance with oral healthcare plans improves the overall health of patients and the health of their dependents—not to mention building more trust.

As patients trust you with their oral care and stay engaged with your practice, they’re more likely to schedule appointments outside of regular hygiene visits and more likely to recommend your services in a review, or directly to someone in their network.

Even simple appointment reminders through text message can effectively cut through the noise and minimize no-shows. For example, practices that use PracticeMojo to automate communications (such as appointment reminders) see an average increase of two and a half appointments per day, which could be through retention or filling last-minute slots. Studies show that practices with consistent patient communication see up to a 25% increase in appointment retention rates and higher patient satisfaction scores.

Common Challenges Practices Face

Automated appointment reminders are a common solution that practices have already grown accustomed to and recognize as a valuable time-saving tool. However, even with automated solutions, managing patient communications is a significant challenge for many practices. Common additional challenges attributed include competing priorities and limited time. Balancing high-quality patient care with the demands of planning, creating and managing communications can feel overwhelming, especially for small teams. Many practices struggle to identify the right content that resonates with patients and aligns with their goals, leaving them unsure of what to say or when to say it.

This uncertainty often results in missed opportunities to engage patients, build loyalty and fill appointment schedules. Without a clear plan, communication efforts can become inconsistent or lack the impact needed to make a difference.

Technology and workflow integration add another layer of complexity. Practices must manage multiple communication channels—text, email and social media—while ensuring messages are timely, relevant and consistent. Automated appointment reminders are an example of how technology has already proven its value in saving time and reducing no-shows. By extending automation to broader communication strategies, such as preplanned content calendars and ready-made templates, practices can further streamline efforts, ensuring patients stay informed and engaged without overburdening staff.

Saving Time while Creating Impactful Communications

The best strategy for patient communications is to have one—having a strategy is the most effective way to save time and create impactful content to use in your communications. Use tactics like the ones listed below in your planning.

Leverage Preplanned Communication Calendars

Preplanning your patient communications for the entire year simplifies the whole process, ensuring consistent, timely and relevant outreach throughout the year. With a well-structured calendar, your practice can map out themes, such as seasonal health tips in winter, back-to-school dental checkups in late summer and periodontal disease prevention during Gum Disease Awareness Month. By having a schedule created in advance, your practice can save valuable time and eliminate the stress of last-minute planning.

Use Ready-Made Templates

With a preplanned calendar, it’s easier to create ready-made templates for text, email and social media campaigns to share your content, saving you time not only on writing but also on design. The templates will provide a clear framework that can be quickly customized to fit your needs. For example, a text reminder like “Don’t forget to book your hygiene appointment!” or a social media post offering “How to Keep Your Smile Bright During the Holiday Season” can be reused year after year with minor updates.

Automate Where Possible

Time is usually the number-one constraint for practices sending out consistent communications to their patients. Use tools like PracticeMojo to schedule recall campaigns through email and Hootsuite or Mailchimp for social media platforms to reduce the manual workload. Tools that integrate seamlessly into your practice workflow will help make your communications go out in a consistent manner without any heavy time commitment from your staff.

Delegate and Outsource

Find a specific team member and delegate patient communications to that person, or find an expert outside of your practice to manage your patient communications, which can significantly enhance efficiency and quality. Assigning tasks ensures accountability within your team, while outsourcing content creation to professionals saves time and delivers polished, engaging materials. The ROI of outsourcing is clear: It reduces the burden on your staff, eliminates inefficiencies and allows your team to focus on patient care, all while ensuring consistent, high-quality communication. Investing in expert support often costs less than the time and resources wasted on inconsistent or ineffective in-house efforts.

Repurpose and Recycle Content

When and where you can, repurpose and recycle content. Taking verbiage from email recall campaigns and repurposing it in a format that works for social media allows your existing content to reach more patients. For example, someone who isn’t as responsive by email will see the same content on social and engage with your practice from that channel. This can be stretched over multiple pieces of content. So, be sure to create a content library for easy access and reuse of material.

Ideas for Engaging Patient Communications

Engaging patient communications start with a mix of content that informs, reminds and connects. Educational posts like “Top 5 Myths About Oral Health” or “How to Protect Your Teeth During the Holidays” empower patients with valuable information, making your practice a trusted resource for oral health. You can also use timely reminders, like sending a text for regular hygiene appointments or posting a friendly nudge on social media about scheduling oral cancer screenings or backto-school dental cleanings.

Being proactive with messages keeps your practice top of mind and encourages timely appointments. Building stronger connections with patients, including birthday greetings and holiday wishes, makes patients feel valued. Community-focused content, like sharing patient success stories or testimonials, builds trust and encourages other patients to schedule appointments with your practice.

Don’t forget behind-the-scenes communications about your practice. Introduce a new team member, showcase upgraded equipment or highlight a milestone, like your practice anniversary. These humanizing touches create a sense of familiarity and connection, making patients feel part of your community.

Conclusion

Patient communications are a major connecting element between patients and your practice. Without them, there are opportunities for other practices to become the trusted resource and, potentially, pull appointments away from your practice. Avoiding challenges like time constraints and uncertainty about what content would be effective and implementing time-saving strategies, such as pre-planned calendars, ready-made templates and automation can simplify the process and make your communication strategy much more effective.

Now is the time to prioritize communication as a core component of your patient engagement strategy, and we’ve started the process for you with a full year of timely social posts and communication ideas to keep patients engaged and coming back to your practice. Download our 2025 Dental Patient Communication Calendar for free today.

Ashli Klingaman is content marketing manager at ProSites. NYSDA-endorsed ProSites has provided marketing and automation solutions for over two decades and is committed to supporting practices to fill their appointment schedules and treat as many patients as possible in their communities. Plus, NYSDA members receive exclusive discounts on ProSites solutions. Visit prosites. com/NYSDA or call (888) 932-3644 and mention you are a NYSDA member to schedule a free strategy call today.