Most dental practices collect email addresses and never do anything with them. That's like filling your waiting room and then sending everyone home. Dental email marketing is the highest-ROI channel available to practices — it costs almost nothing to send, it's fully automated, and it works while you sleep. Here are the five sequences every practice needs, complete with timing, subject lines, and what to include in each email.
Email marketing generates an average of $36 for every $1 spent across all industries. For dental practices specifically, we've seen returns as high as $42 per dollar because the cost to send is near zero and the lifetime value of a reactivated or retained patient is enormous.
Unlike social media, where you're at the mercy of algorithms, email lands directly in your patient's inbox. You own the list. You control the message. And with modern automation tools, you set it up once and it runs forever.
The five sequences below represent the core email infrastructure every dental practice needs. Think of them as your automated patient relationship manager — nurturing new patients, reactivating lapsed ones, keeping current patients on schedule, building your review profile, and generating referrals without your team lifting a finger.
A series of 4–5 emails sent to new patients between the time they book and their first few weeks as a patient. The goal is to reduce no-shows, build trust, and set expectations before they ever walk through the door.
Keep each email short — 150–250 words max. Use a warm, conversational tone. Include one clear call-to-action per email. Add the practice phone number prominently. Include a photo of the doctor or office in at least two of the emails. People don't trust faceless businesses, especially in healthcare.
Practices that implement a welcome sequence see no-show rates drop by 25–40%. That alone makes this sequence worth its weight in gold. A single no-show costs the average practice $200–$400 in lost production. If you're getting 30 new patients a month and reducing no-shows from 20% to 10%, that's 3 extra patients showing up — roughly $1,000–$3,000 in recovered monthly revenue.
A 3–4 email sequence targeting patients who haven't visited in 6 months or more. These people already know and (presumably) trust you. They just need a nudge. Reactivating existing patients is 5–8x cheaper than acquiring new ones.
Lead with empathy, not guilt. Avoid language like "you're overdue" — instead, try "we'd love to see you again." Include an easy booking link (ideally one-click online scheduling). If you can offer an incentive like a free whitening touch-up or discounted cleaning, do it. The cost of the incentive is trivial compared to the lifetime value of a reactivated patient.
A well-crafted reactivation sequence recovers 8–15% of dormant patients. For a practice with 500 inactive patients, that's 40–75 patients back in the chair without spending a dime on advertising. At $800+ average patient value, that's $32,000–$60,000 in recovered revenue from a sequence you build once.
Automated reminders for routine hygiene appointments that go out at regular intervals. This is the backbone of patient retention and the easiest sequence to set up. Most practice management software handles basic appointment reminders, but email sequences add a layer of personalization and education that boosts compliance.
Automated recall sequences increase hygiene compliance by 20–35% compared to phone-call-only reminders. They also free up your front desk from making hundreds of calls each month. One of our clients added email recall sequences and booked 47 additional hygiene appointments in the first month — all without a single phone call.
A short sequence that asks satisfied patients to leave a Google review. Google reviews directly impact your local search rankings, click-through rate, and patient trust. Most patients are happy to leave a review — they just need to be asked at the right time in the right way.
Keep the first email to under 100 words. Thank them for coming in, say you hope the experience was great, and provide a one-click link to your Google Business Profile. Don't ask for a "5-star" review — just ask them to share their honest experience. A direct link that opens the Google review form eliminates friction and dramatically increases completion rates.
Practices that systematically request reviews via email generate 15–25 new Google reviews per month. That's 180–300 reviews per year, which puts you in the top tier of dental practices in any local market. We've seen practices go from 45 reviews to over 300 in a single year using this exact system.
A periodic email sent to your best patients asking them to refer friends and family. Referral patients are the highest-quality leads any practice can get — they arrive pre-sold, they trust you before they meet you, and they have higher lifetime values than patients from any other source.
Offer a two-sided incentive — something for the referrer and something for the new patient. A $50 credit for each is a common structure that works well. Make it easy to refer by including a shareable link or a simple "reply with their name and number" option. Always express genuine gratitude — patients who refer are doing you an enormous favor.
A structured referral program generates 3–8 new patients per month for the average practice. These patients cost you $50–$100 in referral incentives compared to $75–$150 in advertising costs for a Facebook lead, and they convert at nearly double the rate. Over a year, that's 36–96 high-quality new patients at a fraction of acquisition cost.
For dental email marketing, we build all of our client sequences in Klaviyo. Here's why:
Mailchimp and Constant Contact work for basic newsletters, but they lack the automation depth and segmentation power needed for patient lifecycle marketing. Klaviyo is purpose-built for exactly this kind of work.
You don't need to build all five sequences at once. Start with the welcome sequence and review request sequence — they have the most immediate impact and are the easiest to set up. Once those are running, add reactivation. Then recall. Then referral.
The total setup time for all five sequences is roughly 15–20 hours of work — writing copy, building flows, connecting your data, and testing. After that, they run on autopilot. The ROI compounds month over month as your patient list grows.
If you want these sequences built by a team that's done it for dozens of dental practices, check out our dental email marketing service. We'll handle the strategy, copywriting, design, and Klaviyo setup so you can focus on dentistry.
Proven strategies to generate 15–25 new reviews per month without being pushy.
Budget ranges, ROI expectations, and South Florida benchmarks for dental ad spend.
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