If you'd like to divide your patient email marketing list into groups based on shared attributes such as location, patient type or treatment modality, this tutorial will walk you through all you need to know.
Note: This article is specific to your Patient email marketing list, not your automated non-marketing (Transactional) emails. Read this article to learn more.
Peptalkr syncs with your Cliniko database so that you can send accurate, timely email. Your patient email marketing list is an automatically created list of patients your Peptalkr account is able to send marketing emails to.
Who is in the patient list
The patient email marketing list only contains Cliniko patients who are:
Opted-in for email marketing (They can opt out themselves)
Have visited within the timeframe set by your Active Patient Limit
Have a valid email address
Your patient email marketing list is a special division of your entire Cliniko database. It contains only patients who are eligible to receive marketing email. It's size is influenced by your settings - in particular, the Active Patient Limit.
When to segment the patient list
Segments are a great way to further divide your patient list into groups or buckets of patients sharing similar qualities or attributes.
Your Peptalkr account will have several segments set up already by default, but you can create your own to meet all kinds of simple or complex needs, such as:
A segment for each individual business in your Cliniko account.
A segment for patients of specific practitioners.
Segments targeting specific postcodes.
Segments for specific treatment modailities (Chiro, Physio, Massage etc.)
How to segment your patient list
Step One: Navigate to the 'Patients' list
You can view your Patient list by:
Going to the 🔗 Email manager
Clicking on Lists & Subscribers
Look for the list named 'Patients'
Click on the Patients list to open it, and on the left hand side you'll see a submenu option called Segments. Click on this.
Why is my list so small?
If you see 250 or fewer patients here, chances are you're on a free trial and or have not set an Active Patient Limit yet.
Step Two: Check out your automatically created segments
Peptalkr automatically creates a number of segments for you - so definitely check these out before diving into to creating new segments.
Expand to learn about all pre-built segments
Expand to learn about all pre-built segments
SEGMENT | DESCRIPTION | HELPFUL HINTS |
Appointments - Has an upcoming | The 'Next Appointment' custom field has a date set. | |
Appointments - Has no upcoming | The 'Next Appointment' custom field is blank. |
|
Next App - 1st with anyone | The 'Next appointment type' custom field contains the words 'First' or 'Initial' or '1st' | If your initial appointment types do not contain the words 'First' or 'Initial' - you can edit this segment.
Change 'Next Appointment' to 'is provided' and add another rule by clicking |
Patients - Loyal (More than 10 visits)
| The 'Total visits' custom field has a value of 10 or more | You can |
Recalls:
14 - 29 days 30 - 59 days 60 - 89 days 90 - 179 days 180 - 364 days 1-2 years 2+ years
| The 'Last Appointment' custom field has a date that falls into one of these ranges. | Recalls/Reactivations are usually sent with Transactional emails, however, sometimes our users wish to narrow down who receives promotions, offers or other marketing content they include in their Campaigns or Automated Journeys. These segments make doing so a breeze. |
then set 'Total Visits' to '0' - this way we are looking for people with no past appointment history, but do have an upcoming appointment scheduled.
this segment and change the 'Total Visits' field to a more specific appointment category such as 'Total Chiropractic Visits' if you want to segment out patients of a specific modality/category.
🚨 Please do not edit the recall segments we have created for you. Their names and settings are inextricably linked to Peptalkr's core functions and they may stop working as expected if you edit them.
Step Three: build your own segments
Click the Create a new segment button to build your own segment using Rules.
Peptalkr automatically imports Custom data about your synced patients, we called these Custom fields. You can use the custom fields to make all kinds of combinations of patient segments.
To set up a new segment:
On the Segment screen, click Create a new segment in top right of screen.
Select Custom fields from the first dropdown
Choose your custom field (e.g. Businesses visited)
Choose your operator (e.g. contains)
Type the value this field must contain for a patient to be included in the segment (e.g. Byron Bay)
In the example below, we are using the Businesses visited custom rule to target only patients who have visited the Byron Bay location from our Cliniko account:
Adding more conditions to your segments
You can layer multiple conditions using rules - you have the choice of:
AND rules - AND to connect rules when you want to group subscribers who match all of the rules in your segment.
OR rules - Use OR to connect rules when you want to group subscribers who match any of the rules.
More on using 'And' segment rules
More on using 'And' segment rules
You can add more rules on top of this. Simply click the 'and' button to add an additional rule. For example, you may want to create a Segment of all Male patients who have an upcoming appointment. That would look like this:
We use the 'is provided' condition in this instance. If we wanted to target all male patients with no upcoming appointment, we'd have selected the 'is not provided' condition.
More on using 'Or' segment rules
More on using 'Or' segment rules
Here's an example of using an 'or' rule to target patients who have EITHER the postcode 2570 or 2512:
There are many possibilities when it comes to segmentation. Feel free to chat to our team if you have any questions or would like some guidance.
💡 Segment creation tips
Common segment examples
Common segment examples
Here's some common segments our users like to set up:
Patients of a specific business location (as above)
Patients that have a specific medical alert in their patient file (e.g. 'Pregnant')
Patients who attend group appointments (e.g. Group Visits > 0)
Female patients or male patients (e.g. Sex = Female)
Available custom fields and their definitions
Available custom fields and their definitions
Here's a listing of the custom fields that work well with segment creation.
Custom field name | Description | Recommended operator |
Attended categories | A comma separated list of all appointment categories a patient has ever attended. | Contains |
Attended types | A comma separated list of all appointment types a patient has ever attended. | Contains |
Businesses visited | A comma separated list of all businesses (from your Cliniko account) a patient has ever attended. | |
Date of Birth | The day/month of a patient's birth. | *Please note the year of birth IS NOT stored in the patient list! This is for security and privacy reasons, thus age-based segmentation is not possible at this time. |
Last appointment | The date of a patient's last appointment | |
Last appointment category | The Cliniko category of a patients last appointment. | |
Last appointment type | The specific appointment type a patient last attended. | |
LastBusiness visited | The business the patient last visited. | |
LastBusiness visited city | The 'City/Suburb' of the business the patient last visited. | |
LastBusiness visited display name | The display name of the business the patient last visited. *Set in your Cliniko settings. | |
Medical alerts | A comma separated list of all medical alerts currently added to this patients file in Cliniko. | Contains |
Month of birth | The full name of the month the patient was born in - e.g. January. | Contains |
Next appointment | The date of a patient's next appointment *The most upcoming appointment if they have multiple booked. | |
Next appointment category | The Cliniko category of a patients next appointment. *The most upcoming appointment if they have multiple booked. | |
Next appointment type | The specific appointment type a patient is next attending *The most upcoming appointment if they have multiple booked. | |
Next appointment practitioner | The practitioner a patient is due to see at their next appointment. | |
Next appointment business | The business the patient is next visiting. | |
Next appointment business city | The 'City/Suburb' of the business the patient last visited. | |
Next appointment business display name | The display name of the business the patient last visited. *Set in your Cliniko settings. | |
Postcode | The postcode of the patient. | |
Practitioners Seen | A comma separated list of all practitioners a patient has attended an appointment with. | |
Primary practitioner | The practitioner a patient has most seen across their appointment history. | |
Primary treatment type | The most commonly booked appointment type for this patient. | |
Sex | The sex of the patient (if set in Cliniko) | |
Total visits | The total number of visits a patient has had in their entire appointment history, across both group and individual appointment types. | |
Total group visits | The total number of group class visits a patient has had in their entire appointment history. | |
Total individual visits | The total number of individual visits a patient has had in their entire appointment history. |
And if your business offers more than one appointment category (e.g Chiropractic, Remedial Massage, Phsyio etc) you'll also be able to create segments based on:
Last [category] practitioner
Primary [category] practitioner
Next [category] practitioner
Total [category] visits
For example, if you offer both Chiropractic and Physiotherapy - there will be 4 datapoints for each category such as 'Last Chiropractic Practitioner'. These are created automatically whenever you add a new treatment category in Cliniko.
🙋🏻♀️ FAQS
Can I make more recall segments?
Can I make more recall segments?
We have created 7, 14, 30, 60, 90 and 180 day intervals for you as well as 1 and 2 year recall segments. At this stage it is not possible to create your own but we have included more than enough for marketing purposes.
However - you can use Transactional email to send more specific recall/reactivation emails at any duration you select. We generally recommend using this transactional email tutorial for your reactivations/recalls, only use the marketing recall segments for sending offers/other marketing email to people who have not got an upcoming appointent.
Does case sensitivity matter?
Does case sensitivity matter?
The "matches exactly" condition is not case sensitive, meaning "male" is equivalent to "Male".
The segment is getting no results
The segment is getting no results
Most commonly this is either a misconfiguration of rules, or using the wrong operator. We recommend using the Contains operator rather than matches exactly for most cases as spaces and spelling matter! Any additional blank spaces or other spelling variations will not find a match in Cliniko, so ensure you enter the text exactly as it appears in Cliniko when it comes to things like Practitioner names, appointment types, medical alerts and so on.