There are multiple reasons that contribute to a patient being removed (deleted) from the your list of active marketing subscribers. Keep reading to learn what they are and how to change your settings.
Your patient marketing list is an automatically-managed database of patients from your Cliniko account who are opted in for email marketing.
This list is updated every 5 minutes with the latest patients, details and activity, including removing people from the list.
Reasons patients would appear in the deleted tab:
They have unsubscribed themselves.
Their email address is bouncing (emails can't be delivered).
You have set an Active Patient Limit which removes patients who have not attended an appointment within a specific period of time (e.g. 12 months, 24 months).
You are still on a free trial and are limited sending email to most recent 250 patients.
Your trial has ended, but have not yet set an Active Patient Limit on the settings page of Peptalkr.
A patient's email address has changed in Cliniko.
A patient has been archived from Cliniko.
A patient marked an email as spam.
Details explanation of deleted reasons
Patients who have unsubscribed themselves
Patients who have unsubscribed themselves
Patients can click Unsubscribe at the bottom of any marketing email to opt themselves out of future marketing email - thus 'deleting' them from the list. You can view when a patient unsubscribed and from which email by:
Click their email address from the Deleted tab of the Patients list
In the Activity column of their email marketing profile look for Unsubscribed:
*Please note sometimes it is not possible for us to record/know when and how they unsubscribed. So if you can't find the Unsubscribed event, they were deleted for another reason listed above OR they did unsubscribe but we do not have the tracking details about when.
Bouncing email addresses
Bouncing email addresses
A 'Bounce' is when an email failed to deliver to an email address. There are two types of bounces:
A hard bounce - permanently undeliverable as the email address no longer exists.
A soft bounce - temporarily undeliverable due to technical reasons such as a full inbox or server outage.
A hard bounce will result in a patient being deleted right away, whereas there would need to be multiple soft-bounces in a row for a patient to be deleted.
It's important that we automatically clean your list of bouncing emails as a list with a high % of bouncing email addresses can affect your email deliverability and land your emails in spam filters. We don't want that, so we automatically keep your list clean.
Active Patient Limit
Active Patient Limit
The Active Patient Limit is an important setting of Peptalkr which allows you special control over how patients are imported to your marketing list.
You can simply select to import 'All' patients from Cliniko, or you can set a limit. The limit means that if it has been a certain duration since a patient's last appointment, and they have none coming up - they will be automatically removed from the marketing list until they book another appointment.
This is useful if you want to reduce the plan you are on by excluding patients from it automatically.
For example, if you set a 24 month limit - then only patients who have attended an appointment in the last 24 months or have an upcoming appointment will be in the marketing list. As soon as a patient's last appointment is beyond 24 months ago - they are automatically deleted from the list.
They'll be automatically re-added to the list if they book another appointment (and have not unsubscribed or been deleted for some other reason).
Free Trial Mode (still on a free trial)
Free Trial Mode (still on a free trial)
When you sign up to Peptalkr, you get a free trial period. The only limitation on your account during this time is the number of patients synced into your patient email marketing list.
Only the most recent 250 patients will be in the marketing list.
Once the trial ends, you can change your Active Patient Limit from 'Free Trial Mode' to one of the other available options which will import the rest of your database per your selection.
Free Trial Mode (your trial has ended)
Free Trial Mode (your trial has ended)
If your trial has ended, but you still only see a max of 250 patients in your list - it's because you need to set an Active Patient Limit.
We require you to make a selection yourself, as this determines the plan you are on and we want you to know your plan before you're billed.
So make sure you head over to the Settings page of Peptalkr and set an Active Patient Limit per the instructions here.
Patient email has changed
Patient email has changed
If you have recently updated a patient's email address directly in their Cliniko patient file, then Peptalkr will reflect this update in the patient marketing list within 5 minutes.
You may notice the patients 'old' email address in the deleted tab. However, their 'new' email address will be in the Active tab.
Patient has been archived in Cliniko
Patient has been archived in Cliniko
Archiving a patient in Cliniko hides them from your Cliniko account. It has a similar impact on Peptalkr - archived patients are considered 'no longer in need of services' and thus are automatically excluded from the patient email marketing list, as well as transactional email.
The only way they'd receive email again is if you un-archive them or they book a new appointment and an active patient profile is created in Cliniko.
Deleted patients will also, of course, be deleted from Peptalkr.
Patient marked an email as spam
Patient marked an email as spam
Spam reports are serious, and Peptalkr will automatically delete anyone from your patient marketing list if they have reported an email as spam. This is to protect the reputation of your email marketing list - very important if you want to reduce risk of being caught by spam filters next time you send email.
To learn more about the relationship between your entire Cliniko database and your Peptalkr marketing list you can read this article (spot the handy diagram!)