#image_title
Running a successful dental practice requires more than fluoride, free toothbrushes, and clinical expertise.
Between managing patient appointments, following up on treatment plans, and regulatory concerns, dental practices face unique marketing challenges, and analog outreach methods often fall short of tackling them.
Thankfully, email marketing offers a scalable channel to stay top-of-mind, educate patients, and boost retention across hygiene, referrals, or specialty procedures by automating appointment reminders, personalizing treatment follow-ups, and segmenting patients based on their dental health needs.
In fact, the average email open rate for dental practices hovers around 40%, showing email marketing is a highly effective avenue in the industry. But where do you start?
This article provides a comprehensive comparison of email marketing solutions built for dental practices (including HubSpot). You’ll find detailed feature breakdowns, verified pricing information, a side-by-side comparison, and a step-by-step guide to choosing the right platform.
Table of Contents
Email marketing for dentists enables dental practices to send digital targeted messages to patients and prospects. This includes appointment reminders, treatment follow-ups, recall notifications for cleanings (all with HIPAA compliance), oral health education, and promotional campaigns for cosmetic procedures. Email marketing helps dental practices maintain consistent patient engagement while reducing no-shows and increasing treatment acceptance rates.
Email marketing software addresses critical challenges dental practices face in patient communication and practice growth. Here’s how the right platform transforms dental practice operations:
Organizing patients by treatment needs, demographics, visit history, or engagement behavior helps you better target your contacts with messaging that truly resonates and drives action.
HubSpot’s advanced segmentation allow dental practices to create both static and dynamic patient lists that you can use to promote things like orthodontic services to families with teenagers, cosmetic procedures to adults aged 35-55, or dental implant consultations to seniors. In fact, companies have cut their time creating lists and segmenting contacts by 50% using HubSpot.
However, it’s important to note that your email marketing tool must be HIPAA-compliant (like HubSpot) to target and email patients based on any health or medical history data. (More on this shortly.)
Automated appointment reminders (like the one below) significantly decrease missed appointments, which cost dental practices an average of $150-200 per occurrence in lost revenue and schedule disruptions.
Appointment reminder workflows with a HIPAA-compliant tool like HubSpot can integrate with practice management systems to automatically send confirmation emails upon booking, followed by strategically timed reminders at 48 hours and 24 hours before appointments.
Appointment reminders have been shown to reduce no-shows by up to 40%.
Regular communication keeps patients engaged between visits, encourages consistent preventive care, and builds camaraderie, directly impacting practice revenue and patient health outcomes.
Dental practices can send care tips, team updates, host contests, or even send birthday wishes like the orthodontist below:
Educational email campaigns that explain procedures, address common concerns, and showcase results can help patients feel more confident about recommended treatments , particularly high-cost ones like implants or cosmetic work.
Here’s an example of a newsletter from the same orthodonist:
HubSpot Content and Marketing hubs can aid the delivery of this kind of content through automated drip emails. Practices can share targeted educational content, patient testimonials, and even financing information, all of which can help patients make more informed purchase decisions.
Automating routine communications frees up staff time previously spent making phone calls and sending manual reminders, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities like in-office patient care.
HubSpot’s versatile workflows, for example, can automate consistent, transactional communication (e.g., appointment confirmations, pre-appointment instructions, and insurance reminders) thanks to its HIPAA compliance without requiring staff intervention.
This reduces administrative burden while improving communication consistency and timeliness.
When evaluating email marketing platforms for your dental practice, prioritize these essential features that directly impact patient communication effectiveness and practice growth:
Protecting patient information is legally mandatory for dental practices and any healthcare providers under HIPAA regulations. And a lot of email initiatives like appointment reminders and campaigns based on patient history depend on this.
To be HIPAA-compliant, email platforms must maintain specific security standards and sign Business Associate Agreements to send messages including or relating to protected health information (PHI).
Source
HubSpot offers Business Associate Agreements for enterprise-level plans and maintains the security infrastructure necessary to communicate patient information safely (i.e. encryption, access controls, and audit logging).
Note: HIPAA compliance is unnecessary for sending general marketing emails that do not include specific health information.
The ability to automatically send pre-appointment reminders at strategic intervals reduces no-shows, improves schedule efficiency, and eliminates staff time spent making manual reminder calls.
HubSpot’s automated emails integrate seamlessly with practice management systems like Dentrix and Eaglesoft, so practices can trigger confirmation emails upon booking, followed by reminders at 48 hours, 24 hours, and even same-day.
Your HubSpot emails can also include personalization, such as patient names, appointment times, and specific pre-appointment instructions for different procedure types.
Grouping patients by treatment history, age, last visit date, procedure interest, insurance status, or engagement behavior enables targeted, relevant communication that drives higher engagement and conversion rates (though this requires HIPAA compliance).
For instance, perhaps you could send emails about braces to preteen patients or resources on denture care to elderly patients.
HubSpot’s segmentation tools allow dental practices to create patient lists based on multiple criteria. Dynamic lists can also automatically refresh segments as patient data changes.
Source
Read: Customer Segmentation: How to Segment Users & Clients Effectively
Over 60% of emails are opened on mobile devices, making mobile optimization essential for ensuring appointment details, treatment information, and practice updates display correctly and remain actionable on smartphones and tablets.
Great email marketing tools like HubSpot provide mobile-optimized templates specifically designed for healthcare communications.
HubSpot’s drag-and-drop editing ensures any staff member can create professional, mobile-friendly emails without coding skills, while its preview tools show exactly how emails appear across different devices before sending.
Check out HubSpot’s free email templates.
Testing different subject lines, send times, content variations, and calls-to-action helps optimize email performance and identify what resonates best with your specific patient base.
HubSpot’s built-in A/B testing allows dental practices to experiment with up to five variations simultaneously, automatically determining winning versions based on open rates, click rates, or custom goals.
Bidirectional data flow between email marketing and scheduling systems prevents duplicate data entry, ensures patient information stays synchronized, and enables automation based on practice management system events like appointments, completed treatments, or outstanding balances.
HubSpot connects with leading dental practice management platforms, including Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, and Curve, through native integrations and API connections.
This allows it to automatically synchronize patient demographics, appointment history, and treatment information to enable sophisticated segmentation and personalization without manual data exports.
Understanding which campaigns drive results helps refine marketing strategy and justify marketing spend to practice owners and stakeholders.
HubSpot’s analytics dashboard can track email opens, clicks, appointment bookings, and revenue attribution with clear visualization, providing visibility into which campaigns generate the highest ROI, which patient segments are most responsive, and how email marketing contributes to overall practice growth.
Email Marketing Tool | Best For | Key Features | Pricing |
HubSpot | Dental practices seeking all-in-one patient management | AI-powered personalization, appointment workflows, patient segmentation | Free plan available; Marketing Hub Starter at $15/month; Professional at $800/month |
Mailchimp | Small practices with basic email needs | Email templates, basic automation, audience segmentation | Free for up to 500 contacts; Essentials from $13/month |
Constant Contact | Practices focused on event marketing | Event management, social media integration, list segmentation | Starting at $12/month for up to 500 contacts |
ActiveCampaign | Practices with complex automation requirements | Advanced automation, CRM integration, predictive sending | Starting at $29/month for 1,000 contacts |
AWeber | Solo practitioners and small teams | Drag-and-drop builder, autoresponders, landing pages | Free for up to 500 subscribers; Pro from $12.50/month |
Kit | Practices with content marketing strategies | Landing pages, visual automation, subscriber tagging | Free up to 1,000 subscribers; Creator from $25/month |
Drip | Practices with sophisticated patient journeys | E-commerce focus, multi-channel campaigns, custom workflows | Starting at $39/month for 2,500 contacts |
Campaign Monitor | Practices valuing design and brand consistency | Template builder, journey designer, analytics | Starting at $11/month for 500 contacts |
Moosend | Cost-effective option for growing practices | Marketing automation, landing pages, reporting | Free for up to 1,000 subscribers; Pro from $9/month |
Choosing the right email marketing platform can transform how your dental practice communicates with patients. Here are the top solutions designed to meet the unique needs of dental professionals.
HubSpot is the most comprehensive email marketing solution for dental practices, combining robust automation with an integrated CRM and practice management capabilities.
Unlike competitors that focus solely on email delivery, HubSpot provides a complete patient engagement ecosystem that tracks every interaction from initial inquiry through ongoing care. This makes it the ideal choice for practices that want to eliminate data silos and streamline operations. It’s also HIPAA-compliant, unlike many other popular email marketing tools.
Source
Best For: Dental practices of all sizes that want to consolidate patient communication, appointment scheduling, and marketing automation in one unified platform while maintaining complete visibility into patient engagement.
Key HubSpot Features:
HubSpot Pricing:
HubSpot offers a free CRM with basic email marketing capabilities, including email creation, contact management, and simple automation. Marketing Hub Starter begins at $15 per month (billed monthly) with expanded email features and removes HubSpot branding.
Marketing Hub Professional costs $800 per month (annual billing) and includes advanced automation, A/B testing, and comprehensive reporting. Marketing Hub Enterprise is $3,600 per month (annual billing) for larger practices requiring sophisticated patient journey mapping and multi-location management. Learn More.
Mailchimp has established itself as one of the most recognizable names in email marketing, offering an accessible entry point for dental practices new to digital marketing. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface and extensive template library make it easy for non-technical staff to create professional-looking emails. It is, however, not HIPAA-compliant.
Source
Best For: Small dental practices or solo practitioners who need straightforward email campaigns with minimal complexity. It can be useful for newsletters and basic appointment reminders rather than sophisticated patient journey automation.
Source
Key Mailchimp Features:
Mailchimp Pricing:
Free plan available for up to 500 contacts with 1,000 monthly email sends and basic features. Essentials plan starts at $13 per month with 5,000 contacts, removing Mailchimp branding and adding basic automation. Learn more.
Constant Contact differentiates itself through robust event marketing capabilities and exceptional customer support. While its email features are solid, the platform’s real strength lies in its event management tools and reputation for responsive customer service.
Source
Best For: Dental practices that regularly host community events like oral health seminars, open houses, or patient appreciation days and need integrated event registration, ticketing, and promotion alongside standard email marketing. Also, for practices investing in multi-channel marketing.
Key Constant Contact Features:
Note: Constant Contact is not inherently HIPAA compliant, but it can be made so. Learn more here.
Constant Contact Pricing:
Core plan starts at $12 per month for up to 500 contacts with unlimited email sends, basic automation, and event management. Plus plan begins at $35 per month with advanced automation, dynamic content, A/B testing, and social media scheduling. Learn more.
ActiveCampaign excels in sophisticated marketing automation and CRM functionality, making it ideal for multi-location dental practices or specialty practices with complex patient journey requirements. ActiveCampaign is HIPAA compliant.
Source
Best For: Multi-location dental practices, specialty practices, or growing practices with complex patient journey requirements.
Key ActiveCampaign Features:
ActiveCampaign Pricing:
Starter plan starts at $15 per month for up to 1,000 contacts with email marketing, marketing automation, and basic CRM. Plus plans begin at $49 per month, adding landing pages, Facebook audiences, and contact scoring. Learn more.
AWeber has built its reputation on reliability and excellent customer support, making it a comfortable choice for solo dental practitioners and small practices that prioritize ease of use. The platform delivers solid email marketing fundamentals without overwhelming users with complexity. It is particularly newsletter-friendly.
Source
Best For: Solo dental practitioners and small practices seeking user-friendly email marketing with strong customer support and straightforward functionality rather than complex automation or advanced features.
Key AWeber Features:
AWeber Pricing:
Free plan for up to 500 subscribers with basic email marketing features, one list, and AWeber branding. Pro plan starts at $12.50 per month for 0-500 subscribers with unlimited email sends, removes branding, and adds automation. Learn more.
Kit caters specifically to users with content marketing strategies, making it well-suited for dental practices that publish blogs, educational newsletters, or oral health resources to attract and nurture patients.
Its subscriber-centric approach and visual automation builder appeal to practices that view email marketing as part of a broader content strategy rather than just transactional communication.
Source
Best For: Dental practices that prioritize using blogs, educational newsletters, and oral health resources to attract new patients, establish thought leadership in their community, and nurture existing contacts to purchase.
Key Kit Features:
Note: Kit is not HIPAA compliant, so you cannot include sensitive patient health information.
Kit Pricing:
Free plan available for up to 1,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms, and broadcasts, though without advanced automation. Creator plan starts at $25 per month for 1,000 subscribers, automated funnels, and sequences. Learn more.
Drip positions itself as an e-commerce CRM with sophisticated multi-channel capabilities, making it particularly valuable for dental practices with multiple revenue streams (i.e. selling dental health products) and complex patient retention strategies.
Source
Best For: Dental practices with sophisticated patient retention strategies, multiple revenue streams from both services and products, and the desire to coordinate messaging across email, SMS, and on-site channels.
Key Drip Features:
Note: Drip is not HIPAA compliant, so you cannot include sensitive patient health information.
Drip Pricing:
Plans start at $39 per month for up to 2,500 contacts with unlimited email sends and full platform access, including automation workflows and revenue tracking. Pricing scales with contact volume. Learn more.
Campaign Monitor emphasizes beautiful design and brand consistency, appealing to dental practices that want every patient communication to reflect professional polish.
Best For: Dental practices that prioritize brand consistency and visually appealing patient communications as part of their premium positioning, particularly upscale practices focusing on cosmetic dentistry.
Key Campaign Monitor Features:
Note: Campaign Monitor is not HIPAA compliant, so you cannot include sensitive patient health information.
Campaign Monitor Pricing:
Basic plan starts at $11 per month for 500 contacts with unlimited email sends, basic automation, and analytics. Unlimited plan begins at $29 per month for 500 contacts with time zone sending, advanced segmentation, and countdown timers. Premier plan available with custom pricing for advanced features, priority support, and dedicated account management. Pricing scales with contact volume.
Moosend delivers powerful marketing automation capabilities at affordable pricing. While less known than competitors like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, the platform punches above its weight class in features, offering automation, segmentation, and reporting tools typically found in much more expensive solutions.
Best For: Cost-effective option for growing dental practices seeking powerful automation capabilities at an affordable price point, particularly practices transitioning from basic email tools to more sophisticated marketing.
Key Moosend Features:
Note: Moosend is not HIPAA compliant, so you cannot include sensitive patient health information.
Moosend Pricing:
Free plan available for up to 1,000 subscribers with basic email marketing features and one list. Pro plan starts at $9 per month for unlimited emails, automation workflows, landing pages, and reporting with no subscriber limit. Learn more.
Selecting the right email marketing platform ensures your dental practice communicates effectively with patients while supporting practice growth goals. Follow these steps to make an informed decision:
Begin by documenting every patient touchpoint from initial inquiry through ongoing care, identifying which communications happen manually today that could be automated.
Common dental practice workflows include:
Understanding your complete communication flow helps identify which platform features matter most for your specific practice needs.
Remember, any transactional emails related to your contact’s health require a HIPAA-compliant tool — that includes appointment reminders. Only general marketing emails like blog articles, promotions, holiday greetings, etc., can be sent without this compliance.
It is common to use multiple tools to cover all your bases, but HIPAA-compliant tools like HubSpot streamline your email marketing toolbox to just one.
Based on your workflow map, prioritize essential capabilities to reap the most immediate value to your practice.
Most dental practices require appointment reminder automation to reduce no-shows, patient segmentation to enable targeted messaging, mobile-responsive templates for optimal viewing on all devices, and integration with existing practice management software to avoid duplicate data entry.
Determine whether you need advanced features like SMS capabilities for multi-channel reminders, webinar hosting for patient education, sophisticated patient journey automation for complex treatment nurturing, or e-commerce functionality if selling oral care products.
HubSpot provides comprehensive features that address common dental practice needs including automation, segmentation, integrations, and analytics without requiring multiple disconnected tools.
Consider who will manage email marketing in your practice (i.e. front desk staff, marketing coordinator, or practice manager) and their comfort with learning new technology.
Work with them to test free trials and demos to see how quickly they can create campaigns, set up automation workflows, and interpret results without help.
The ideal platform enables existing staff to execute marketing initiatives easily and without consistent support.
HubSpot’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface, thorough documentation, support, and training courses in HubSpot Academy allow dental teams to become proficient quickly, even without previous marketing technology experience.
Compare pricing as your patient database grows. Many platforms appear affordable at low contact volumes but become expensive as your practice expands.
Factor in costs for additional features like extra user seats, email volume limits and overage charges, SMS messaging credits, and integration costs for connecting practice management software.
Consider the value of integrated functionality versus purchasing separate tools for CRM, landing pages, automation, and analytics, which adds complexity and total cost.
HubSpot’s transparent pricing structure and included features often prove more cost-effective than piecing together multiple solutions, particularly when accounting for staff time spent managing disconnected systems.
Select a platform that scales with your practice and adapts to changing marketing needs rather than one you’ll quickly outgrow.
HubSpot serves dental practices ranging from solo practitioners just starting with email marketing to multi-location groups with sophisticated patient acquisition funnels.
Dental practices implementing HubSpot report 25% improvement in new patient appointments within the first six months and a 40% increase in positive reviews, demonstrating the platform’s effectiveness for dental-specific communication needs and patient relationship management.
Successfully implementing email marketing requires strategic planning and consistent execution. If you’re just getting started, here are some basic steps you can follow to set up a basic email marketing campaign for a dental practice. Refine as needed for your specific goal and messaging.
Establish clear, measurable goals for each email campaign before creating content. This gives you direction and something to help you evaluate how you’re doing.
Common dental practice objectives include:
HubSpot’s campaign management tools (and HIPAA compliance) enable setting specific goals like appointment bookings or consultation requests, tracking performance against those targets in real-time, and calculating ROI by attributing revenue directly to specific campaigns.
Organize your patient database into groups based on shared characteristics or behaviors.
This could mean last visit date, age group, treatment history, geographic location, insurance status, and engagement level to identify potential campaign ideas and improve relevance and response rates.
HubSpot’s sophisticated list features enable complex filtering. Dynamic lists even automatically update as patient data changes, ensuring segments stay current without manual maintenance.
Create visually appealing, on-brand emails that display correctly and remain functional across all devices, particularly smartphones, where most people read email.
Include clear, easy-to-click calls-to-action, use concise copy that communicates value quickly since patients scan rather than read thoroughly, incorporate practice branding elements like logos and colors for consistency and recognition, and optimize images to load quickly even on slower mobile connections.
HubSpot’s drag-and-drop email builder includes a library of mobile-responsive templates specifically designed for healthcare providers. This allows even non-technical staff to create professional emails, while also showing you a real-time preview of how the email will appear on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
Set up the automated sequence that triggers your email send. This could be based on patient actions, practice management system events, or time intervals, ensuring communication without any additional manual effort.
HubSpot’s visual workflow builder makes it simple to design, test, and launch sequences with drag-and-drop logic.
Customize email content using available patient information to increase relevance, engagement, and response rates through targeted messaging.
Include patient first names, sure, but also go beyond that. Reference their specific upcoming appointments with date, time, and provider details, mention their treatment history to acknowledge ongoing care relationships, recommend services based on previous procedures or stated interests, and adjust messaging tone based on patient demographics like age or family status.
Modern buyers are savvy to “first name” personalization tokens, but incorporating deeper details cut through the noise. They make your emails feel like they were actually written specifically for that person. (This is an important piece of Loop Marketing).
In addition to HubSpot’s personalization tokens, it’s smart content features can display entirely different content blocks to different segments within the same email campaign.
Continuously improve email effectiveness through systematic testing of different elements like subject line, call-to-action, design, and messaging.
HubSpot’s A/B testing capabilities allow you to test up to five variations of subject lines, content, or send times simultaneously, automatically determining winning versions and applying those insights to future campaigns for continuous improvement.
Regularly review campaign metrics to understand what resonates with patients, which segments are most responsive, and how email marketing contributes to practice growth. This may include, but is not limited to:
HubSpot Reporting consolidates these metrics into visual charts and graphs, enables filtering by segment or campaign type to identify patterns, and provides year-over-year comparison showing growth in email marketing effectiveness over time.
The best tool depends on your specific needs, but with its comprehensive suite of integrated marketing and business growth tools and HIPAA compliance alongside its email offerings, HubSpot is hard to top.
It combines powerful automation, sophisticated patient segmentation, and practice management integration in one unified platform rather than requiring multiple disconnected tools and protecting patient data. What features should I look for in Email Marketing Tools for Dentists?
Essential features for dental email marketing include:
HubSpot delivers all these features in a unified platform with transparent pricing, eliminating the need for multiple disconnected tools that create data silos and complicate operations.
Yes, HubSpot is excellent for dental practices of all sizes seeking comprehensive patient communication and practice growth solutions that go beyond basic email marketing.
The platform serves solo practitioners just starting with digital marketing, growing practices ready for automation and segmentation, and multi-location dental groups requiring sophisticated patient journey management, with scalable features that adapt to specific needs and practice size.
Many dental practices report significant improvements in patient retention rates, treatment acceptance for high-value procedures, operational efficiency through automation, and overall practice growth after implementing HubSpot for their email marketing and patient relationship management needs.
Email marketing software pricing for dental practices ranges from free plans with basic features to enterprise solutions costing several thousand dollars monthly, with pricing typically based on contact database size, number of email sends, and feature sophistication.
HubSpot offers flexible pricing starting with a completely free CRM including basic email marketing suitable for practices just beginning digital communication. Paid plans start at $15 a month.
Absolutely. Email marketing significantly reduces no-show rates through appointment reminders sent at strategic intervals before scheduled visits, addressing one of dental practices’ most costly operational challenges.
Research indicates that practices using automated email reminders reduce no-shows by 30-50% compared to relying solely on phone calls or no reminders, translating to thousands of dollars in recovered revenue monthly for typical practices.
HubSpot’s appointment reminder workflows integrate with practice management systems to automatically send multiple touchpoints.
HubSpot stands out as the premier email marketing solution for dental practices seeking to transform patient communication and accelerate practice growth through sophisticated yet accessible marketing technology.
Unlike specialized email tools that require separate systems for patient tracking, scheduling coordination, and analytics, or basic tools that lack the automation capabilities dental practices need, HIPAA-compliant HubSpot provides a unified platform that streamlines all aspects of patient engagement while maintaining complete visibility into marketing effectiveness and ROI.
Key HubSpot Features for Dental Practices:
Dental practices using HubSpot’s email marketing platform experience 25% more new patient appointments within the first year.
Ready to see how HubSpot can work for your dental practice? Get started with HubSpot today and transform how you connect with patients, fill your schedule, and grow your practice through strategic, automated email marketing that delivers measurable results.
Email marketing needs in the automotive industry are unique. Dealerships, repair shops, and automotive service…
Higher education institutions face unique communication challenges in 2025. Between recruiting prospective students, engaging current…
Inside an unassuming building in Lagos’ Opebi district, a group of young engineers are hunched…
Building a business has never been easier, but the landscape is also more competitive. The…
Twiga Foods, a Kenyan B2B startup, has been ordered to pay a former sales representative…
Email subject lines determine whether your carefully crafted campaigns ever see the light of day…