Reactivation round three: the goodbye text booked two more surgeries

Finishing off this case study series with a 3rd post I’ll give a run down of the full campaign and what we accomplished on the reactivation front for Indiana Sinus Centers.

To recap, Indiana Sinus Centers started with 152 surgical candidates who had begun a consult, never submitted requested insurance info and therefore never scheduled. Three text messages later, 44 of them have re-engaged and 10 have booked surgery. The last message, the one that told people we were closing their file, booked two of those ten.

Where rounds one and two left off

The first text re-engaged 20 patients and booked four for surgery. A second, gentler follow-up went to the 128 still sitting quiet and brought back 11 more, four of whom booked surgery. That left 117 people who had now ignored us twice. We said they would get one more note and then we would stop. This is what happened.

What we did in round three

We decided the third message shouldn’t be a pitch. It should be a closing notice: a short line saying we were going to close out the consult unless we heard back. Go for the no. No offer, no persuasion, just a deadline and an easy way to answer.

Hi [First Name], it’s Andrew at Indiana Sinus Centers. I’m cleaning up our files this week. Should I close out the consult you started, or do you still want to come in? Either answer’s fine, just reply and let me know.

As we’ve mentioned, Blue knew exactly who those 122 were, so nobody who had already replied, booked, or asked to be left alone got the text.

What came back

Thirteen of the 117 replied. Two booked surgery, with dates on the calendar for July 8 and July 9, the same week the text went out. Two more are in active conversations. The other nine told us in one form or another that they were not candidates, and their records were cleared.

Here is the part we did not expect. The goodbye text performed great! Round two's gentle check-in got 11 replies and 4 surgeries. Round three's closing notice got 13 replies and two surgeries, off a smaller list. The deadline did what the politeness could not.

The three-round math

Three text messages to a list the practice had written off produced 44 re-engaged patients and 10 booked surgeries: four from the first message, four from the second, and two from the last. One hundred and four people never answered any of the three, and the rest of the backlog has been sorted into what it actually is, rather than sitting in the pipeline as an open maybe.

10 surgical cases, recovered from records that were just sitting.

Where it ends

The list is done. The 109 who stayed silent through three messages have told us what they think, and we are not sending a fourth. Knowing when to stop is part of running this well, and it protects the practice's name with people who have already moved on.

If you run a practice

You have this list. It is sitting in your phone logs and your form submissions right now, and it is worth more than you think. Work it in three touches, end with the goodbye, and count what happens after the reply, not just the reply itself. That patient on the schedule is the key value add, and it only works if every message, every answer, and every outcome lands in one record. Blue can manage the whole campaign for you.