Communicating with your patients outside of your practice can help to raise awareness about your practice with your patients, sharing information such as,

• Practice and staff updates, opening hours and emergency contact details
• Raising awareness about oral health and hygiene 
• Promoting offers through marketing campaigns and more

The two main methods of contacting your patients from EXACT are by using, Campaign Plus or Patient Lists. When using Patient Lists you have the option to send communications by email, SMS or post, in this article, we'll explore the option of email.

• Creating your email
• Compiling your patient list
• Sending your communications

Creating your email

The first step is to create you email. it's best to create your email as an email template, as this will make the process of sending your email from your Patient List easier.

1. Go to Configure - Email Templates.
2. Click +1 to create a new template.
   • Enter a unique name into the Code box, this helps to identify it from your other email templates
   • The Description box is where you should add you email Subject line
   • The final step is to create your content in the main window, to find out about all the options the email creator has available, read about creating email templates here
3. Once your email template has been created, save everything before moving onto creating your patient list.

Compiling your patient list

The next thing to do is create a list of active patients to send your email to, with the latest version of EXACT we've included a suggested search to do this for you.

1. Go to Administration - Patient Lists - Create New List.
2. If you're not already on the Suggested Searches tab, click this.
3. Locate the search called Active Patients - Marketing.
   • This search only includes patients who have opted-in to receive marketing communications, if you are not sending any marketing information in your communication, you choose if you wish to include patients who are marked as undecided. If you do wish to make this change, double-click the search, highlight With Opted In row and tick the box for Undecided.
4. Select this search the click Find Patients.
   • You will be prompted to select your patients Contact Preferences for you to decide what patients to send your communications to depending on the content of your email (newsletter, important information or marketing)
   • Click Finish once you have selected your choices
   • Now you will need to enter a name for your list to help you identify the purpose of the list, for example 'Newsletter Dec '23'
   • Then click Create List
5. Your list of patients will be created and saved ready for you to perform your next step.

Find out more about Patient Lists or Suggested searches in the EXACT help centre.

Sending your communications

With your email template and patient list created, you are now ready to send your email.

1. If your list is already open, skip to step 2,
   if not go to Administration - Patient Lists - View Saved Lists then select your list by double-clicking it.
2. With your list open, click on the email button in the lower right.
   • Make sure Mutliple email is checked and Tick as complete when emailed then click OK
   • Untick Who have been Contacted then click OK
   • Click the selection button for Email Template then double-click your template from the list
3. A preview of your email will open on screen, confirm everything is showing as you would like before clicking Send to start sending your communication to all the patients on your list.