Is email marketing still a relevant part of the marketing toolkit for independent veterinary practices in the UK in 2025?

If your vet business doesn’t send email newsletters to clients, you could be overlooking a tool that can still give you a real competitive advantage. For every new pet registered at your practice there’s an owner needing more attention. Providing information, advice and even entertainment by email can help in a number of ways.

Regular email newsletters don’t just remind clients that you’re there, they provide an opportunity to raise awareness, change client behaviour and they can even bind clients to your practice.

Here are eight questions that the independent veterinary practices that we work with asked about outbound email when we suggested that they started to use it. The answers also give you a few ideas on what regular email newsletters could do for your practice.

1. Can email marketing help with client retention?

• Yes! Proactively highlighting healthcare tips, seasonal updates and even the occasional offer can build an emotional connection between your practice and your clients. This typically leads to greater client loyalty.

2. Does email help drive repeat business?

• It absolutely does. Email campaigns & discreet healthcare recommendations remind clients what they need to be thinking about as the seasons progress but also as their pets reach important stages of their life.

3. How is client education helpful?

• We use what we call ‘preventative care’ emails to educate clients by highlighting pet wellness suggestions. These emails position your clinic as a trusted advisor and boost uptake of preventative care measures.

4. Is email marketing for vets cost-effective?

• It can be if you do it right. Typically, compared to slow burn SEO or quick and effective paid ads, email marketing can be relatively low-cost and has high ROI. This makes it especially valuable for practices with limited marketing budgets.

Clients who use our CAPI news and email service typically see the following results:

• Up to 45% of recipients open the monthly email newsletter.
• 18-20% of openers click through to the articles on the website. Imagine what you could do if a bare minimum of just 5% of all your clients read what you wanted to share with them every week!
• Connected Vet emails typically perform 20% better than the industry average because we follow the simple steps in this blog.
• Practices who ‘do email properly’ typically see a higher percentage of clients coming in for minor treatments (year on year).

Ask us if you’d like to see some examples >

Read our blog post on ‘The ten things most vets are likely to get wrong when they do email marketing’ >

5. Can email help with client communication?

• You bet it can. Remember, communication is a two-way thing. Encouraging feedback from your email or asking clients for reviews via email helps build engagement and trust.

6. Will email give you useful data and insights?

• It will. Every email platform offers open and click-through metrics. These metrics help you to understand what content works. By interpreting the data you can get insights that will inform services and even staff training.

7. Can email help brand building and practice differentiation?

• Ask yourself this question. Is your biggest competitor doing outbound email?
  • If they are, you need to too.
  • If they are not, then this is your opportunity to get ahead of them.

Well-designed email communications help re-enforce your practice’s brand identity and show professionalism. They help practices stand out in our competitive market.

• Note for independent vets. If your competitors are corporates, so much the better. To be fair, corporates do tend to be consistent in their emailing. However, their emails do come over as a bit, well … corporate. Your opportunity is your individuality.

8. Could email reactivate lapsed clients?

• Yes! Campaigns like this can remind clients of overdue services or offer incentives to return, potentially recovering lost revenue.

Finally, a compliance tip:

Under UK GDPR, you need to ensure all email recipients are properly ‘papered’ for one of the six legal reasons you can rely on to justify holding people’s data – typically ‘Legitimate Interest’ or if you must, ‘Consent’. All emails must have a clear unsubscribe option. Most veterinary CRMs, email platforms or even Connected Vet’s (much more comprehensive) own services can help with this compliance.

Andrew

Andrew founded Connected Vet in 2013 to level the online playing field for independent veterinary practices.