5 healthcare marketing automation tips to increase patient acquisition

Healthcare marketing automation tackles a challenge every provider faces—manual efforts that are time-consuming, inconsistent, and impossible to scale. When your front desk is juggling appointment calls, your team is behind on follow-ups, and reviews are nowhere to be seen, your practice stops growing.

That’s where marketing automation for healthcare steps in—not as a flashy trend, but as a necessity to attract and retain patients in a highly competitive environment.

This blog breaks down the problems multi-location healthcare providers face and shows how you can use automation to solve them, without adding more staff. From reviews to reminders to real-time feedback, each of these marketing strategies helps professionals strengthen their healthcare reputation management.

Read this blog further to learn how to use proven automation tips to take control of your patient journey.

Reclaim time, trust, and patient loyalty—automatically💡You don’t need a bigger team—you need better systems. The right healthcare marketing automation platform simplifies the hardest parts of growing a practice: collecting reviews, sending reminders, responding to feedback, and keeping your listings accurate.

We'll show you how two top healthcare organizations used Birdeye's HIPAA-compliant healthcare marketing automation platform to help them smooth their workflow.

What is marketing automation in healthcare?

Marketing automation in healthcare refers to using technology to streamline repetitive marketing tasks like review requests, appointment reminders, email campaigns, patient follow-ups, and content scheduling. It helps healthcare providers engage patients consistently, improve outreach, and scale growth without increasing manual work.

Here’s how you can apply marketing automation to solve real-world challenges and create a more connected, consistent patient experience—without overloading your team:

1. Automate patient reviews to improve search visibility and build trust
2. Keep provider and location listings accurate across platforms
3. Turn patient feedback into real-time insights and action
4. Reconnect with patients through automated recall and follow-ups
5. Maintain a consistent social presence without manual effort

These solutions aren’t just about saving time—they reflect a major shift in automation in healthcare. Let’s explore them in detail.

Tip 1: Struggling to stand out in search? Start by automating your patient reviews

You can deliver exceptional care—but if you don’t show up in search, it’s like your practice doesn’t exist. For most healthcare providers, visibility isn’t just about having a website. It hinges on one thing: a steady flow of recent, high-quality patient reviews. And yet, asking for feedback often gets buried under day-to-day operations.

That’s where marketing automation for healthcare becomes a practical solution. Instead of relying on front-desk staff to remember to ask for feedback—or worse, not asking at all—such automation in healthcare ensures every patient is invited to leave a review at the right time, through the right channel. And when implemented well, it can dramatically improve online presence and drive patient acquisition.

That’s where Birdeye's healthcare-centric marketing automation solution of GenAI tools proves an invaluable companion. They help healthcare organizations simplify review collection while improving patient engagement at every touchpoint.

Its Reviews AI is just what automation expert would need as it helps simplify the review ecosytem. These reviews boost local SEO, improve click-through rates, and build social proof at scale.

Here’s what you can automate with Birdeye Reviews AI:

• Automatically send review requests via text or email based on visit triggers
• Personalize requests by doctor name or service (e.g., “Dr. Patel would love your feedback”)
• Guide patients to review you on Google, Healthgrades, or other trusted platforms
• Monitor and respond to reviews from a central dashboard

How Cenegenics turned reviews into revenue with Birdeye Reviews AI

Cenegenics, a pioneer in age management medicine, has been in the healthcare industry for over two decades. Despite their clinical reputation, they weren’t ranking well in search. Why? Their patient reviews were inconsistent and infrequent. Without a system, they couldn’t generate enough feedback in their 20+ locations to build online trust.

After adopting Birdeye’s healthcare marketing automation platform that integrates seamlessly with their Salesforce CRM, Cenegenics automated their entire review generation process. Every patient now receives a review request post-consultation, without manual follow-up.

Since it’s fully HIPAA compliant, patient data stays secure while teams focus on outreach. Plus, integrating Birdeye with your CRM and marketing automation tools like Salesforce ensures consistent follow-through.

The results speak for themselves as to why more patients chose Cenegenics:

• More reviews in a single year than in the previous 22 years combined
• A significant boost in local search visibility and patient engagement
• Over 158,000 website visitors within a year
• A substantial increase in new patient inquiries across all locations

By automating review requests through email marketing or SMS, you can ensure every patient hears from you right after their visit—without relying on manual outreach.

Tip 2: Inaccurate provider info? Automate listings to improve local discovery

Patients will simply move on to the next provider if your practice details are outdated or inconsistent across platforms. Whether it’s incorrect hours, old location data, or missing doctor profiles, inaccurate listings hurt trust and crush your local search visibility.

Must read: Marketing for doctors offices: 9 tips to boost your practice efficiently

For multi-location healthcare providers, manually updating each site isn’t just time-consuming—it’s unscalable.

That’s where Birdeye’s Listings AI steps in as a smarter solution. It helps healthcare practices maintain accurate, up-to-date profiles across 80+ platforms automatically—without updating each manually. From location hours to provider bios, Birdeye helps ensure patients find the right information, every time they search.

Here’s what you can streamline with Birdeye Listings AI:

• Push real-time updates to directories like Google, Bing, Healthgrades, and more.
• Prevent duplicate listings and misinformation from affecting your search rank.
• Reflect seasonal hours, new staff, or service changes instantly.
• Strengthen local SEO for healthcare businesses by keeping providers’ profiles consistent and trustworthy.

How Hughston Clinic fixed fragmented listings with Birdeye

With 25 locations and 76 doctors, Hughston Clinic found it nearly impossible to keep provider info consistent across platforms. Some doctors had incomplete profiles; others showed incorrect clinic addresses—creating confusion and eroding trust.

By implementing Birdeye’s healthcare marketing automation platform, the team streamlined their online business listings management—a major pain point for any growing healthcare business managing dozens of providers across locations.

Listings AI’s reports helped them push clean, accurate data across healthcare directories—freeing their staff from repetitive updates. This helped them automate marketing tasks that once drained hours of team time.

For a multispecialty provider like Hughston, accurate listings aren’t just about convenience—they’re critical to ensuring optimal patients satisfaction. This is so that they can access the right healthcare services and connect with the right healthcare professionals at the right time.

The results speak for themselves:

• 5840% increase in map views
• 2390% increase in clicks to phone calls
• 1678% increase in direction requests
• 1793% increase in web visits
• 1393% increase in search views
• Easier discovery, faster decisions, and a better experience for new patients

With listings handled automatically, Hughston’s team reduced administrative overhead and focused more on care—reducing administrative tasks in the process, a landmark victory in healthcare industry.

Tip 3: Collecting feedback but not learning from it? Automate your insights

Most healthcare practices send surveys or get reviews—but never actually use them. Patient complaints get buried, praise doesn’t reach providers, and patterns go unnoticed. This leads to missed opportunities to improve patient satisfaction and long-term loyalty. When feedback lives in silos, it’s easy to miss what really matters. And over time, that hurts both patient experience and patient retention.

That’s where automation adds real value. With the right tools, you can automatically collect feedback, analyze it at scale, and alert the right people when something needs attention. Instead of manually combing through reviews and surveys, teams can instantly see trends, surface root causes, and act on real-time insights.

Birdeye’s Surveys AI and Insights AI are built to streamline automated workflows that transform scattered health surveys into real-time, actionable data. From NPS responses to detailed survey comments, everything is tracked, tagged, and summarized in a way your team can use—no spreadsheets required.

Here’s how Birdeye simplifies feedback intelligence:

• Automate post-visit surveys triggered by your EHR system
• Track patient feedback trends by location, provider, or service type
• Flag low NPS scores or negative reviews for follow-up automatically
• Surface recurring patient pain points through AI keyword analysis

How Hughston Clinic uses automation to improve patient experience

Hughston Clinic used to rely on manual review checks and fragmented survey tools. With dozens of locations and physicians, they couldn’t keep up—leading to delayed responses and missed opportunities to improve care.

With Birdeye’s healthcare marketing automation platform, they now run post-treatment surveys tied directly to their electronic health records (EHR)—capturing feedback without disrupting provider workflows.. When a patient leaves negative feedback or scores them low on NPS, the right clinic manager gets notified instantly.

These insights help Hughston better understand evolving patient preferences, ensuring care delivery and communication align with what patients expect.

They also use Birdeye Insights AI to monitor sentiment and keyword trends, giving physicians visibility into what patients love—or want fixed.

Here’s what changed:

• Over 66,000 survey responses collected through automation
• Achieved a 25% average survey conversion rate
• Issues flagged in real-time and routed for quick follow-up
• Improved service recovery and team accountability across all locations

This feedback-driven approach is increasingly vital across the entire healthcare sector, where patient experience and reputation often matter just as much as clinical outcomes.

Tip 4: Too many missed visits? Automate patient recalls and follow-ups

Missed appointments don’t just impact revenue—they create gaps in patient care, lead to inconsistent outcomes, and chip away at long-term patient retention. Yet most healthcare practices still rely on phone calls or manual reminders to get patients back in. That’s hard to scale, especially when you’re managing multiple providers, service types, and locations.

This is where marketing automation makes a noticeable difference. Instead of chasing patients, you can set up automated recall campaigns that reach the right people at the right time—without the follow-up slipping through the cracks.

Birdeye’s recall automation workflows help practices stay connected with patients long after their visits. Whether it’s a 6-month cleaning or a yearly wellness check, reminders go out automatically via SMS or email—customized by visit type, frequency, or provider.

You can also tailor messages to align with upcoming procedures or routine health checkup reminders—making it easier to meet both care standards and patient needs.

Here’s how Birdeye helps reduce no-shows and improve follow-ups:

• Trigger automated reminders based on time since last visit
• Personalize recall messages by patient type (e.g., pediatric, senior care, post-op)
• Include one-click scheduling links to reduce friction
• Keep track of sent messages and follow-through rates

Why this matters for patient care and retention

Losing touch with patients leads to gaps in treatment, lower outcomes, and missed revenue. And as your patient base grows, follow-ups become easier to miss. Birdeye’s automation helps bring lapsed patients back in—without adding to your team’s workload.

You don’t have to manually flag every overdue checkup. Just set it once, and Birdeye ensures your practice stays top of mind—whether it’s six weeks or six months after their last appointment.

Tip 5: Can’t keep up with content? Let automation manage your social presence

Healthcare teams are busy enough delivering care—sitting down to plan, write, and post on social media often falls to the bottom of the list. But an inactive or inconsistent presence doesn’t go unnoticed. In the healthcare industry, it can hurt your brand’s credibility, weaken patient engagement, and erode trust over time.

The good news? You don’t need a social media manager to stay consistent. With the right marketing automation tools, you can keep your social channels active, post relevant content, and even personalized—without spending hours.

Birdeye’s Social AI helps practices automate social media publishing across locations and platforms. You can generate educational posts (like health tips, health checkups to do), schedule them in advance, and even tailor content for different service lines or providers—all in just a few clicks.

Here’s what you can streamline with Birdeye Social AI:

• Auto-generate social media posts around healthcare tips, awareness days, or clinic updates
• Localize posts by location or provider (e.g., “Meet Dr. Ahmed at our Austin clinic”)
• Plan an entire content calendar in advance and publish across platforms
• Monitor engagement metrics and see what resonates with your audience

Social AI also adapts content to align with your email marketing and outreach efforts—helping you maintain consistent messaging across channels without extra effort. These insights also help uncover patterns in patient behavior, giving your team better visibility into what content prompts action and where you can improve customer service.

Why does it matter more than ever?

Patients often discover providers through platforms like Facebook or Instagram, and judge your credibility by what they see. An up-to-date, informative feed signals that your practice is modern, engaged, and accessible.

With secure integration capabilities, your content stays aligned with your CRM, practice information, and patient updates without extra coordination between tools.

Birdeye makes it easy to stay visible. Set your preferences, review the AI-generated content, and publish on your schedule.

And because Birdeye integrates with your existing systems, you don’t have to worry about managing multiple sources of patient information or customer data manually without stretching your marketing team.

Common healthcare automation mistakes to avoid

Use of AI in healthcare can be a powerful growth tool—but only when it’s implemented with care. Without the right strategy, even well-intentioned automation can lead to disjointed communication, patient frustration, or operational inefficiencies. Here are a few mistakes healthcare teams should actively avoid:

Over-automating and losing the human touch
Automation should enhance communication, not replace empathy.

Sending generic or unpersonalized messages
Patients notice when it feels robotic—use names, context, and relevance.

Not aligning automation with clinical workflows
If reminders or follow-ups aren’t in sync with provider schedules, it creates confusion.

Ignoring feedback on automated communications
Patients will tell you what’s working—don’t overlook survey comments or negative reviews.

Setting it and forgetting it
Automation still needs regular oversight to ensure timing, tone, and triggers remain effective.

FAQs about healthcare marketing automation

Grow your healthcare practice with Birdeye’s smart, scalable automation

Manual marketing isn’t just time-consuming—it’s holding back your growth. Whether it’s missed follow-ups, outdated listings, or scattered feedback, these gaps make it harder to deliver great care and attract more patients.

With a trusted healthcare marketing automation platform like Birdeye, you can stop chasing tasks and start building momentum.

What used to require a full marketing staff can now run in the background—bringing in more patients, improving patient communication, and strengthening your online reputation at every step.

Let Birdeye’s healthcare-centric GenAI tools help your team:

• Automate your marketing efforts without losing the human touch
• Simplify key touchpoints in the patient journey
• Free up your staff to focus on care, not admin

If you’re ready to improve how your practice connects with patients—before, during, and after the visit—Birdeye can help you automate what matters.