While personalized patient outreach is a priority, deliverability is the true bridge to patient engagement. To protect your team’s efforts from patient and carrier spam filters, use the following strategies to refine your technical approach and optimize your delivery rates. As always, connect with your Customer Success Representative for specific recommendations that best suit your team’s outreach workflows.

Segmented Line Strategy

To maximize deliverability, it is essential to strategically categorize your phone lines based on the nature of each communication. We recommend isolating mission-critical outreach, such as video visit links, discharge instructions, and appointment reminders, from general or informational communications, like flu shot notifications or new health center announcements. As carriers are applying more stringent spam filters, separating these workflows ensures that your essential patient updates remain unaffected by the filtering risks associated with broader outreach. 

By designating specific lines for health education and dedicated lines for time-sensitive appointments and follow-ups, you protect your sender reputation and ensure consistent delivery for your most important messages. 

Click here to learn how to submit requests for new lines and use the table below to help you determine which line should be used for your outreach type:

Mass Messaging Strategy

When mass messaging patients, it is crucial to prioritize deliverability by avoiding high-volume “bursts” that can trigger carrier spam filters. 

While manual and Recurring Campaigns are designed for large-scale outreach (up to 30,000 patients), sending messages to thousands of patients at once can impact delivery rates. To protect your sender reputation, throttle your Campaigns to maintain a steady flow and distribute high-volume workloads across multiple dedicated lines. To reduce the risk of carriers deciphering your message as spam, be sure to also include opt out language in your Campaign messages. Click here to learn more about Campaigns leading practices. 

Beyond message pacing, audience segmentation is a powerful tool for ensuring high deliverability. By narrowing your outreach to specific groups, like active primary care patients, you reduce your overall message volume while increasing content relevance. For instance, rather than sending a system-wide blast about a new primary care location to all of your patients, you can send a targeted message to primary care patients: “Hi {clientFirstNameProperCase}. As a patient at {practiceName}, we wanted to share that we have a new location at 123 Main St. in Chicago. If you would like to schedule your next visit at this location, please call (773) 123-1234." This personalized approach is less likely to be flagged as spam by patients and carriers.

Third-Party Link Shortening

Artera includes a built-in link shortening service designed to ensure messages that include links reach their destination without being flagged as spam. Click here to learn more about Link Shortening.

How it Works

Any URL over 25 characters is automatically shortened by Artera. This happens across all messaging channels, including manual messages, Bulk Messages, Triggers, and Campaigns.

Why Use Artera’s Shortener vs. Third Parties?

While you can paste links from services like TinyURL into Artera, using third-party shorteners often leads to issues. We strongly recommend sticking with Artera’s native tool for two main reasons:

• Better Deliverability: Phone carriers frequently block third-party links (like TinyURL) because they are common targets for spam filters. Artera’s links are optimized for carrier approval, significantly reducing rejection rates.

• Actionable Insights: For Analytics Plus customers, using the internal shortener is the only way to track patient click-through rates. Third-party links are "invisible" to our reporting tools.

Preparing your Patients for Outreach

To minimize the risk of patients and carriers flagging your communication as spam, it is essential to set clear expectations for how and when they will hear from you. Proactively informing patients about your outreach methods builds trust and ensures they recognize your number when your messages arrive. 

While every organization should tailor their approach to the unique needs of their patient population, the following leading practices serve as a strategic foundation for introducing electronic outreach.

Tips for Notifying Patients about Outreach:

• Mention communication methods at check-in: Have front-desk staff or medical assistants verbally confirm that the patient is opted-in for text and phone communications.

• Include outreach information in the After-Visit Summary: Add a brief note at the bottom of the summary stating, “We may contact you via text or phone regarding follow-up care and appointment reminders. Please save this phone number in your contacts for reference.”

• Update your physical signage: Place small signs or table tents in waiting or exam rooms that say, “Stay connected! We use text messaging for appointment updates and health news.”

• Leverage your Patient Portal: Use a portal announcement or a welcome email to introduce patients to your outreach methods.

• Maintaining Privacy and Terms of Use Policies: When carriers notice high messaging volumes, they often investigate the sender to determine if the traffic is legitimate. If they can easily find publicly available Privacy and Terms of Use policies that include an explanation of how your health system communicates with patients, they are less likely to block the line.

• Contact Card downloads: Send an initial text via Campaigns to new patients asking them to “Save our contact card” so that your health system’s name appears on their screen instead of an unknown number. Artera’s support for Branded Messaging plays an important role here. Click to learn more.