Marketing to doctors via fax

You might think that using fax for marketing these days would be a silly idea (after all they are slow, need paper, and make weird noises) but the fax machine isn’t dead yet. In fact, fax machines still have a place in modern industry.

They are still heavily used in areas of law enforcement, health care and anywhere people are suspicious of digital signatures.

Doctors use fax machines to get their lab results, x-ray results as well as to transfer patient medical records between clinics (e.g. when a patient moves). Various communications between practitioners are also sent by fax (e.g. a consult note from a specialist back to a family doctor). Then there are insurance forms and pharmacy orders which need to be kept highly secure for privacy concerns.

Another aspect is a multitude of incompatible electronic medical record (EMR) platforms doctors are faced with. So for a lot of medical practices, it is just easier to fax medical records than to send them electronically.

What this means is that most clinics, hospitals and doctors offices still have fax machines that are used daily. For example, as of Aug 2019, we are showing 361,593 unique fax numbers for all practitioners in the US.

Marketing via fax is therefore a viable option if you’re targeting health care professionals.