Introduction to YAPI Postcards

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How Do Postcards Work in YAPI?

In addition to digital messaging, you can use YAPI to create and print postcards to send to your patients for reminders, advertising, and general patient engagement. YAPI uses postcards in two major ways:

  • Within its automated reminder systems - If you choose, you can set up postcard reminders for both appointment and recall.  (You can even choose to have YAPI generate these only for patients without email addresses!) YAPI then generates batches of these postcards as needed to your Mail Queue Mail_Manager.png so you can print them out on postcard stock and send them to your patients.

  • For mass mailings - You can also use YAPI to generate and print postcards on demand through the Mail Blast feature.  This option is great for marketing campaigns and for contacting patients  about important changes in your practice.

YAPI comes pre-installed with several postcard templates already, but you can also download more templates from our free Postcard Templates librare, create your own templates, or edit the ones that come pre-installed so patients always get messages that are personalized to your practice.  For more information, check out Importing Ready-to-Use Postcard Templates into YAPI, Creating a Custom Postcard Template, and Editing an Existing Postcard Template.

 

The Postcard Process

While YAPI doesn't send the postcards itself, it digitally generates postcards that you can print out:

  • Step 1: Postcards are Generated to the Mail Queue - For automated appointment and recall reminders, YAPI sends batches of postcard reminders to your Mail Queue Mail_Manager.png automatically, inserting each patient's address, name, and appointment information into the text of the postcard where applicable. For recall reminders, this happens each day at housekeeping and for appointment reminders, you choose which days of the week YAPI does this within your appointment reminder settings.

    For mass mailings, you choose the template you want to use and the patients you want your postcards to go to.  YAPI then adds the patient's address and any applicable information through Merge Tags.  To learn more, check out our article Generating Postcards for Mass Mailings.

  • Step 2: You Print Your Postcards from the Mail Queue - When you're ready (we recommend once or twice a week), you'll print your postcards from the Mail Queue onto postcard stock and if you've chosen to print postcards that go inside envelopes instead, you'll also print address labels to go with them.  You don't have to look up any addresses or patient information; YAPI does that for you!  To find out how, see Printing Postcards From the Mail Queue.

  • Step 3: You Send Your Cards - Once your cards are printed and ready to go, you can send them off to your patients.  Don't forget the stamps!

 

Why Use YAPI Postcards?

While emailing and texting are incredibly effective ways to communicate, some patients - especially the senior crowd - don't use either or they don't check their email or phone often enough to get the messages you send.  Some patients also prefer a tangible card that they can post on their refrigerator as a visible reminder.  Though these patients are usually the exception, YAPI helps you generate and print postcards for them quickly without having to look up and hand-write each address.

 

Types of Postcards in YAPI

In YAPI, you can create and use two types of postcards:

Standard Postcards - These are what you'd typically think of as a postcard, with a message and and the patient's address printed on the back.  This option saves time and money and patients see their message immediately when they pick up the card from their mailbox.  When editing templates that come pre-installed with YAPI or downloading templates from our Postcard Template Library, you'll be able to recognize standard postcard templates by the word "Postcard" in the name.

Birthday_Card_2.jpeg

Envelope Postcards - These are postcards that don't include the patient's address on the card itself and are intended to be mailed in an envelope.  Instead, YAPI prompts you put label stock in your printer after it prints out all the postcards, so it can print the address labels separately.  This is a great option when you have messages that contain HIPAA-sensitive information and want to protect patient privacy. When editing templates that come pre-installed with YAPI or downloading templates from our Postcard Template Library, you'll be able to recognize standard postcard templates by the word "Envelope" in the name.

Birthday_Card-_Envelope_2.jpeg

 

Supplies You'll Need to Print Postcards

For all postcards, you need:

  • A standard office printer that takes 8 1/2" x 11" paper and can print on card stock
  • "4-Up" postcard stock - These are are 8 1/2" x 11" perforated sheets that print four 5.5" x 4.25" postcards per sheet.  They're usually available through your dental supplier with a dentistry-related image on the front side, while the other side is blank for printing on.  

    postcard_stock_2_2.png

For Envelope postcards, you ALSO need:

  • 5" x 7" envelopes
  • "30-Up" printable address label sheets - These sheets are 8 1/2" x 11" with thirty 1" x 2-5/8" rectangular address labels (3 columns of 10)

    30up_labels.png

When printing a batch of postcards from the Mail Queue, YAPI will tell you how many sheets of postcard stock and, if applicable, how many sheets of labels to load into your printer:

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Getting Started

Ready to get started?  Check out our Related Articles below to learn how to import postcards from our free Postcard Template Library or create your own template.  With your template, you can then set up a mass mailing and print your postcards.

 

Related Articles

 

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