Three openings. And the doctors around them already knew.
Dolomed is a pain medicine centre in Biel/Bienne. A pain clinic lives on referrals. Before the openings in Bern, Grenchen and Montreux, Akquire personally wrote to the GPs in the surrounding area, doctor to doctor, in German and French.
- 46referring practices
- 942Doctors personally contacted
- 13,8 %responded, 130 replies
- 0,6 %asked not to be contacted again
May and June 2026Three openings.New premises in Bern and Grenchen, a new location in Montreux. Plus Biel/Bienne, where it all began.
In the surrounding area942 doctors.General practices, group practices and medical centres around each location, each one identified by name, found with 
Clay.
About ten weeks later46 practices refer patients.The new locations opened with referrers who already knew where to send their pain patients.
Spring 2026
A pain clinic does not sell to patients. It depends on GPs trusting them with their patients. Three new locations meant three catchment areas full of doctors who did not know Dolomed. And doctors are the profession that gets written to every week.
Sender.
Doctor to doctor. Never clinic to doctor.
Anyone making a referral trusts a person, not a brand.
A GP passes on their own patients and stands behind that with their name. That is why every email came from the doctor at the new location who would personally treat the patients. Never from a marketing address.
- A genuine reasonAn opening with date and address, verifiable in seconds.
- A small requestNo appointment, no call, just whether two or three test patients would be worth a try.
- Plain textWithout links and without read receipts, because medical inboxes treat both as warning signs.
- The language of the regionGerman in Bern and Grenchen, French in Montreux, in the first-person voice of the doctor on site.
For you: your referring doctors get to know the people who will treat their patients before the first referral comes in.
Bern in German. Montreux in French.
The first email of both campaigns, as it appears in 
Smartlead. The names of Dolomed's doctors are shown here as placeholders.
Guten Tag Doktor [Name]
[Eine persönliche Zeile zur Praxis]
Ab Juni 2026 sind wir mit neuen, deutlich erweiterten Räumlichkeiten an der Effingerstrasse 77 in Bern da, und ich nutze diesen Moment, um mich als Zuweisungspartner in der Region vorzustellen.
Ihre Patienten bekommen bei uns innerhalb weniger Tage einen Termin. Wir werden Ihre Patienten beurteilen, interventionell diagnostizieren und bei Bedarf langfristig schmerztherapeutisch behandeln, in engem Austausch mit Ihnen.
Zuweisen heisst eine kurze E-Mail mit dem klinischen Bild. Ihre direkten Ansprechpartner vor Ort: [Ärztin oder Arzt] und [Ärztin oder Arzt].
Wäre das für Ihre Praxis ein Thema?
Bonjour Docteur [Nom]
[Une ligne personnelle sur le cabinet]
Je me permets de vous contacter car nous ouvrons dès mai 2026 un nouveau site au Rue de Belmont 19 à Montreux, dont j'assurerai la direction médicale.
Vos patients pourront obtenir un rendez-vous chez moi dans les quelques jours. Je les évaluerai, établirai un diagnostic interventionnel et, si nécessaire, prendrai en charge leur traitement antalgique à long terme, en étroite concertation avec vous.
Adresser un patient, c'est simplement un bref message avec le tableau clinique. Je suis votre interlocutrice directe sur place.
Serait-ce une piste intéressante pour votre cabinet?
The result: four emails, one request that gets smaller and smaller.
- Day 0The occasionThe opening, with address and date.
- Day 4The difference«Would this be worth a try for two or three test patients?»
- Day 9The aperitifAn invitation to the opening, «without a programme and without obligation».
- Day 19The farewell«I am getting in touch one last time.» With telephone number, no pressure.
Intervals in the sequence in Bern. In Grenchen and Montreux, the invitation came seven instead of five days after the second email.
For you: an email a doctor would write to a colleague, not a flyer with your logo.
Romandy.
The same offer, two languages. French won.
The smaller list responded the most.
- Montreux and Romandie262 doctors, 45 responses, in French17,2 %17 practices
- Bern443 doctors, 66 responses14,9 %21 practices
- Grenchen and Solothurn237 doctors, 19 responses8,0 %8 practices
Response rate by location, bars start at zero.
German-speaking Switzerland is saturated, the Romandie is not. The list in Montreux was around 40 percent smaller than the one in Bern and had the highest response rate. Most campaigns in Switzerland remain in German. That is exactly why the Romandie still responds.
For you: A market your competitors overlook in German is often the one that responds first.
Result.
Only those who actually refer are counted.
942 doctors. 46 referring practices.
- 942Doctors, 3'146 emails, up to four per contact
- 130Responses, 13,8 %
- 46referring practices
- 35 %More than one in three responses were a conversation about referrals.
- 6 of 942asked not to be contacted again, 0,6 %. In one of the most heavily approached professions, the doctors read the emails as collegial, not as advertising.
- 3 openingswith referring doctors who already knew where they could send their pain patients.
A lead at Akquire means exactly one thing: a positive response from a verified decision-maker in the target customer profile. Here: a practice that wants to refer patients. No opens, no clicks, no lists.
For you: A new location that starts receiving patients from day one, instead of waiting months for word of mouth.
finds a website, built for referring doctors.
We also built Dolomed's website in three languages, with a navigator for doctors who refer patients. That is a separate story.
Dolomed website case studyFrom the list to the opening.
Start with Akquire, one campaign per location
The emails go out, in Bern and Grenchen in German, in Montreux in French
New location in Montreux
New premises in Bern and at the Grenchen medical centre
46 referring practices, around ten weeks after launch
Are you opening a location? Referring doctors will not come on their own.
For clinics, practice groups and specialists who rely on referrals: Tell us where you need referring doctors. At the strategy meeting, we will bring the number of practices in your catchment area and a sample email.
10Weitere Akquire-Fallstudien
Andere Märkte, dieselbe Methode.
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