Edge Cloud: So Much More Than Just Practice Management Software

Published by Michelle Haupt on Mar 25, 2025

Most offices are aware that Edge Cloud is a complete practice management system and includes everything you need to run your practice smoothly and efficiently. But did you know the tools in Edge Cloud serve a dual purpose in your marketing efforts? With a little bit of creativity, you can take your marketing to new levels with Edge Cloud in just three steps:

1. Establish yourself as an expert and create awareness with branded Edge Animations embedded on your website and in social media posts.
2. Make it easy to convert those leads into opportunities with Online Scheduling, inVisit, Edge Reminders, and Online Forms.
3. Maximize your marketing efforts by tracking your best (and worst) performing referral and campaign sources.

Drawing in New Patients

In sales and marketing, we often use a funnel to show the progress of someone interested in a product to how they become a customer. The same can be true with your practice. The top of the funnel is awareness or lead generation. Using tools like Edge Animations, Online Scheduling, and inVisit make it easy for prospective patients to learn about your practice and schedule an appointment with your office.

Edge Animations. Using the videos in Edge Animations is one of the easiest ways to educate your current patients on what their treatment will look like. But have you considered Edge Animations for prospective patients? Put together a video compilation of treatment with full braces or Invisalign, add your practice’s logo, and export it. Then, you can add it to your website and/or social media accounts, becoming a trusted source of information even before patients make a commitment to your practice.

Online Scheduling. Make it easy for your patients to book an exam with your office with Online Scheduling. Set the parameters of available appointments, including the procedure, location, and doctor, and let the prospective patient choose what works best for them.

Use the Online Scheduling editor in Edge Cloud to set up which appointments will be available to book online. Then, use the URL provided to you in the editor to add the link to your website and/or social media accounts. You can even give the link to your top referring dentists so they can share it with their patients.

inVisit. Take Online Scheduling one step further and leverage the power of virtual exams with inVisit. New patients can begin orthodontic care from the comfort of their home. Simply direct new patients to your website where they can complete and submit photos and customized forms. inVisit allows patients to begin treatment 24/7, with no app to download or waiting for a registration process.

Both of these features are integrated with Edge Cloud. Appointments made through Online Scheduling automatically appear in your Scheduler. inVisit appointments are linked to patients’ treatment chart, and can be opened from within Edge Cloud.

Communicating With New and Prospective Patients

After a patient schedules an exam with you, keep in contact with them through Edge Reminders, which allows you to send reminders through email and text message. Reminders can be set up to automatically send one week before, one day before, and/or even the morning of the appointment. You choose which procedures and intervals the reminders are sent, then set it and forget it.

Not only can you send reminders, but you can also send individual texts to your patients and responsible parties, and they can respond back with the two-way texting feature. It’s a convenient way to get in touch with a new patient after a scheduled appointment, and ensure you have all of the information from them to make their initial exam a breeze.

But Edge Reminders isn’t the only way to conveniently get patients ready for that first visit. Edge Cloud’s built in Online Forms streamlines all of your form submissions. Whether it’s a health history form, office questionnaires, or outpatient forms, simply send a link to the patient or responsible party through either text or email. All of the data from the form is automatically entered into Edge Cloud.

For the patients who don’t decide to do treatment right away, use the subgroups in Edge Cloud to keep track of them. Subgroups are lists of patients where you define who should be included based on your criteria. You can create a subgroup for patients who kept a new patient exam, but didn’t start.

Once you have this list created, use Edge Broadcast (which is included with Edge Reminders) to start an email campaign to this group. With Edge Broadcast, create and send electronic newsletters with easy-to-use templates already designed for you. You can focus these newsletters on information about treatment options, why patients should choose your practice, and any promotions you may be running.

Referral (Marketing) Tracking

Now that you have put all of this effort into your marketing, how do you track it? The easiest way is by adding the referral source for each patient. In the patient information panel in a patient’s chart, click Edit. This opens the information panel where you can add in the type of referral: patient, professional, or other. Use the Fast Find window to choose either a patient or professional if you are choosing that option.

Alternatively, you can choose Other which pulls up your Other Referrers list. To populate this list, go to Editors > Other Referrers under the Professionals/Referrers heading. Here you can add any referrer you want - the more specific, the better. Did you set up a campaign or ad on Facebook? Did your in-office referral raffle take off? Add any option so you can document and track non-people referrals.

The best part about the referrals in the patient’s folder, is you can include multiple sources. Say that an existing patient referred a friend through your raffle. You can give credit to both the patient and the raffle, and mark which source is the primary referral. Then, when you go to run reports or create subgroups about referrals, both instances can be counted.