Email Marketing for Chiropractors

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Catch Up with ChiroTouch. Thank you for tuning in.

I'm your host, Dr. Brian Blask. Today, we'll be doing something a little bit different. We'll be speaking with two guests on the subject of email marketing, a marketing roundtable, where I'm joined by Mariness Didulo and Sanjil Kumar.

Welcome to the podcast, guys.

Thanks, Brian.

Happy to be here.

Now, Mariness normally helps me put these podcast episodes together, helps to reach out to our guests, so it's nice to have her in the hot seat today. I understand you guys have recently released an e-book all about email marketing for chiropractors, and that's why I have you on today.

Correct. One of our initiatives is to create educational content for the chiropractic profession that we make available for free. It's how to communicate effectively via email is a concern we hear a lot from our customers.

So we took our marketing knowledge on the matter and put it in an e-book that is available for free download.

Free. I love free. And I know my chiropractic friends love free as well.

So how do I get this free e-book from ChiroTouch?

It's pretty easy. You're able to get this and other useful information for your practice by signing up to receive our newsletter. And you could sign up on the ChiroTouch website chirotouch.com/newsletter.

Okay. So that's going to get me this email marketing e-book. So the topic of email marketing, all right.

Why, Sanjil, is this so important?

Great question. Email marketing is one of the best ways to communicate with your patients. Not only is it convenient and cheap, it's also effective in maintaining and growing your practice when done right.

Remember, chiropractic is a personable, service-oriented profession, and email marketing allows you to build on that provider-patient relationship.

I agree. I agree. But also then, now to say, okay, let's play devil's advocate here.

Isn't that what social media does? Am I doing the same thing? It's free.

I can communicate with Facebook. It's personal. It's a whole lot easier to just make that post that reaches everyone than create specific email messages though, right?

Facebook has a time and place, but it's not a replacement email. Yes, it's possible to reach a wide audience, but you have no way to tailor your message, nor be sure that you're actually reaching the people that you want this message to reach. So here's a fun statistic.

72% of people actually prefer receiving content through their email rather than social media. So things like patient appointment reminders or any announcement from your office, you just can't do through Facebook.

So let's say I'm one of the thousands of chiropractors listening to this episode, and you've convinced me to give email marketing a shot. Sanjil, what do I do first?

One of the most important aspects of email marketing is understanding who your audience is. You need to examine your email list and determine who should or should not receive your message. In marketing, we call this targeting, and it can help you formulate email strategies.

For example, if your goal is to reach patients who have fallen out of your care, you wouldn't send the same message to a patient who comes in to see you regularly as you would a patient who stopped coming in six months ago.

Yeah, exactly. So targeting is also important because it helps to hone in on your patient's needs and wants. It also helps decrease the number of people who opt out.

For those that don't know what opt out means, it means that they remove themselves from your email list. So if you know who you are sending your email to, then you can craft a message that speaks directly to those people, which will most likely incite them to take action, which is what you really want. You can have them book an appointment, attend an event, refer a friend, even give your practice some reviews.

Those are all the things that you could do with a targeted email message.

First, I've developed that idea of who my audience is. Then what do I do?

The message of the email is next. You have to decide what you want them to know or do.

Like what? Can you elaborate, give me some examples here.

Well, you can stay top of mind by sending a promotional message. These do not have to be limited to special offers. Also think about announcements, new services or introducing new team members.

Another message type is reminders to help patients keep their appointments and arrive on time. You could also ask for online reviews, as I mentioned earlier. That's another common use.

Also sending birthday messages, holiday greetings, just so that you are on top of mind during the holidays too. Try a few different types and see what your patients respond to the most.

This is great. With a COVID world right now, and just being able to make sure we can engage with our patients. We've had other topics, other webinars on this too, this whole patient engagement.

This is really relevant. Thank you guys for doing this. Now, how do I measure the response?

I want to make sure I'm targeting the right people, but then how am I going to know how many replies I get? Is there a certain number? Where do I go from there on the actual response?

Yeah. Response doesn't necessarily mean the number of replies. Sometimes you can measure what we call a hard metric, like the number of additional appointments you booked.

But you'll also want to measure how well your message was received, how many people opened your email, how many clicks you received on the links, and also how many people unsubscribed from your list. I think that's a really important one that people tend to forget, because it's an indicator that you're sending information that people want to receive. A high number of unsubscribes probably means you should revise your strategy.

That's a good point. Then outside of the audience list and the message, what is one thing people can do to, say, improve their overall email marketing?

There's actually two things. The first is consider your subject line. Thirty-five percent of email recipients open an email just based on their subject line alone.

Think of when you open an email, usually it's a subject line that catches your eye. Make it short, make it snappy, and make it relevant. There are some great websites out there that will help you write your subject line.

One is subjectline.com, but you can just be as creative as you want.

That's good because I, as a sales executive here at ChiroTouch, my main job other than hosting our podcast is working with clients, doing demos, and then reaching out to them via email. I notice myself the same thing. Sometimes when I write subject lines that are way too long, no responses.

subjectline.com, that's a useful tool for myself. And you mentioned there are two tips, right? What's your second tip?

The second one is to invest in an email marketing automation tool. This is essential when sending emails, especially in bulk. For ChiroTouch customers, we actually offer a service called CT InTouch, and that's a patient engagement tool that makes email marketing really easy.

It's already integrated within the ChiroTouch system, so you can easily communicate with your patients, you already have in your database. You could send them emails, text messages, just everything that you really want to do with email, you can do with CT InTouch.

So full patient engagement right out of ChiroTouch with the CT InTouch. That's phenomenal. Where should our listeners go if they want more information about CT InTouch?

ChiroTouch customers can reach out to their account development representative, or simply visit chirotouch.com and request a demo.

So we've got chirotouch.com for CT InTouch. Go there to get the newsletter as well so you can get the ebook. chirotouch.com/resources for old podcasts and for webinars, educational tools there.

So a lot of useful tools there at chirotouch.com. Any final thoughts, any parting words of wisdom for our audience, Sanjil?

Yeah, I do want to share that. Based on our market research, the average practice loses over $3,200 a month from missed appointments. Adding email marketing can help to recapture that lost revenue, while freeing up your team's time from reminding and rescheduling appointments.

Really, that's why we produced an ebook and are doing a podcast on the very topic of email marketing. It's a small step that can reap big rewards for any practice.

That's so smart. People really need that, especially right now in a COVID area, where we need this type of email communication. Thank you guys both so much.

I really appreciate, you know, Mariness, Sanjil. I know you guys are busy with our marketing team. So thanks for coming on, sharing your knowledge on this topic with us.

And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to Catch Up with ChiroTouch. You can find more episodes of Catch Up with ChiroTouch on Spotify, iTunes, and go to chirotouch.com/podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Brian Blask, and I wish everyone listening a well-adjusted day.

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