How to Boost Email Engagement with Personalization
The old fashioned way to write emails.
Sending consistent email is the best way to create predictable growth for your practice. Contrary to popular belief, email is not dead. It's alive and well, but it must be done right to get results.
Unwanted and unpersonalized emails can end up crushing your open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates.
Running an email marketing campaign relies on consistency and engagement. If you consistently get engagement with your email (and send them consistently!), then you can drive a significant amount of revenue for your practice in the form or products, services, new patients, and patient reactivations. But growing takes time and expertise.
Personalized emails are messages that change the content of the email from generic to specific. Specificity can come by using the recipient's name, location, or interests.
Here are a few ways to boost email engagement through personalized messages.
How to Build Personalized Messages
Your list will be most engaged when they aren't flooded with useless information. The emails you send need to be relevant, timely, and from an individual. Emails should have a face, not just a logo. The goal is for you to build a connection with your subscribers. Sending weekly emails (we automate this for our members of The Smart Chiropractor and get crazy remarkable results) is one way to stay consistent and develop the "know, trust, and like" factor while having a weekly call to action that creates revenue.
There are hundreds of emails that come through an inbox. It would be best if you stood out immediately. Relevant, personalized messages grab your subscriber's attention, whether that's changing the "from" name, subject line, or more in-depth personalization tactics.
Merge fields are the technical names of the personalization tools available in many email software programs. If you save a piece of information, such as first name, last name, city, etc., you save it to a "field" in the email. It's the tracking system so that your email system can keep everything straight.
The great part is that these merge fields can then be used to customize and personalize your email message.
For instance, using a merge field (which is built into our email system at The Smart Chiropractor) enables you to send a personalized email using your subscriber's first or last name. This can be extremely powerful in the subject line and the first line of body copy.
Creating a Picture Perfect Email
A copy can go a long way, but pictures can go even further. Your emails need to look professional. Take a look at this example below. Who would you rather receive an email from?
meh….
wow!
The pictures you use and the formatting you choose can have a dramatic effect on the results you get.
Images and good design are powerful when it comes to email marketing. Your click-through rate can be increased by using bold images and strong calls to action. There are even some software tools out there that allow you to create custom images embedded with the subscribers' name!
This is not only easy to do but also a simple way to limit your copywriting length and focus your relationship elsewhere.
Staying Compliant
Letting your subscribers control their experience helps keep personalized messages coming. Be sure to comply with your local/regional/national laws regarding email.
There are still a lot of chiropractic practices that send their "every so often" newsletter through a Gmail account, which is a big no-no! Your subscribers need to have a way to opt-out of your emails for you to stay compliant. Running email campaigns for your practice is not the same as sending a buddy a quick note.
Avoiding Mistakes
Now that you know all the do's of personalized messages, let's look at the do not's.
Spamming avoids optimized mobile viewing and irrelevant suggestions; these are all examples of mistakes you can make. Personalized email marketing means allowing the customer the opportunity to come to you.
Providing them with some form of information that is relevant and timely will lead to sales. Nothing is more enticing than a well placed and personalized message from a company you support.
Best Practices:
personalize the subject line or first line of copy with your subscriber's names
use a tool like Grammarly to check your spelling
watch your cadence (emailing 1x wk is best!)
monitor your open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates
always Teach & Invite
don't forget to have a strong call to action
Building Trust One Email at Time
Personalized email messages aren't only for huge corporations with big marketing departments.
By using email to communicate with your audience consistently, you can generate more revenue for your practice and a deeper connection with your list.
Take it to the next level by personalizing your emails with your subscriber's first name.
If you're inconsistent with your emails (or non-existent), visit us at The Smart Chiropractor. We provide automated email for chiropractors that gets fantastic results. We supply the automation, the system, the copy, and everything you need- on autopilot!
