The Evidence Based Chiropractor Blog

Hundreds of chiropractic marketing and research articles to help you grow.

Jeff Langmaid 6/23/20 Jeff Langmaid 6/23/20

How to Boost Email Engagement with Personalization

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?

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!

Jeff Langmaid 2/10/20 Jeff Langmaid 2/10/20

Marketing Channels 101: Where You Should Be Marketing Your Chiropractic Content

Last year, Millenials overtook Baby Boomers as the largest generation. The surge of young immigrants seeking better opportunities helped.

It's important to know what marketing channels to use to reach this audience. Your chiropractic practice depends on drawing the interest of this demographic.

Check out where you should be concentrating your marketing efforts.

Social Media Strategy

Companies and businesses have forgotten the original purpose of social media and started pushing their products and services blindly. People get on social media to connect, not see advertisements.

Your strategy should be geared towards engaging with your clients and community. Offer great content on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Post articles about how to improve posture or workout tips. Make yourself accessible and approachable by replying to comments and messages. Want to automated daily posting to your Facebook page that is research-based? Check out The Smart Chiropractor.

Video Outlets

Much of the population prefers to watch videos instead of reading articles. High-quality video production gives an image of professionalism and trust.

Use YouTube or TikTok for demonstrations or instructional videos. You can either target fellow chiropractors or patients.

Videos make people seem closer and more authentic. Be careful not to create videos that are too long. Less is more.

Make a video exciting but short. It's better if a person wants to watch repeatedly rather than quitting halfway through the video. Member of The Smart Chiropractor receive easy to follow video scripts each day (as well as done for you video!).

Podcasts

You probably won't have a large online following like the Joe Rogan Podcast, but people over the age of 12 listened to podcasts last year in record numbers.

Long-form audio content gives the creator ample opportunity to elaborate on topics. A podcast can be both informational and entertaining, while most marketing channels are only one or the other.

A great idea is to have a patient come on the podcast and talk about life before and after getting adjusted. You can also invite fellow area chiropractors or business owners to talk about family, practice, and health.

People want to know more about you, and this is a perfect way to do it.

Email Blasts

Email is a marketing channel that has existed since its for a while but still is extremely impactful. Adding email marketing to your previous touch points helps build your brand and develop potential leads.

Email marketing informs all your patients at once with one click.

Providing a way to tell patients and the community the developments at your office ensures everyone is current. There are times people might think a business has gone under because they never hear anything from them.

Let the email blasts make people loyal to you. We have found tremendous success using a 3 pronged approach to email marketing- weekly newsletters to stimulate re-activations, event promotion sequences, and new patient on-boarding. We automate this entire process at The Smart Chiropractor.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth marketing is an excellent tool if you know how to jumpstart it. Turn your patients into free marketers. Start a referral program and give out discounts.

When a referral walks in the door and mentions the patient who referred them, give both a credit on their visits.

Employing All Marketing Channels

Your best bet at reaching broad audiences, including the Millenial generation, is by utilizing all the marketing channels together.

If you need help developing the right strategy, contact us so we can help you market your practice.

Let the world know your practice is ready to serve them.

Jeff Langmaid 5/13/19 Jeff Langmaid 5/13/19

The Ultimate Chiropractic Email Guide [with 2 free newsletter templates]

Let's get real. Email is a necessity in your practice.

Not sure about that?

Is there anything else that allows you to press a single button and deliver thousands of personalized messages to someone which stimulate referrals, build trust/rapport, and increase retention?

Didn't think so.

Most chiropractors attempting to market their practice

To use email to market your practice effectively there are three campaigns or sequences that you need to have in your practice.

You may already be thinking- these tools are complex.

Do I use MailChimp or Constant Contact? (spoiler alert: NEITHER)
What's automation?
How do I create the content?

These exact questions are the stumbling blocks for a lot of chiropractors (so you’re not alone). Historically, email tools and systems are somewhat complicated. If you don't come from a tech/entrepreneur or marketing background, email software can seem confusing.

I understand where you're coming from. By spending tons of time and money at conferences around the world, I was able to discover how to make the tools simple and adapt it perfectly for a chiropractic practice like yours.

Over the past eight years, I've sent millions (literally) of emails between The Smart Chiropractor, ChiroEmails, The Evidence Based Chiropractor, and my private practice.

After sending all those email's, I have discovered and learned a predictable and great way to build a business.

To get started, let’s take a look at the anatomy of a successful email campaign because regardless if you’re using email for on-boarding, re-activation, or events there are a few critical elements you should be aware of. While some of these elements may seem obvious, they are routinely not executed on which can results in low open rates, click through rates and poor engagement.

3 Keys of a Successful Chiropractic Email Campaign

Have a super compelling subject/headline
Deliver engagement, entertainment, and education
Craft a solid call to action

#1- Have a super compelling headline

A compelling headline doesn’t (and shouldn’t) be sensational or cheesy. But, it does need to speak to the pain points or interest of your reader. For instance, an example of a great headline would be, “How to Find Lasting Relief from Disc Herniations”...

That's pretty compelling! Your reader probably doesn’t want short term relief right. They want lasting relief. And that intrigue, the potential benefit, will make it much more likely they will open the email then if the headline just said, “Disc Herniations.”

The goal of these subject line or the headline is straightforward. The singular goal is to get the person to open the email.

#2: Deliver engagement, entertainment, and education

Key point number is direct addresses the “copy” or body of your email. Your goal is to deliver engaging, entertaining, and educational information.

The body of your email is an excellent place to showcase the science of what you do as a chiropractor. It's a unique opportunity to showcase all the benefits that they may receive by coming into your practice.

You may choose to have a short paragraph as with do with The Smart Chiropractor content powered by ChiroEmails which explains the bottom line, why it matters, and the next steps they can take. A great email usually isn’t more than 250-500 words- this is NOT the place to start composing the next great American novel. And, if you happen to have an in-depth topic, you can always ‘tease” it with a few hundred words in the email and then link back to the whole long-form piece on your website which drives additional traffic and helps with SEO.

#3: Craft a solid call to action

The third key of a successful email campaign is your call to action. In marketing, a “call to action” means the next steps you would like the reader to take. A call to action does NOT need to be a coupon code or deep discount of your services. Having a sale or discounting your care is not the same as having a call to action. Remember, your emails should constantly be proving education, engagement, and entertainment. By creating a situation where your reader knows, trusts, and likes you-you will be in a position to offer your services without having to resort to deep discount and coupons. Your goal is to create such an experience that they are ready and will to take the next step.

So what are some examples of an excellent call to action for a chiropractic email?

Your call to action could be as simple as asking your reader to connect with you on Facebook for daily health tips. If you’ve just started a Youtube Channel, you could also encourage them to subscribe to the channel to never miss your weekly Research That Matters TV episode highlighting the latest healthcare research and why it matters to them. Just because your call to action may be subtle does not mean it won’t be effective.

As you can see, your call to action is an excellent opportunity to drive your readers to other platforms and increase your engagement there. But don’t be afraid to ask for a call either. You may use something like, “if you’ve suffered from (condition outlined in email) then give us a call today to get on the road to relief.” A solid call to action can ignite patient re-activations, stimulate engagement, and help people feel closer to your office.

Now that you know the three keys to attract more new patients with email let's break down a little bit of the technical stuff and make it easy for you to get started.

What exactly is a campaign or automation?

A campaign or automation is when you upload the patient's email address one time, and then a series of emails go out over time- automatically. It could be a specific series of condition-based emails, an onboarding sequence, or a long term nurture campaign — either way, the system does all the heavy lifting. You set the email once- and place it on cruise control after that! In theory, you could have a patient get hundreds, or even thousands of emails over the years with you only having to press a single button. Now, that's the kind of efficiency I can get behind!

Let's dive into the three campaigns that are crucial for your practice.

I’m going to open up the ChiroEmails playbook for you.

The first email campaign mirrors the first step a patient takes in your office- onboarding.

The 3 Chiropractic Email Campaigns You Need in Your Practice Now!

The On-Boarding Chiropractic Email Sequence

An engaging onboarding campaign will contain 5-7 emails over the first 10-14 days after the first visit a patient has in your practice. This is THE most crucial time to reduce friction, establish trust, and start getting results.

You probably do a great job getting results, but most docs struggle with establishing trust and reducing friction.

Here are a few of the key topics we focus on with our ChiroEmails onboarding sequence that has been super successful.

• Welcome to the practice

• Addressing frequently asked questions

• Reinforcing your care plan

• Providing Social proof and testimonials

• Obtaining referrals and testimonials

• and more…

Essentially the goal of the onboarding campaign is to reduce friction. Friction and confusion during the first week or two of a patients time in your practice is the top reason for patient noncompliance, no shows, and dropouts.

You need to be proactive in helping people understand why they're in your practice and how can you help them. An excellent onboarding sequence accomplishes, and that is what we build out a complete onboarding sequence in ChiroEmails, and I'd suggest you do the same.

#2. The Reactivation (aka Newsletter) Chiropractic Email Sequence

The second sequence that you have to have is a reactivation, drip, or nurture campaign.

Is your head spinning?

Let’s break it down and make it easy.

So what do I mean by that I mean long term drip or nurture?

A reactivation, drip or nurture sequence all mean the same thing to me. They are all examples of an email sequence that reaches out to your patient list one time per week. For example, one week your subject may be, “Is the pain in my arm coming from my neck?”, the next one might be “How to find lasting relief from a disc herniation.”

By sending weekly emails with educational, engaging, and entertaining content, you will be able to stay top of mind with your patient base which is critical when building a pipeline of consistent reactivations from the people who already know, trust, and like you.

Our members of ChiroEmails have been hugely successful in stimulating reactivations using this approach. And the real beauty is that we build it all out for you. We write all the content. We build all the automation. We’ve seen docs with a list as small as 400 inactive patients get four to six reactivation per week based upon our carefully crafted Research That Matters reactivation campaign.

#3. The Chiropractic Event Email Sequence (Online/Offline)

The third automation you should have is based upon driving people to your online and offline events.

Every event you hold should have an invite sequence reaching out to your patients and inviting them to attend. We recommend a four email sequence- request (1 week before the event), reminder (2 days before the event), day of reminder (day of the event), and replay/follow up (the day after the event).

And don’t forget that your email list can help drive more people to engage with you on social media.

If your Facebook page isn't exactly rocking, and your engagement is low, you can encourage people from your email list to follow and engage.

Or perhaps 2,000 past patients and only 200 fans on Facebook. Something isn’t adding up! I’d be willing to bet 90% of those people had a great result in your practice. Email enables you to connect, engage, and rekindle your relationship with those people while helping boost your social media numbers (for example- by sending an excellent email that inspires them to like your Facebook pages based on your great call to action :) )

I hope that this blog post has shown you how important your email list. In my opinion, it’s your most valuable asset.

If you have any questions- shoot me a message here.

If you want to have a full service, done for your email system with a killer onboarding sequence, all of the weekly Research That Matters content build for you, and an event sequence that will drive more people to your online and offline events become a member of ChiroEmails here.

Jeff Langmaid 5/3/19 Jeff Langmaid 5/3/19

How to Send Awesome Chiropractic Email Newsletters

Imagine being able to hit one button and have an endless string of communication reach your patients which stimulates reactivations, builds trust, and gets more new patients via referral in your front door.

Does that sound too good to be true?

Chiropractic email newsletters can accomplish it all..and more.

Does that sound too good to be true?

Chiropractic email newsletters can accomplish it all and more.

The biggest questions most chiropractors have is: why should I do them ( I think we just solved that one), how often you should send them (once a week is an ideal cadence) and how to get the best return on investment.

In today's healthcare marketplace, you have to be sending an email newsletter to the people in your audience.

What do I mean by the audience? I mean the people in your community, your new patients and your past or in-active patients. Everybody on your email list should be getting an email newsletter updating them on the happenings in your office but also showcasing benefits that you provide directly for them in their life.

Key Point #1: When sending an email newsletter make it about your audience.

Gone are the days of a monthly newsletter showcasing what's going on in your practice (you're not still doing that are you?)

Quite frankly very little of your audience cares about that. What they care about are their pain points and challenges. What are they are experiencing in their life? Your email newsletter should focus upon those pain points and the items of interest to the people in your audience. An example of that will be this if your audience is all cross fitters you probably don't want to highlight a geriatric research study for them. There is friction there. It just doesn't make sense. So understand your audience understand your ideal patient and serve them. The information that they are already looking for online there is no better place to do that than your email newsletter.

Key Point #2: Send your email newsletter 1x week.

Once per week is the perfect cadence to send your email newsletter. It gets your name in front of your audience often enough without being annoying. By sending each week, you have four touch points a month which allows you to showcase news and happenings while also really focusing on the benefits that you and your practice can provide for them.

Key Point #3: Have a call to action

Finally, number three is that in each weekly email newsletter you should have a helpful link or a call to action. A call to action is simply an action step that you want to reader to take. For instance, if you are trying to grow your YouTube channel, then place a link in a few of your emails letting people know they will be able to learn more about how to x, y, or z by subscribing to your Youtube channel. The bottom line is that you need to make sure you are directing people to take action. If your goal from a particular email is to have that individual pick up the phone and call you to make sure that your phone number is linked in a way that they can touch it on their cell phone and it automatically dials your front desk. Those little extra steps will help you see drastically more return on investment with your weekly email newsletters.

So again the three things to keep in mind:

It's all about your audience- showcase the benefits that your office can provide to them educate entertain and engage with those individuals.
A weekly cadence is best. That's going to give you 52 touch points throughout the year which is enough to make an impact
Be sure to have a strong call to action and link in each email that you send out. You might be trying to drive more traffic to your website, drive more traffic to YouTube, get people to subscribe to your podcast, or maybe even fill out a form or a questionnaire that provides you more information to serve them even better content.

If you have those three action steps as part of your email newsletter system, you'll be in a great position to grow your practice, build your brand, and make a more significant impact with the people in your community.

If you have any questions about email newsletters then comment down below!

Want a full automated solution (all the automations and content DONE FOR YOU?)- check out ChiroEmails here.

Jeff Langmaid 4/29/19 Jeff Langmaid 4/29/19

Chiropractic Email Marketing ( + FREE Templates)

Step by step I am going to break down email marketing for chiropractors, and show you exactly what you can do to get started and start getting results. Easy email marketing (newsletter, reactivation, onboarding) with FREE templates!

Chiropractic Email: How you can improve your conversion, retention, and new patient flow!

What do the most successful chiropractic practices in the world do every day to get more patients, build trust with new patients, and stimulate a crazy amount of reactivations from their database?

The answer is more simple than you probably expect…

…it’s email!

Email allows you to build trust, improve new patient compliance, and stimulate the reactivations that essential to sustainable and predictable practice growth.

The problem is that email programs are brutal to use. They are confusing, setting up automations takes forever, and getting the content right is tough.

I think it’s time for a change.

Join me for a this webinar where I am going to make email easy for chiropractors. Step by step I am going to break down email marketing for chiropractors, and show you exactly what you can do to get started and start getting results.

As someone who has sent hundreds of thousands of emails (including this one!) to both chiropractors and chiropractic patients, I’m going to take all everything I’ve learned an put it into an action-packed webinar designed to help you get the most out of email.

You know you need to be delivering messages every week to your inactive patients to stimulate consistent reactivations. I want to show you how to make it easy and I’ll even be giving away a few email templates to get started.

Learn more at www.ChiroEmails.com

Why is email so important?

Well, fill in the blank: Each week I generate patient re-activations by ____________________

If you answered anything but “reaching out to my inactive patients weekly with content that is valuable (to them), builds goodwill, and has a casual call-to-action,” then you are missing out.

Automated email is crucial for your practice to thrive in 2019 and beyond.

But very few chiropractors get started with automated email because the old software systems are complex, confusing, AND they don’t have any chiropractic specific content built in (sound familiar?)

What if there was a way to automate your lead generation, new patient onboarding, and patient re-activations?

There is…meet ChiroEmails.

The Real Problem

Streamlining and automating email follow-up is usually super tricky. The systems are hard to use, the learning curve is steep, and pretty much no one (except for us :) ) creates excellent content for chiropractors that inspires action by your community and patients.

How ChiroEmails Changes Everything.

ChiroEmail’s is the first automated chiropractic email marketing system build by chiropractors and for chiropractors. It has been developed to warm up your leads to help them convert, welcome you new patients by building trust and rapport, and re-activate your past patients by providing follow up sequence that is dripping (geeky pun: in the marketing world a follow-up series of emails is known as a drip sequence) with value to them.

It’s automated email marketing for smart chiropractors.

Now that you know a bit more about ChiroEmails, we’ve had an exclusive offer for you!

As a special thank you for being part to The Evidence Based Chiropractor, we are doing a limed early access period where we’re offering a special price of just $149.00/mo for the entire ChiroEmail’s system.