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 6/9/20 Jeff Langmaid 6/9/20

5 Powerful Conversion Strategies to Improve Your Chiropractic Marketing Funnel

Conversion strategies in the chiropractic marketing world are used to add value to patients, increase revenue for the practice, and develop an excellent customer experience. Funnels and conversion don't need to be tricky or slimy. It's actually the opposite. Your chiropractic marketing funnel should be constructed to provide answers to your patient's questions and targeted solutions to their problems.

If done correctly, you can expect an increase in incoming new patients, referrals, and retention.

A successful chiropractic practice needs new patients to get going, but repeat business is how you can stay relevant, profitable, and growth-oriented over the long haul. One way to do this is to have a marketing funnel.

To improve your chiropractic marketing funnel, you have to find a way to drive conversion opportunities in a patient-centric approach. This means that you need to have a focus on benefits instead of features, on the patient instead of your wallet, and on being a guide instead of a hero.

Let's go over five ways to increase the conversion rates in your chiropractic marketing funnel.

1. Be Patient-Centric

A marketing funnel is used to help a patient transfer from stage to stage of a buying (or decision making) process. At the end of the funnel, the goal is that you have provided answers, stimulated interest, and the patient makes a buying decision.

The patient's actions should help drive a funnel forward. Your message should be responsive to their interests. Organic actions and choices lead to enhanced development of the funnel.

Each phase should be patient-focused, not practice-focused. If you lose sight of that, you'll more likely than not to lose the relationship.

2. Get Attention at Introduction

A marketing funnel is widest at the top. If you cast a large enough net, the introductory phase will grab the potential patient's attention. As Gary Vaynerchuck says, “jab, jab, jab, right hook”. Deliver value, deliver value, deliver value, then ask…

Getting attention at the first step of your funnel is making sure you deliver the content they asked for! This is an essential part of the funnel since it acts as a first impression. Double the top of your funnel to ensure that it’s delivering the promised information in a timely fashion. When someone opt-ins to the top of your funnel (typically via a “lead magnet”) you want to deliver that information right away.

Aim to provide valuable education and information to get attention and to get people into the top of your funnel. Examples of chiropractic focused lead magnets include:

health guides
free courses
health tip cheat sheets

3. Conversions in Awareness Stage

Awareness is just as important as "attention” in your funnel.

Potential patients won't choose your practice or your services if you aren't trustworthy or open. You can increase the conversion rate and push the awareness stage by becoming a content producer on social media, networking, blogging, or traditional public relations.

One post or email isn't going to cut it. You need to have systems and processes to get real results. This is where content marketing comes into play. We recommend that you publish daily on your Facebook page, create weekly videos, and send weekly email campaigns.

It's best to think of your marketing in terms of automated monthly campaigns, weekly topics, and daily posts like we do at The Smart Chiropractor.

4. Track Your KPI’s (key performance indicators)

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential for optimal conversion in your marketing funnel.

Although there are seemingly more critical steps than others in the funnel, you should value conversion. Lack of focus in one step could result in someone exiting early.

Establish metrics for each phase to measure your success. Drop-offs are the most significant indicator for businesses to know where they stand.

A few critical KPI's include:

email open and click-through rates
email unsubscribe rates
conversion percentages
lead acquisition cost
lifetime value

5. Don’t Rush, Give It Time

A funnel doesn't mature overnight.

Rushing into developing insights immediately won't give you an accurate view of your practice. The longer you let marketing and exposure mature, the better off you'll be.

Looking at your funnels and follow-up's monthly is a good cadence. With a larger customer base, your funnel will take even longer to see sales conversion. Time is money, but some things can wait.

Chiropractic Conversion Development

Managing your chiropractic marketing funnel leads to optimal and sustainable practice growth.

With The Smart Chiropractor, we help chiropractors automatically market their practice with the click of a button.

You can save time and increase your revenue by having predictable and repeatable marketing processes in your practice. This all happens while optimizing your specific marketing funnel through conversion strategies.

Give us a chance today to get you on the road to referrals.

Jeff Langmaid 5/4/20 Jeff Langmaid 5/4/20

Email Marketing Mistakes Chiropractors Need to Avoid at All Costs

You've grown your email list, of patients, prospective patients, friend, and acquaintances. But now that you have this list of subscribers, what should you do with them?

You know that you're supposed to email them, but what should you say? And how often should you email the members of your list?

Messing it up could mean you'll find your subscribers will forget about you quickly, your open rates will plummet, or worse... you will end up in everybody's spam folder.

In this article, we'll go over the seven most common email marketing mistakes so you can avoid them. Read on to learn more about how email can help you grow your customer list and your business.

What Is Email Marketing and Why Do You Need It as a Chiropractor?

While it may be more fun to talk about the latest social media platform, email is still the best way to increase your marketing and sales. Email boasts the highest ROI when it comes to a low-cost way to reach your ideal target audience and launch your next big sale.

Targeting email marketing still provides the best way to reach your audience every day. Most social media feeds move fast; but email give you the opportunity to teach and invite consistently. We have docs that are still able to achieve 50%+ open rates that translates to 10-12 or more patient activations per month (just from sending weekly emails).

The most successful chiropractic practices utilize weekly email blasts to reach their audience and generate interest.

Seven Email Marketing Mistakes Chiropractors Need to Know

There is a right way and a wrong way to run your email campaigns. When it comes to email marketing, you don't want to make these common mistakes.

Not sending an onboarding email to new subscribers - welcome your new subscribers with a friendly and informative email immediately after they subscribe to your list.
Not ending your emails with a specific CTA - don't make people think, they're busy, tell them what you want their next action to be, whether it's reading a blog post or getting on your calendar.
Not sending enough emails - people will forget you if you don't show up in their inbox regularly (we find sending an email 1x wk to be a perfect cadence).
Sending too many emails - there is a Goldilocks situation here, you need to find the right balance, so you don't send too many emails either.
Not personalizing your emails - you can send targeted emails through email segmentation.
Not knowing your subscriber list and what they want to hear from you - again, this comes to market research and segmenting your list.
Not tracking your open rates and conversion rates regularly - know your percentages so you can plan your launches and know how much you can expect to make each time you run a campaign.

You spend a lot of time building your email list, so spend some time now learning how to use your list to grow your business successfully!

Avoid These Mistakes to Improve Your Targeted Email Marketing

From onboarding new customers to email marketing segmentation, you don't want to make these common mistakes. Email marketing can be your best marketing tool if you do it right.

Don't collect email addresses only to have them sit on your hard drive collecting virtual dust! Avoid these email marketing mistakes so you can create a valuable marketing campaign that will help you build and grow your business.

If you want to learn more about how email marketing can produce consistently and predictable patient activations, check out The Smart Chiropractor with ChiroEmails, and become a member today.

You're NOT crazy or seeing double.This is a 50% open rate, and 18% click through rate on an email sent two days ago from a member of The Smart Chiropractor.It resulted in 14 patient activations. No tricks, no discounts, no ad spend.Super proud of wh… — You're NOT crazy or seeing double.
This is a 50% open rate, and 18% click through rate on an email sent two days ago from a member of The Smart Chiropractor.
It resulted in 14 patient activations. No tricks, no discounts, no ad spend.
Super proud of what we've put together and how many docs we've been able to help during these crazy times.
This picture is from the Insights within ChiroEmails, our complete email system (automations AND content) which is a part of The Smart Chiropractor.
If you're ready to step up your marketing game- check out www.thesmartchiropractor.com

Jeff Langmaid 4/17/20 Jeff Langmaid 4/17/20

How Chiropractors Can Use Healthcare Market Research To Grow Their Practice

It is reported that the healthcare industry collectively spends $30 billion on marketing each year. Most chiropractors spend about $15,000 pr year- so that means we need to be creative with our approach!

It is not always easy to explain complex medical and chiropractic concepts to the public using traditional marketing techniques.

Read on as we explain the best ways to leverage healthcare market research for the benefit of your practice.

Conversational Marketing

Many experts have begun to dismiss traditional marketing methods as too one-sided.

They claim that the idea of broadcasting a carefully tailored message from a billboard or television is borderline propagandistic.

They suggest treating marketing as a conversation. The idea is that you communicate with potential patients as if they were sitting before you.

This approach fosters trust and respect. When dealing with healthcare products, this is especially important.

People with medical issues need to believe what you tell them. They also need to believe that you care about them and that you're not just trying to line your pockets.

If you can use research findings in this way, your marketing budget will be far better spent.

Know-How to Back Up Your Claims

Patients might not understand everything you do, or why you do it. However, many of them are quite adept at catching out doctors who don't understand what they say themselves.

When acting on new market research, consider why you're doing it. Make sure you can justify your course of treatment to a patient if they make inquiries of you.

Improving the quality of your care is the best marketing strategy you can employ.

If you leave most of your patients in a better condition than you found them in, word of mouth will grow your business.

Consider Your Medium of Communication

Social media is the most important means of communication for many people nowadays, especially younger adults.

Where suitable, therefore, make use of it. Use Facebook posts or YouTube videos to communicate with your patients. Break down difficult concepts so that those without medical expertise have a better chance of understanding them.

If you become adept at this type of communication, you can even start to build an online community. As well as increasing the traffic to your practice, it will also open up other moneymaking avenues.

Using Healthcare Market Research to Your Advantage

There are many ways to grow your medical practice. However, using healthcare market research to inform your expansion will allow you to achieve your business goals in a way that is beneficial to your patients.

If you're a chiropractor and you're interested in securing more referrals from doctors, join our program today.

Jeff Langmaid 4/13/20 Jeff Langmaid 4/13/20

5 Telehealth Trends to Look out for in 2020

Have you ever gone to a doctor's appointment virtually?

If not, odds are you will have a virtual appointment in the future.

Telehealth is one of the new technological trends in healthcare. Now, you can get an expert opinion and see just about any healthcare professional without having to leave your home and sit in a waiting room.

Keep reading to learn more about what telehealth is and some other significant trends that are transforming the lives the doctors and patients.

Technological Trends In Healthcare to Watch For This Year

Telehealth has been around for a while, but you should expect to see it more widely adopted this year. The COVID-19 crisis accelerated telemedicine and other technological advances in healthcare. During this virus outbreak, doctors needed a way to see a lot of patients quickly, without putting their health at risk.

So, many doctors started doing virtual patient consultations, and countries like Italy began using robotics to tend to patients.

As telehealth becomes more widely adopted, other technological advancements and trends start to emerge as well. Here are five healthcare technology trends you might already be seeing or you will see this year:

1. More Doctors Will Adopt Telehealth

Right now, it is mostly general practitioners that use telehealth to diagnose illnesses. However, as more and more patients start to demand in-home services, doctors of all specialties will have to adapt and start offering telehealth services.

Even chiropractors, who are used to hands-on services, can start offering telehealth in the form of consultations or patient check-ins.

2. Artificial Intelligence

Telemedicine isn't the only technological advancement that is changing healthcare. Artificial intelligence (AI) will also change how people receive a diagnosis and medical treatment. AI is already being used to analyze a patient's symptoms and medical history to provide a more accurate diagnosis.

3. Health-Tracking Apps

You probably already have a health-tracking app built into your smartphone. Whether you use this app to gain insights into your health or not, it is tracking your habits every single day. As the capabilities on these apps become more advanced, chiropractors can use them to understand how healthy you are.

4. Robotic Doctors and Nurses

Just like we've already seen in Italy, hospitals around the world are using robots to tend to patients, so doctor's lives don't have to be put at risk. Robotics combines machinery with AI to provide constant care to patients.

5. Smart Hospitals

Smart technology is already at work in most of our lives. Smart tools like thermostats, refrigerators, and televisions, for example, learn our habits and make suggestions that improve our lives. The same technology works in a hospital as well. Smart tools can learn about illness and doctor's routines and make the routine of treating patients much more streamlined and effective. For instance, according to Harvard, over 3 million people visit emergency rooms each year for low back issues. Here's the kicker- 99% of these issues can (and should be addressed) conservatively, with care such as chiropractic. As hospitals get "smarter," they will better be able to triage patients to the most appropriate providers proactively.

Learn More About the Latest Chiropractic Trends

As more and more patients start to demand virtual doctor's office visits, telehealth is something all chiropractors should consider incorporating into their practice.

Make sure you check out the rest of our free tools that will help you keep up with the latest technological trends in healthcare and so much more. You can also become a member to unlock even more helpful resources that will take your practice to the next level.