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Email marketing is here to stay.
Far from the boring, text-only versions of twenty years ago, email has evolved into a sophisticated communication platform.
You can use email for sharing images, links, and even videos that wow your audience.
It’s estimated that over 99% of people in the US check their email once per day and over 50% check it ten times per day!
After sending over 4 MILLION emails for our Smart Chiropractor members in 2020, we discovered that email marketing is one of the most impactful and high ROI marketing channels available for your practice.
Want to know how to take your chiropractic practice to the next level through email marketing? Here is the complete chiropractic beginner’s guide to email marketing.
What is Email Marketing?
Starting and growing a chiropractic practice takes a lot of work, but having a good marketing plan makes it easier.
Email marketing means spreading the word about your products and services through a dedicated email strategy.
Email marketing has the unique feature of being able to drive traffic and sales for your practice.
For example, if you have a new blog post on your website- you can use your email list to drive traffic, which will help it rank higher on Google.
Or maybe you’ve begun using The Smart Chiropractor to automate your social media channels- email marketing can help you grow your engagement and follower numbers on your social platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
The best part about email is that you can create campaigns (some systems call them automations or journeys) that allow you to “set it and forget it.” That means an entire series of emails can be sent on your behalf without you having to send them individually. This helps you save a TON of time!
One of the best things about email as a messaging platform is that it’s so versatile.
"The Smart Chiropractor has helped me stay constantly booked. No bait and switch discounts that make you look worse than a used car salesman."
Dr. Sam Liveriadis, DC
North Road Chiropractic
You can craft newsletters and sales flyers, printables, event promotions, and even full digital health courses with embedded video content.
We’ve discovered that effective chiropractic email marketing contains a few key automations:
- A Lead Generation Campaign – by having an opt-in on your website (keep reading to learn more), you’ll be able to convert more of your website visitors into scheduled patients.
- A New Patient On-Boarding Campaign – providing a world-class patient experience (while also improving your patient retention) is why an email campaign for all new patients is incredibly important.
- A Re-Activation Campaign – this isn’t your grandfather’s email newsletter! A weekly email that teaches your audience something new about their health and then invites them to take the next step and schedule an appointment is one of the most effective ways to keep your schedule full automatically.
We’ve built these email automations/campaigns (and many more) directly into our service ChiroEmails and they’ve produced huge results for our members.
You want to wow your audience so they see you as a credible source of information.
If you accomplish this, they’ll stick with you and buy your products and services.
How Do You Build an Email Marketing List?
Email marketing software, like ChiroEmails, helps with setting up and running email marketing campaigns. But before you can get started, you’ll need a list of people who will receive the emails you send.
The best place to start building your list is by using the data you already have in your EHR.
Your EHR/EMR contains the email addresses of many of your patients.
You may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of past and current patients in your EHR that can kick start your email list.
The best part about starting your email list with your patients is that these people already know, trust, and like you.
The rapport you’ve already built will help improve your engagement, open, and click-through rates.
In other words, you’ll be able to achieve better results!
If you’ve been in practice for decades and have amassed a list of tens of thousands of past patients, then we would recommend filtering out just the last year or two.
If you import a huge email list (10,000+) that hasn’t been used in the past, you may have a significant amount of bounces and un-sendable email addresses that can cause you trouble.
It’s best to start with a few hundred or a few thousand of your most recent patients and slowly add to the older patient contact records.
Also, NEVER buy or rent an email list. These tactics are tacky, never work, and are likely to hurt your deliverability in the future.
It’s important to build a quality list of fans who really want to know more about your area of expertise.
How to Make Email Marketing Work for Your Chiropractic Practice
Yes, email marketing platforms are powerful, but remember: your email marketing campaign is only as good as the list you’ve built.
Size isn’t everything! Having a big list of unengaged people won’t do you much good. It’s far better to have a smaller list of highly engaged people.
On the other side, if you have only five people on your list, your email campaign won’t accomplish very much.
The balance of size and engagement is why you’ll want to continually be adding to your list (with lead generation from your website) while also pruning your list over time.
Every quarter, it’s a good idea to remove anyone from your list that hasn’t engaged (opened, clicked, or replied) to an email in the last 12 weeks. This is called “list hygiene,” and it can help keep your deliverability high.
Don’t stress about trimming your list!
Removing people who aren’t engaging with your emails is essential.
And let’s get real- why are you keeping someone on your email list that doesn’t want to engage with your messages?
Maintaining a growing (even if it’s slow-growing) email list of highly engaged people will help you achieve the best results from your email marketing.
So what’s the best way to continually build your list? Fortunately, there are a few reliable list building methods that work well.
You can use website pop-ups to capture visitors’ email addresses in exchange for membership or something of value, like a quality e-book.
We’ve seen tremendous success with website pop-ups.
Using a pop-up on your website can convert up to 5-10% of your website visitors into new email subscribers.
So, if you have 100 people visiting your website per month, you could be adding ten new subscribers per month.
And with a tremendous automatic email follow up campaign, it’s not uncommon to have 5 of those people become new patients.
Yes, I’m saying that even with a website that is only generating 100 visitors per month, it’s not unrealistic that you’re currently missing out on five additional new patients (that cost you ZERO marketing dollars) by not having a pop up on your website.
With ChiroEmails, we’ve got this down to a science with our exit intent pop-ups and lead magnets such as our Headache and Low Back Relief Guides.
If you have a blog, place email sign-up areas after each article, and offer to send the article to them via a PDF. You’ll be surprised how many people visit your blog and don’t have time to read the whole article right then and there. You’ll be doing them a favor by delivering the article via a PDF, and you’ll be converting more of your website traffic into email list subscribers.
Lastly, don’t forget about social media! Social media fans typically love to sign up for email lists. They’re already following you because of common interests, so joining your email list is a significant next step in your relationship with your health tribe.
Grow Your Practice With Us
Email marketing can be a powerful strategy for growing your chiropractic practice.
In 2020, we sent nearly 4 million emails for our members that resulted in over 133,000 clicks. We know that power of email marketing for chiropractors.
If you’d like to automate your email marketing with high quality content and campaigns that generate incredible results check out The Smart Chiropractor today.