How Writing 1 Email Newsletter Drives 20-50 Additional Patient Visits per Month for this Chiropractor.

Over the last several years I've worked with small business owners all over the world. In that time, I've not only helped them grow using the power and reach of the internet, but I've also gotten a chance to learn a thing or two from some of the best out there.

If you pay attention to online marketing techniques and methods as much as I do, you start running into some really smart ways to drive more business every month.

Today I wanted to share a story that I heard about a few week ago.  It's all about how a Chiropractor gets anywhere from 20-50 additional clients walking through his front doors and spending money on services (and how he does it every single month).

The Funny Part is how what he's doing is so simple but yet so effective.

I met Dr. Ben Adkins a few years back and he just recently told me the story of how he accidentally stumbled onto something he calls his "1 Email per Month Model" that worked so well for him (and has ended up working extremely well for everyone he's taught it to). Today, I'm going to walk you through his exact model so you can use it in your business. Trust me when I say that this is worth implementing in your business, even if you're not a Chiropractor

The Story behind How Dr. Ben discovered the "1 email per month" model.

Dr. Ben tells me that he first stumbled onto his email method when he was first starting out in practice and was actually sending out Physical Letters in the mail.

I'll Let Dr. Ben Tell You About it in His Own Words:

"It was funny. The first few years as a Chiropractor I would write a short letter and send it out to all my patients via physical mail. We did this once a month and, as we grew, it got really expensive. Between the paper, envelopes, and stamps, it got to be something that would cost us quite a bit of money."

"We kept doing it with old fashioned mail because, even though it was expensive, it always worked and it accounted for a lot of patient visits and new business each month. That said, I am always looking for ways to cut costs. And then, it just hit me like a bolt of lightning one day. I needed to kill the physical mailers and just start emailing my monthly newsletters to my patients."

"I didn't know if it would translate to email but I thought we would give it a shot. We sent out our first email and within a few minutes of hitting the send button, the phone rang. It was a patient of ours that hadn't been in for a while but had gotten our newsletter and decided it was time to come back in for an adjustment."

"During the next few days we kept getting calls like this. The person would say that they had "just been thinking they needed to come back in" and then our email reminded them that they needed to call and book an appointment."

Dr. Ben told me that this ended up accounting for an additional 34 patient visits that month and it averages between 20-50 patient visits every month that they send the newsletter out. He went on to tell me that it was so effective in his practice that he had to hire someone to help him write everything because he had gotten so busy from all the new patient visits.

The Psychology of Why The Model Works.

The super weird thing about the email newsletters that Dr. Ben sends out is that they never offer discounts or promotions and they rarely talk about Chiropractic stuff that you'll see most offices talk about all the time.

Dr. Ben told me that the secret to his emails was that the people he sent them out to were actually interested in the content. He always wrote about things that were relevant to the Season or month of the year and made sure that each topic positioned him as the expert in his field, without positioning him as boring and not worth reading.

The reason the email newsletters draw people back into the business is because they serve as a sneaky excuse to remind folks that you still exist and that they love your business.

The list of people that you send these emails out to are already customers and they are already fans of what you're doing in your business. All you need to do is send them a subtle and entertaining reminder that you're still there and that you are open for business.

I don't care how cool your business is, people don't spend much time thinking about you as they battle their daily battles. The email newsletter is a cool little way to remind folks that you're around and that they should come back (without coming right out and telling them to come back in or offering a discount for your product or services).

How to Write and Send out the same kind of  300-500 Word Newsletter that Dr. Adkins uses to Drive Business Each Month.

The trick to writing great email newsletters that your customers/leads will open and take action on is to make sure that what you're putting inside of the email is something that your audience actually wants to read. There are 2 big mistakes that people make when sending out email newsletters to their customers and both of them can drastically affect your results.

• Email Newsletter Mistake #1: Only Sending out Promotions.
  One of the quickest ways to mess up your email newsletters is to only send out an email when you have a promotion. It may sound counterintuitive because people love getting great deals (especially from businesses that are local to them), but this happens a lot. When the only thing you email out is promotion, people actually get bored with that.Unless your email always contains deals that "give away the farm" you'll end up having less and less opens over time This is also a terrible tactic because you'll create a culture of "deal seekers" in your customer base. People will only come in with a coupon or will wait to come in when you offer a deal. Promotional or Deal emails can be a great "every so often" tactic but it can hurt your business a lot if this is the kind of email you send out month after month.
• Email Newsletter Mistake #2: Writing Boring Content.
  This should be a no-brainer but we've found that a lot of business owners mess this up because they just get too busy and the process of writing great content for their monthly newsletter just becomes a task to complete because they know they should.This usually results in the content of the newsletter being bad and the folks reading it to not want to ever open up an email from that business again.The secret to creating an email newsletter that actually brings people through the front door is to create something that is topic and that teaches (all while branding you as the expert).
• So… How Do You Do it Right?
  An Example of a Great Email Newsletter:

December Dentist Newsletter

Subject Ideas:

• Coal for Christmas..... Does Charcoal Really Whiten Your Teeth?
• Looking for Activated Charcoal in Your Stocking?
• Julius Caesar’s Stocking May Have Been Filled with Tiny Knives.

Body:

 As a child, nothing would be worse than waking up Christmas morning to a stocking full of coal.

As an adult… the story is different.

If you look around social media, or check in with your favorite blogger, you’ll find adults are begging for coal this Christmas - activated charcoal that is.

Why? It’s claimed that charcoal is an easy way to get the white teeth you’ve been dreaming about in time for the New Year.

But instead of going to the dentist to get the job done, you may try at-home remedies, like brushing with activated charcoal.

This practice goes way back to ancient Roman times when people used powdered charcoal as an ingredient in their toothpastes. And if it was good enough for Julius Caesar, it should be good enough for you, right?

No

Charcoal may leave your teeth feeling clean and a little whiter but it’s more like a thousand tiny pointed knives digging into your enamel.

Over time, those knives will remove all your enamel leaving your teeth permanently damaged. You’ll be in pain due to sensitivity and cavities.

Oh, and your teeth will look like the walls of a cliff… not exactly the picture-perfect smile you’re dreaming of for this year’s New Year’s Eve party.

Come see us for safe teeth whitening. We will guarantee your teeth are white and beautiful, without any damage to the enamel.

Book your teeth whitening appointment today, before our calendar fills up this holiday season.

Why Do Email's like the example above work so much better to get a business’ phone ringing?

The above email newsletter style works because:

1. It's something that is topical (this was sent out right around the beginning of December as the Christmas spirit was getting into Full Swing)
2. It has actionable information.
3. It's about helping the Reader... not about educating them about the business.
4. The "Call to Action" at the end is topical without being pushy.

When you build out content like this, people will open it and immediately have a "good feeling" about the person who sent it (who they already like because they are existing customers). This leads to them wanting to come back in and do business with you.

 So… How do you get this going in your business without having to do any of the hard work in creating the content for your Email Newsletters  ?

You're a Dentist that realises how profitable it is to send out a monthly newsletter every single month, but you don't have the time and/or desire to do it yourself. If you'd like to have us do everything for you, just contact me. We can do everything for you for as little as £97 a month and help you get the same kind of benefits that Dr Ben got by sending out a monthly newsletter.