How to write effective email newsletters for your practice

As with any business, when it comes down to marketing your practice, don’t just focus on trying to get new customers in the door.

It’s actually a lot easier to retain your existing customers by getting them to return, rather than trying to source new ones.

This means you’ll need to build a relationship between yourself and your existing customers, so you can enjoy the benefits of both worlds. One of the best ways to do this is with an email newsletter. By learning how to use email effectively, you can maximize your marketing opportunities.

Monthly missive

The easiest way to generate emails to send your patients is a monthly newsletter. This means they won’t constantly be bombarded by emails from you, but it’s not a long enough time for the patient to forget about your existence.

If you’re in need of a way to create, write and distribute these email news- letters, you can also use tools like Mailjet or MailChimp to get started.

Survey new customers

When you’re writing newsletters, it’s all about generating, creating and nurturing a relationship with your patients. After your customers have visited you for the first time, make sure that one of the first emails you send them is a new customer survey.

This allows you to gain vital and valuable information about your customers and your business, enabling you to improve your services so they are better for everybody. The better the service you provide, the more patients you’re going to get.

You can also include some of the best comments in your monthly newsletter using tools like Cite It In to highlight how good your business is to your other customers.

Beautiful is professional

One of the most important aspects to consider is what your email newsletters look like. When your reader opens them, you want them to think “Wow, this is nice,” and start reading, rather than just seeing a huge block of text and thinking they haven’t got enough hours in the day for that.

Fortunately, making good-looking newsletters is easy. Of course, you can design them yourself but using a template tool and designer, such as Litmus or ReachMail, can save you a lot of time and generate a professional newsletter that looks the part.

Sweat the subject line

There’s no point in writing email newsletters if your customers are not going to open them and read them. Of course, the first impression you have with your customers is the subject line, so you want to make sure that it’s as engaging as possible.

You can do this by being short and sweet, using tools like Easy Word Count, or using an email subject line generator, such as SubjectLine. Test the quality of your subject lines with free analysis tools like Coschedule and Headlines.

Ensure high quality

Before you start hitting “send” on an email—let alone on your news- letter—you want to make sure that you’re sending out the best quality content that you can. After all, if you can’t spot a simple spelling mistake, how is a customer supposed to trust you enough to let you be their chiropractor?

Even if you’re not the best at editing and proofreading your content, you can always use tools like Grammarly.com to ensure that your newsletters are perfect. If your news- letter makes a good impression, it says a lot about the quality of your practice and your attention to detail.

Make them easy to read

Imagine the sort of people who are going to want to read your emails. What kind of people are they? It’s safe to assume they’re just like everybody else, and how many people do you see sitting on a bus, in a café, or at home, scanning through articles and blog posts and absorbing content?

Nearly all of them. But the aim of the game is to absorb as much content as possible, which means you’ll need to make your newsletters “scan-able,” so they can be quickly absorbed into the minds of your readers. Blogs like State of Writing have a ton of content on how to make your emails easier to read, with respect to design and formatting.

Fit your brand

It’s essential to write and design your newsletters to fit your brand. If you’re a professional chiropractor who has a professional and formal tone, this needs to be reflected in your emails. Likewise, if you favor a more approachable and informal style, this can also be conveyed in your newsletters. If you’re struggling with how to do this, you can always use tools like WriterAccess or hire a freelancer who can write your content on your behalf.

As you can see, there is a broad range of things you can do to ensure that your email newsletters (and any other content you create) are a perfect fit for your chiropractic practice.

Gloria Kopp is an email marketing strategist and a business writer at Paper Fellows. She is a regular marketing contributor at Huffingtonpost and Australian Help blogs. Gloria is an editor at Studydemic study blog for marketing students. Follow her on Twitter @gloria_kopp.