Episode 49: Email Marketing 101 for Your Wellness Practice

Hi, and welcome back. Today's episode is all about email marketing. So I recently did a poll on my Instagram stories and asked what you wanted to hear from me next, and the majority of people actually voted for email marketing. So before you tune out, and maybe you have this belief that email marketing is, quote, dead, it is not, I can assure you, or maybe you see, like, you've got email fatigue right now, because it was, you know, just black friday not too long ago, and your inbox was probably getting blown up. I really think that you should make sure you listen to this entire episode, because I think you'll be shocked. And when done properly, email marketing to this day still remains the number one, like, what's the best way to put it like, lowest cost way to market, believe it or not. And just this year alone, let me see, let me pull this up just this year alone, my email list has made me $35,000. Now the majority of my revenue comes from my Instagram Management Agency. But considering I only have 1400 active email subscribers, that's a value of around $23 per active email address I have on my list. So again, before you poopoo, this, definitely listen, this is going to apply to you whether you are a brick and mortar office, that's just marketing to a local geographical area, or maybe your current patient or client database. And this is also going to apply to you if you are an online business or a combination of both. So here we go. Welcome to holistic marketing simplified a podcast for helping moms professionals looking to simplify their marketing. I'm your host, Molly Cahill. And this podcast is brought to you by my marketing roadmap, which is a five episode private audio training that kind of like this podcast, but not exactly because it's not available to the general public when you search on your podcast feed. So the great thing about consuming free content like this for me or on my Instagram or my blogs or whatever is that yes, you will learn a lot but you kind of have to go searching for what it is exactly you're looking for. This five episode private podcast is broken down in a logical step by step order. That's why it's called a roadmap. If you're ready to get started on your Instagram marketing journey, or if you already are started and you're just feel like you're kind of like overwhelmed with all of the different free information. This is a super clear roadmap with lots of tangible step by step action items that will get you from point A to point B for just $27. So all you have to do is head to Molly K hill.com/private training. And based on the reviews I've had so far, I know you won't be disappointed

Hello, my name is Dr. Abby Parrish and I'm a chiropractor located in Old Town, Daphne, Alabama, and I listen to the holistic marketing simplified podcast.

Alright, so we have already done an episode. Not I don't want to say similar to this. But if you go back to I can't remember I feel like it's episode number. But it was one of the earlier podcast episodes I did with Alison Hardy. I am definitely not the email marketing expert. But I definitely know enough, like I said to make sure that my list does. It's always profitable for me. And it's also something that we do for our own clients. So yeah, I will go back to the episode after this and listen to the one with Alison Hardy, because she really is the email marketing queen. And if you're going to follow anyone on Instagram for email marketing advice, hers is more focused on online businesses for sure. But I would definitely go back and listen to that. We'll link it in the show notes as well. I can give you some stats just like general email marketing stats, but I thought you might be more interested in our own clients statistics. It's such a hard word to say, our own clients that we do email marketing for in house, their open rates to their lists are anywhere from 30 to 70%. And just so you know, believe it or not 30% would be considered like a top tier, amazing email open rate. And we're going to talk about how to increase that a little bit later in the episode. So I've had a client before who was getting around 40%. And she was like, just isn't very good. And like why is nobody opening my emails. And I just told her well, 30% is actually considered really high industry standard. And she was like, shocked to hear that stats. So that's one quick stat in terms of click through rates, like if you send an email that has a clickable link on it. So let's say you're sending an email, and you want people to click to book an appointment, or maybe you have a full script in your office or something like that. Do you want people to click to go to your full script, or if you're online only, you want people to click to book a free consultation with you or something like that those click through rates are usually going to average around two to 3%. And that's actually considered good. So again, if you're seeing this, when you're sending your own emails, it's just something to go check and keep a pulse on, then that's actually really good. So again, we're going to talk about ways to increase your open rates and increase your click through rates. And we're gonna talk about deliverability. Briefly in just a minute, I just wanted to give you those statistics. And then I also wanted to just give you some statistics when it comes to conversion rates, which is like a realistic, I don't know what the stats are for like a brick and mortar office, like say you're sending a patient reengagement campaign to try to get people to rebook or something like that, I don't have any of those stats, and I tried to find them, and I couldn't find anything good. But if you have an online product, so let's say, you know, you're trying to sell your, you know, $497 course, or $150 course or whatever, I'm not saying you were sold a lie. I really not, obviously, past like, quote, unquote, passive income, I hate the term passive income, because I just, it's really not passive. But I think back in 2020, a lot of people who were hands on practitioners were kind of like, Oh, I'm gonna have this passive income product now. And, you know, it's gonna be like supplemental income, and it totally can be, but I just want you to hear these stats. So you can kind of understand the volume, you're going to need to make that profitable. So the average conversion rate, meaning the amount of people who actually buy your offer, can range anywhere from 1% to 5% 5% is considered like, you are an expert level, talk to your marketer, who knows your audience so well, that your language is so great, and you've just really got it going on. I've never been able to hit I mean, my my conversion rates, I should have looked this up for the episode, genuinely, they have around 3%, I've never hit five that I know of. So I feel like I know y'all pretty well. So what that means is, let's say you are you have an email series to your database, and you have 100 people on your database, that means you're going to sell anywhere from one to five of your courses or products or whatever. So if you only have a $97 course, and you sell one $100 100 people on your list his major $97. Like, again, you can do the math and go on further with that. And so I just think that's important to understand. Because that's 100 People like it needs to be refreshed, right. So if you're sending it to the same 100 people the next month, and the next month or the next month, it doesn't mean necessarily that you're going to continue to get that one to 5% from that same pool of 100 people. So you need to be adding people to your list to have fresh people being told about your offer every month. So I'm not going to go into a lot of depth on email marketing for like a funnel or like a digital product in this episode. Again, I would reference back that episode with Alison Hardy. But I did want to make sure I pointed out that conversion rate just so and I don't want to I don't say that to discourage you. It's actually quite the opposite. I think sometimes people create this passive product, and they're like, nobody's buying it, only one person bought it. And I'm like, Well, how many people are on your list? And then we look at it, we're like, oh, great, your average, it's great.

Another thing I wanted to touch on before I dive into more specifics on email marketing is if you are someone who has created an online product, in addition to your one on one work, then I know I've said this like a million times if you've followed me for any measure of time. But please don't feel like it has to be this completely separate business unless it actually genuinely, genuinely is a separate business like you know, maybe you are a brick and mortar chiropractor. And then now you've created a course on crocheting Well yes, of course that's a separate, but I've just seen so many people who have like a thriving one on one functional medicine practice, for example, and then they create a course and they like again on like the same topic have some type of something related to functional medicine. And they think they can't market that course to their current one on one patients or clients and that's just silly. Why would you not do that? They think they have to start a whole new Instagram and a whole new business name and a whole new thing. Well, why would you not market your passive product to your current warm leads to people who already know like and trust you? So I just want to go back and say let's say again, like I just these are all examples of people I know Have off the top of my head. So always know when I'm giving examples and you don't hear something that sounds like you. Just DM me, and I'm happy to chat with you. These are just people, I have enough to wrap my head. So let's say you're a brick and mortar chiropractor who now is doing functional medicine as well on the side, it doesn't have to be a side business unless I am not a lawyer. I understand there's legality when it comes to different licensing in different states and all that. So again, speak with your own legal counsel, when it comes to yes, if it needs to be an actual, like separate business, LLC, whatever. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about your marketing, like, I don't want you to feel like, oh, I have to start from zero, when you've got this whole database, maybe that it's already knows you likes you and trusts you that you can market, your new service to or if you sell oils on the side, or if you you know, like I said, going back to if you sell supplements, whatever I don't want you to feel like you have to start over from scratch. So that's like a little aside that shockingly, was written into my outline. But I just think it's important to to note. So back to email marketing, like I said, it's still to this day proves to be one of the highest ROI you can have in your marketing because it's your own direct line to someone's inbox. And as I said in the intro, don't get turned off by like the crappy emails that you've probably gotten in the past. I'm not talking about spamming someone with you know, 567 emails a week, this is not what we're talking about here. People are also way more apt to open your email, if it's somebody they already know. So if they already know you, of course, they're more likely to open it. So let's talk about some popular email service providers first. So depending on what type of like if you're a brick and mortar office, and you have like a current type of patient software, a lot of our clients have their own like built into their own software. And then I also know like Jane, for example, they integrate with MailChimp, and whatever. If you want to use that you totally can. But I personally love flow desk, and that's just FLOD sk flow desk. I, at the time of recording this, I'm not an affiliate but full disclosure before I hit the show notes, I might go grab it and see if I can grab an affiliate link. I don't personally use it, which I'll explain in a minute. But I we use it for I don't know, like majority of our clients, I would say 70% of our clients is we've gotten them set up on FLOTUS. And I like it because it's so simple to use, like it doesn't have crazy amounts of bells and whistles that you probably don't need. And their emails are just so pretty, they're really easy to make, it's a very simple drag and drop builder. And their deliverability scores are really good. So deliverability just literally means like, is your email going to make it to someone's inbox? Or is it going to end up in spam or whatever. And that actually, believe it or not, can be determined based on the email service provider that you choose. So I don't know, like we've moved some of our clients from MailChimp and from constant contact to flow desk, just because a their emails are just so pretty and like more visually appealing and be their deliverability is great. And see it is crazy affordable. So before you like I said I've got to find a coupon link of some sort, because you can pay full price and I believe it's 36 or 37 $38 a month. But usually there's a coupon going around, and I'll try to make sure that's what's linked in my bio, a coupon for half off. So it's essentially $19 a month. And the cool thing about flow desk is that $19 A month is locked in no matter how many subscribers you have. So a lot of services like MailChimp, Constant Contact or free up to a certain amount of subscribers. So maybe it's like 500, I don't know, I haven't checked recently. Let's say it's 500. It's like, oh, you can use this for free. But then once you get over that threshold of subscribers, the price goes up exponentially. So the cool thing about Floyd is, is that that amount is locked in. I use kartra which the majority of you listening to this are not going to need something that robust. I use Karcher because it's a really great all in one profile that fits profile.

What word platform that fits my own needs meaning kartra is it's kind of like Kajabi if you've ever heard of Kajabi it hosts my course. So holistic marketing hub. All the videos are hosted in kartra. It is my email service provider. It serves as like a CRM, which is like customer relationship management. It's where all of my checkout pages are hosted through and you know I have like a stripe integration for payments. It's where all of my landing pages and thank you pages and checkout pages like I said are hosted so if you wanted to go download one of my like my real freebie for Example. And you go to Molly cahill.com/reals. It that's a kartra. That's a page that was built in kartra. Not on my actual website, like my word websites hosted on WordPress. And you definitely can do that it doesn't have to be hosted. But I don't want to get into all that today, because it's gonna get a little confusing. But flow desk also has a way to build landing pages, like I was just talking about Super simply super easily. It's like, it's seriously so user friendly. So consider that as one of your providers if you don't know what else to use. Okay, so I just talked about my reels lead magnet, for example, or freebie. And if you don't know what a freebie or lead magnet or opt in is, all three of those terms are pretty much used interchangeably. And that is just some type of free resource or free value that you offer to someone in exchange for their email address. So it's like people's email addresses currency these days, basically. So, you know, just to be completely blunt, most people don't give a crap about, quote signing up for your newsletter. So if you got something on your website, it's like sign up for our newsletter, no one's signing up for that, because there's no value to that person. That's when you do run into that. Just another email in my inbox thing. Now, if you wanted it to be like, five tips for, you know, a pain free pregnancy, you know, opt in here, then that's more of like an even exchange. Sure, I'll give you my email address for that. Again, I'm not this episode is not going to go into a lot of detail on creating lead magnets or opt ins. But I would again, reference that episode with Alison Hardy, we talk about how opt ins can even be good for brick and mortar offices. If you have an online business, it's a it's a must have like I don't think you can, I truly don't know how you would run an online business without having some type of opt in. And if you don't have one and all of this, you're like, I'm not somebody who's good with tech and all that kind of stuff. Just let me know, DM me. And if we may or may not be able to do it for you, we have someone on our team who helps us with special projects for clients. And I'm going to talk about at the end of this, how to outsource this if you need help, and why so let me let me not get ahead of myself there. So if you're like head spinning about the tech, stay with me until the end of the episode, and I'm gonna give you some information on outsourcing. So anyway, most lead magnets or opt ins can easily be made assembling something like Canva. Or it could even be a video series that you upload to YouTube as like an unlisted link. There's so many different things you can do that really give value and make it just like oh, yeah, I would definitely give somebody my email address for that. So many different ideas. Some people will do a free quiz, that's an example of an opt in an eBook, a guide, free video training. Like I said, some people will do a challenge. That's another thing that's definitely obvious. Also popular for the beginning of the year is your all. And then you know, there's just the Goodall, give me your email address for 10% off services like that's obviously another reason people would like an example of like opt in. So the next is we're going to talk about types of emails. So we've talked about the popular providers, we've talked talked about a lead magnet or an opt in. And this might not apply to you, right, like if you have like an established practice. So for example, I was just on a discovery call with a chiropractor last week, who has a really well established practice, she's got, you know, 1000s of patients in her database. And she's like, we haven't emailed them since 2018. So if you kind of fall into that category, don't get bogged down with feeling like you have to do any of the lead magnet opt in stuff right now, we're just going to focus on nurturing and loving on this current database that you already have. Okay? So there are like your one off like in Carter, they're called broadcasts, just normal emails, newsletters, whatever you

want to call them. Those are just kind of those one off emails that you're sending, let's say if you do it once a month, or if you have a special announcement or something like that, that's there's that's one type of email. The other thing we that's like involved in email marketing that I highly recommend you have is some type of welcome or nurture sequence or series. So this could be triggered if you like, let's say you get a new patient or a new client, or just if you're online business, you get a new subscriber to your list and when new who downloads your free download, and it's like an a sequence of you know, like five emails is a great place to start. There's no hard and fast number, but let's just say we want to start at five emails. That's like a welcome or nurture sequence. And that automatically gets triggered like I said, and it's, it's like, you know, talks a little bit about what you do and your story and then how you can help them and you know, give some social proof it might help tackle any objections that person has a And then if you do have some type of online product or some type of recurring thing, that's where if you've heard people talking about their funnels, that's where a funnel comes into play. So for example, for me, when someone signs up, you know, to get one of my free downloads, let's say it's my 101 Free rails prompt, then they immediately get an email, delivering that free download. And then a day later, they get a welcome email for me, like introducing me and my story and how I can help them. And then I usually send a couple, like really value packed emails with with no, you know, I'm gonna say catch, there's never catched up to spec luck. I just give like straight tips and education for free. No, you know nothing else. I usually handle some objections, some common objections that I hear from people in those emails. And then once it's gone through all those like welcome, nurtured emails, then it starts a sales sequence. And all of this is automatic. It's all just running in the background. And I can't remember how many emails are in my sales sequence right now. But that's when it starts to pitch holistic marketing hub to the people on my list. So when you've ever heard anybody talk about an evergreen funnel, that's literally it is not that fancy or complicated, you could create something similar to this, if you're a brick and mortar only practice, by like just making sure that the ultimate goal is getting them to book an appointment or book a follow up appointment. So, you know, like I said, I talked about just kind of the one off broadcasts, one off, you know, email newsletters, or announcements that talks about, like a series or a funnel. But then the other types of emails are you can do campaigns that might be targeted to something specific. So for example, a popular campaign to run for brick and mortar offices is a reengagement campaign. So let's like say you're a massage therapists and you have a database of clients who haven't been in to see you for a massage in like three months, you can usually sort that and whatever software you have, and you can send, let's say, again, a series of three to five emails, to those people trying to get them to come in and get booked again. You can also have some type of campaign that centers around a common goal. So let's say you stock supplements and your office and they're overflowing, and you really need to thin out your inventory and you want to have a sale on your supplements. Well, you could run an email campaign with like three to five emails just around that one certain goal of moving supplement product, or if you're having an online class, or a webinar or whatever, that's where you could use that one off campaigns. So I just kinda want to talk about like the difference in the different things. within normal newsletters, obviously, you still want those to be in line with whatever you're doing like time sensitive at the time, I had someone ask if we could batch like a whole year's worth of email newsletters. And while we definitely could batch like some of the core evergreen content, I would encourage you to go in and add something time sensitive right there for and this is just like this isn't necessarily for like I said all these series or whatever that are always running in the background. But for your more news, quote, newsletter type content, that's what you want to make sure it's it's current. I personally would say just say no to any and all types of syndicated email newsletters, so if your website provider or whatever offers like bulk newsletters, I don't care if it's included in whatever you pay for or not, I literally would just like not use it because and tell me please do like if you've had other experiences, and I just maybe I've just had bad experiences. That's just me, I'm open to being wrong about this. But perfect example is my chiropractor. Back when I was in San Diego was a pregnancy baby, you know, more vitalistic family chiropractor, and her email newsletters were all very pain focused, Whiplash, focused, they sounded nothing like her. And I never opened them because I knew they weren't actually coming from her versus something that is written. And that is another thing we want to talk about is like how to write them in subject lines and stuff. But you definitely can tell when it's coming from you. And it's branded to your own clinics branding. And by branded your own clinic. I don't just mean throwing up a logo. I mean, you know, does it say greetings.

Just, you know, you want to make sure it's it's personalized. So on that same note, and then I'm going to talk about a couple other things of how to make sure you're crafting these emails that actually get open to the people like to read. The most important thing is your subject line hands down. So you can google subject line checker, I've played around with it before there's a couple different services in May Make sure you also send yourself a test email. And just say like, does this stand out in my inbox? Do not, under any circumstances put in your subject line, December newsletter. But he's opening your December newsletter, I don't even want to open the newsletter for my kids school. Um, you have to give somebody a reason to click and open it. So sometimes that might look like all the words being lowercase letters or emojis or, like I said something to make it stand out and make it look a little personal and look different, I could probably do a whole episode around subject lines. But you can go back to the hooks and headlines episode I did that didn't I didn't talk about subject lines at all. But the same types of like formulas, if you will, you would use for our really good hook or headline on Instagram posts is the same exact formula you would use for a good email subject line. And the reason I send to send yourself a test is you only get a certain amount of characters in someone's email preview before it gets cut off. So you want to make sure that whatever that line is, it is like eye catching. Also, there's a lot of studies showing that using people's names in the emails is also a great way or even in the subject line, I mean, is a great way to increase open rates. And most email software has the ability to put that first name field in the subject line, as well as throughout the email. Subject line, obviously, we're gonna look at that first. Then, like I said, the actual design of your email, you want to make sure that at least 75% of your email is actual text. And by text, I mean, don't be going in Canva and typing out everything you want to say on this beautiful graphic and dragging and dropping that in. Yes, it might look pretty. But if you want your deliverability to stay high. Remember, that's where you know making sure these emails actually get into people's inboxes than it needs to be text more text heavy than images. It's been shown that emails that have more than like 20 25% images in the email, get sent to spam. So again, you want to make sure you're actually typing out the email like you would type in your Gmail to a friend, even if you're using Flow desk, which they do have a lot of really pretty graphic photo heavy templates. I always just for clients like to make sure that it's still like text heavy in terms of like literally typing into the email. Again, not like text overlay on a graphic if that makes sense. The other thing to look out in designing your email is what shows up quote above the fold. Above the fold is an old newspaper term, if you think about a newspaper that's folded in half, the bold headline is always quote above the fold, like literally about unrequested quote, literally above the fold. When you unfold the newspaper, obviously, what's below it is just more like text heavy. So you want to make sure that when someone opens the email from you, whether it be on their phone or on their computer, that it's not this big graphic that spans like a couple of thumbs scrolls down. It's like why am I even opening this, it's the same rule that would apply to hooks and headlines. Again, when they hit open to your email right away, they need to have the very first line or something like that needs to be eye catching attention grabbing like, this is why I'm opening this email. And that is that would is one thing I would say is like the only downside to flow desk sometimes is a lot of their templates have these really tall graphics is like the the header of the email, and I just don't like that I don't think it performs well because I don't think it grabs people's attention. And if they're somewhere where they don't have good Wi Fi or good service, it's gonna take a while for that email to load, which is another reason people are just going to click out of it. So that's on the design, you want to make sure you're using consistent fonts and colors. So my email software, for example, doesn't have the exact fonts that I use on my website and in Canva for my graphics on my Instagram, but I tried to use something similar. So again, it doesn't have to be perfect, but just make sure that your emails, you know, look and feel like your website like your Instagram. So it's not just this crazy, different branding. And then I would say the most important thing is just to make sure it sounds like you don't remember how my biggest Mo and everything is making sure like the reason I love Instagram is because it lets people get to know you as a human being and your own personal brand. Because if you're in the health and wellness space, what you're doing is extremely personal, right and so we want to make sure that your emails actually sound like you You and that they're super conversational. Don't feel like you've got to put on your robotic professional hat. I couldn't get into a whole other subject about AI. I literally got an email from someone who's about two months ago now. And it said I'm not kidding when I say this. Greetings, esteemed colleagues. Yeah, so I don't know anybody who goes around saying greetings, esteemed colleagues, I could tell it was written by AI. I'm not I love AI. I'm not against AI, I'm just saying makes actually sounds like a human wrote it and not just any human, but you one way to, well, this not only improves deliverability, but it just makes your email more personal is to encourage replies. So something I'll do, for example, is, I have an automatic email set to go out four days, three or four days after someone down, downloads one of my free resources, and it's a very short email, it's literally like one or two sentences, and it just says, Hey, you downloaded my rails freebie three or four days or three days ago. Just wanted to make sure you got it and see if you had any questions. It's me on the other end, so please hit reply. So yes, the email is automated. But also yes, it is truly still me on the other end, and a lot of people reply to it. And I love it. And I do take the time to read everyone. reply back to everyone. So again, like, yes, it is an automated email. But also, I just love that I get that personal touch if people in my inbox. So, you know, if you want to encourage replies, you're like, Oh, well, what if, like, I guarantee you, if you have 1000 people on your email list, probably only three people are going to reply, but it's still it's like such a personal touch. And that also helps with your deliverability to let the various email services know that, you know, people want to hear from you. And you are a real person sending these emails, you're not like a spammer. So it could even be something like, are you taking vacation for the Christmas holidays, if reply and tell me where you're going. I truly love to hear or something like that. So it's another little like personalization thing you can do. Another thing I like to do is add a candid and instead of you know, you know how much I love encouraging having professional pictures taken. But if you can add a little candid photo that's more recent, like something you've just snapped. And just say like, PS, I'm writing this from my living room, while the fires or I don't know, something like that, just again, just to let people know, like, oh, they are here with me right now. Like they're actually writing this email. And again, it just gives it like a little more personal touch. How often should you be emailing? I would say as often as you can consistently keep up with if you want to start with, I would say a great place to start if you're like okay, I haven't even if you're like the client, I talked to you last week because like I'm not emailed Mallesons 2018 I would start with a more consistent, I wouldn't call it a reengagement or campaign necessarily for like new. For people who haven't been in in a while to get rebooked for her. I just proposed like just general.

Let's get people opening your emails. Again series, it was like five series five emails long. Where I proposed the first email would be something in like a funny your conversational tone, like, Hey, we're getting back to regular emails, I swear, we deserve your good inbox. Here's why. You know, everybody has your junk inbox in your good inbox. Email two would look like an overview of like the clinic, again, your services, how you help people and then maybe like a little personal tidbit about you. The third email could look like a short one to two sentence email as if it was written personally right there to ask them to hit reply with their needs, which was what I was just talking about kind of the fourth email could be something time sensitive, that would have to be edited by you like right in the moment where you could talk about last minute appointment openings, but you don't have to necessarily do that. You could, let's say, you know, you generally have same week appointments available. You could be like, we have appointments available this week, you could probably have that on autopilot and it would probably like always be right or if you know if it's not like this week, you could be like we have appointments available in the next five days or however you want to say that just make sure it's accurate. Email five for this, like I haven't emailed my list in ages and how do I get back started could be like an interesting case study or case studies. Just make sure that these case studies are of your ideal patient or client so that you're attracting more of those people. And then the next email is my personal favorite. Which is that are you following us on Instagram? I need to do a whole other episode on we just had a client who We sent an email to her holist. Again about follow us on Instagram, here's what you'll get blah, blah, blah. And then the beautiful thing about flow desk and pretty much actually, I think every email service has this option, I just don't flow desk, it's a one click thing. Five days later, I clicked resend to non openers, and it just sends the same exact email to the same like to just the people who didn't open it the first time. And it really worked. It got some followers for like, you know, more local to her, her her current patients. And if you aren't sure why that's important, go back to two or three episodes ago where I talked about like my scrappy ways to increase engagement. That's one thing you can do with your email list again, is have them follow you on Instagram. Okay, some other things. So I just talked about best practices of how to actually design your email. And we're almost done to now let's talk about compliance and printing your lists and all that kind of like nitty gritty stuff. So every quarter, we run what's called a prune sequence to my email list. This is how I keep my open rates are so high, they're usually 60 to 70%, which remember, I told you, industry standard, like 30% is considered really high. So basically, how you put in your list, and now obviously, this doesn't, you'd have to figure out the tech logistics of if you're doing this is like a brick and mortar office, you don't want to completely remove and delete subscribers who are actual, like clients or active clients or patients. But you could just segment them to a separate list. But once a quarter we were on like, I think it's three emails, and it just automatically gets run to in my email service. And most all services have this, where you can segment out a list of people who have not opened your emails in a given period of time. So let's say if you're only emailing once a month, I don't think three months is really quite enough time. So maybe let's just say six months. So you can filter by anyone who has never opened your emails in six months. And you can send them an automated sequence. It's like, Hey, I noticed you haven't opened any of my emails in a while. Um, if you want to stay on my list, you know, click here, or, Hey, if you want to go ahead and unsubscribe, click here. And if we don't hear from you, then we'll just automatically unsubscribe you. And then by the third email, again, if they don't click anything, or don't open, they just get automatically unsubscribed. So that makes sure again, everybody who doesn't really want to hear from me or whatever is not getting my emails, it's not clogging up their list. And we do that quarterly. And I'm sure your software that you already use has some type of way to do that. Okay, compliance and double opt in. So a lot of inflow desk has this No, for sure. I'm pretty sure every single email service has what's a double opt in, I don't necessarily recommend the double opt in. What that is, is it's where if somebody comes to sign up for your email list through like a lead magnet or free download or whatever, that instead of sending them the free download, it sends them an email that says please confirm your subscription first, and a lot of people don't do that. And so then they don't ever get the freebie and then they're emailing you like where's my freebie and there are other ways to make sure that you're not getting robots and that you stay in compliance. I one time got this huge spam complaint through one of my emails that I sent. And I was like, freaking heart dropped because I'm like, I don't I don't email people without permission. I'm like, why I've never had this happen. I literally only get like, maybe one to five unsubscribes per email us in like I was just like, shocked, like, where did this come from? And then I looked and there are stupid bots who will go mass sign up on your website for people's email list. And then when you actually email them, they'll report you as spam. What do people get from this? Like, I don't understand it. I really don't. So we were able to fix it and everything was fine by including a CAPTCHA on my opt in and you feel like my eyes are glazing over I've no idea we're talking about captures that thing you know where it's like select all the boxes with traffic lights from for me for my email list. It's not a select all about it's like a retype in the letters and it'll be where it's like, you know, like, in a weird background with like lowercase r capital E A three t, you have to like type in the five letters or numbers. That just ensures that anyone who's signing up for my email list is human and is not a robot. So that's just another thing to like. And also it's like I'm in America. So if you're in Europe, the email standards are different. A I am not a compliance expert when it comes to emails. So it's just something to make sure you're you know, it's not as big of a deal if you're using your current list of patients or clients and your own patient or client database. But that's not typically something you're gonna have to worry about. I'm talking if you're like, like, have some type of lead magnet or opt in where you're just getting like random people to come sign up for your email list. That's when you have to be more particular about compliance. And in terms of compliance in February of 2020, for Gmail, and I think it's one others implementing some stricter compliance standards, it's mostly going to apply to people with email lists of over 5000. But it's still a good best practices, I don't know enough about it to speak intelligently about it right now, My Online Business Manager is in the process of looking into it for us to make sure we are compliant, even though we don't have 5000 subscribers. So I'll keep you posted as February of 2024 approaches. But again, I just don't think that's anything you're gonna have to worry about if you're emailing your current database. And Okay, last but not least, is the outsourcing piece. So if all of this makes your head spin, and it makes you feel overwhelmed, and all that jazz, and if you have this limiting belief that you're not good at tech, then just outsource it. i Some of you've heard this story before. But when I first started my business, I kept putting off starting my email list, not because I mean, I'm genuinely somebody who can figure something out, I just have to want to do it. And I only had eight hours a week of child care. And I just it just kept getting pushed to the backburner because at the time it was literally just me like I didn't have a VA I had no one it was just me. And I had a couple clients. And so I was responsible for everything. And so starting my email list just kept getting pushed to the bottom of my to do list, I have a feeling this might sound similar to what you're dealing with. And if that's the case for you, then outsource it. DM me, we don't have formal email services. Right now we're in the process of adding them. Like I said, I had a discovery call with a client

letter potential client last week, to quote her getting set up her email list and setting up some sequences that she can run and like a newsletter template and all that jazz. But if we're not able to help you, my friend Sarah Wiles, sar a, there's no age, if you go to her Instagram, she has a virtual assistant matchmaking service that's free, you can go on Upwork, then the work is guaranteed just don't do anything like I wouldn't be given people passwords and stuff on Upwork outside of the platform, just I don't know, that makes me nervous. There are virtual assistant Facebook groups where you can find people, I would just be really specific, in what it is that you're wanting. If you're like, hi, I currently use Constant Contact, I need to migrate to flow desk, I want to set up a lead magnet. And like even if the lead magnet has to be designed and created, like that's something we've done for clients before in the past, but just definitely let them know if that's in the scope of the project. And then I need that set up. I need all of my contacts merged, re upload it, you know what I mean? Like, so just make sure you're like being really clear everything that's needed. And if you don't necessarily know what's needed, then if they are savvy with email marketing, they're going to know if they are asking too many questions about, you know, they don't seem to understand that's kind of a red flag and I would move on. But I, my whole point in telling you this is I had someone set up my email list finally after six months of putting it off. And it cost me $75. I had created my own free download. So they didn't do that part. Like why the heck did I put this off for six months and nearly cost me $75. So if you're reaching out to me, we're not able to take on projects that small right now, just because we don't have the bandwidth, we really only do like bigger bulk projects. But again, just DM me, well, if it's not the right fit for me, I'll find somebody who can help you for sure. Okay, I think that's everything, I tried to just kind of make this a little more of an overview of email marketing. And I don't want this to just be something that you're like, it's just one more thing I have to do. It doesn't have to be completely recreated from scratch. When we're doing these for our clients, we often just use a lot of the same copy that we use in their Instagram posts and copy and paste it over into the email, and then we'll just add, you know, something that makes it more email friendly than what you would put on an Instagram post. And for newsletters, typically we do again, we don't call them newsletters, but typically we do. The format we follow is something educational followed by something time sensitive to the clinic, whether that be like a you know cookies with Santa or you know, we're having an Angel Tree or whatever, or we're going to be closed the week of Christmas. This, or if you don't have anything like that, we also like to add things that are going on around the community. So like, you know, farmers market this weekend, whatever. So just don't feel like it. These are all things that I you should be putting on your Instagram anyway. So I don't want you to feel like this is something you have to create for extra, it's literally going to be the same exact content just put into an email. So I just wanted to end with that. Okay, if you have any questions, I'm actually going to be you know, I've got a little surprise that my sleeve coming for the beginning of the year around email marketing. So please, this is not an empty invitation, flood me with your questions in my DMs, just so I know where I need to, you know, be a little more specific and where I can help you, where you're lost where you feel stuck, where you're having success, all that jazz. So, alright, have a fantastic rest of your day or evening and talk to you next week. Thank you for listening to holistic marketing simplified. This podcast is brought to you by my marketing roadmap, which is a five episode private audio training that's kind of like this podcast, but not exactly because it's not available to the general public when you search on your podcast feed. So the great thing about consuming free content like this for me or on my Instagram or my blogs, or whatever is that yes, you will learn a lot but you kind of have to go searching for what it is exactly you're looking for. This five episode private podcast is broken down in a logical step by step order. It's why it's called a roadmap. So you're ready to get started on your Instagram marketing journey. Or if you already are started and you're just feel like you're kind of like overwhelmed with all of the different free information. This is a super clear roadmap with lots of tangible step by step action items that will get you from point A to point B for just $27. So all you have to do is head to Mollie cahill.com/private training. And based on the reviews I've had too far, I know you won't be disappointed. I'm really proud of this training. And I know personally, I've bought 2737 $17 products before and felt like I really didn't get that much out of it. I guarantee you you will learn something from this five episode, private audio feed. So again, it's just Molly K hill that comm slash private training, and it'll also be linked below in the show notes. I cannot wait to hear what you think. And hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast? Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce to bring you free information. So in order for me to be able to continue doing that we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly a K Hill. That's c h i ll I would greatly greatly appreciate your support. I truly appreciate you so much. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.

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