Email Marketing 101 for Local Health Pros with Kate Matheson [Episode 124]

Molly: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Holistic Marketing Simplified Podcast. Today's episode is, it's an encore, so my friend Kate Matheson, I've actually had her on twice already, now she's on a third time. Her past episodes were some of my top downloaded ever, and today's episode we're gonna be talking about email marketing, and I really feel like it's like email marketing 1 0 1.

I hear so many people who say, oh, is an email marketing debt? Or like, I don't know. It's, I, I get a lot of pushback with email, but it is one of those things that is not, what you'll learn in this episode is like, it's not as time consuming as you think. We also talk about ideas for what things to put in your emails.

We talk about the tech, um, we talk about all of that kind of stuff. So. For those of you who don't know Kate Matheson, she is a business coach for health and wellness practitioners. She's also a clinic owner. Her husband is a chiropractor in Canada, and she's just like a serial entrepreneur. She's built six businesses over the past 13 years.

She has a program that's super amazing called Booked Up Blueprint. I've, we've shared a lot of mutual, um, students who really like her program. She also does some one-on-one coaching on the side. She loves like, you know, home decor renovations, like a lot of times she'll, I'll talk to her, she's like, yeah, I'm, I'm like the lead on this renovation project, like I said, and right now they're in the middle of renovating their clinic and yeah, she's just really great about like helping you get the right foundations in place that you never learned in school, so you can snowball your growth in a way that gets you both busier.

Also in a way that's easier every month. So I just always love, like I said, we're just, she and I are just, I don't know. We just get along so great and I always love our conversations and I know you will take away a lot from this episode. So here we go.

Hey, welcome to Holistic Marketing Simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions. And you didn't go to school to learn how to be a. Full-time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day, every day.

So let's come hanging out while we chat. All things ease in your marketing and my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote should to a I get to more dream patients and clients. Yes, please. Hi, I am Dr. Tara Carlson, and I'm from Wiseta, Minnesota, and I listen to the Holistic Marketing Simplified podcast.

All right, Kate, I am so happy to have you back on the show. Our summer came late here in Cincinnati, like it was still chilly all through May. Yes. Well, I know you're Canadian, so it's probably still even colder. What is, is it like, I don't know, fa uh, Celsius, but

Kate: I don't know Fahrenheit so much, but it's, it's, it's warm.

It's hot. I'm, I'm in sleeveless. I'm like, okay, you don't see my neck unless it's getting warm. So it's pretty warm.

Molly: Yeah. Well, I'm sitting outside the cicadas out here. Do you have cicadas up there? I'm like, like you live like you.

Which apparently our president thinks he's gonna buy you one day, which is just a 51st state

Kate: soon. Soon enough. Good

Molly: God, don't even get me started. Um, that's a whole nother topic for. Yeah. I'm so happy to have you back. Did you know that your last episode was one of my top downloaded episodes?

Kate: No, but that makes me so pleased.

I love

Molly: being a part of your world. Same Z. So we were just chatting for 27 minutes.

Kate: We should probably, we

Molly: gotta hit record. What was it? We did a walk and talk a couple months ago and we talked for like an hour and a half.

Kate: Yes. And, and honestly, Molly, like, I'm so grateful for you. You are very bubbly and outgoing and you're so great and, and you know, you bring people onto your podcast, you're chatting with others.

I don't really. Network that much we'll say, and you are like a true friend and we refer back and forth and we collaborate and like I am just so grateful for you and I love that you have this platform and I know so many people love you as well.

Molly: Well, I feel the same about you. I'm always mentioning you on the show and then even your, you know, you shared the gift of Maria with me.

Kate's, um, an amazing, I don't, va is not the right word for Maria. No. She's, she's just like a freaking angel. I'm just like, who, who made you like how She's just so good at her job. And so, yeah, Kate, your amazing, amazing assistant with me and Maria, hope you hear this and we, we love you so much. I

Kate: know we fangirl over each other and over Maria, but truly I just asked her to like sort something out the other day and then she sent me this spreadsheet that was so good, and then I see how long it took her and I was like, how did you do this in like 25 minutes?

She's a machine. Yes, I agree.

Molly: Yeah. Maria, we love you. Shout out. See, and this just goes to show you, uh, go back to all, I think I have three episodes now where I've recorded about the importance of like delegating and outsourcing. So what we're gonna talk about today is actually email marketing. And I just wanna start off by saying again, this is something that you can, so.

So, so easily outsourced to someone else. It does not ha I mean, it can be you, right? Like if you want, but my litmus test is always if I have something in my to-do list and it keeps getting moved to the next list and the next list and the next list, I'm like, huh, if I'd hired somebody for 35, done an hour, it would've been, you know, would've been done.

My fun

Kate: email marketing is also something that's like, doesn't have to be. On a to do list as often as we think I, I find so it's just such a great marketing tool for practitioners.

Molly: It is, and I, like I said, I know it kind of seems like this thing I get, I'm sure if you see this in your audience, Kate, where people are like, oh, email, I thought email was dead.

I'm like, oh, you are grossly misinformed because you haven't posted on Instagram in like. Years

Kate: since like September 20, 23, right before I went on mat leave. And honestly, for me, I, I love it, but my email community is like. Still alive and well and I, it's, it's like I literally think of it as my community and I kind of encourage, you know, the people that I work with to shift away from the idea of newsletters towards this idea of community emails where you really feel like you're talking to someone versus like at someone, if that makes sense.

Molly: It does. 'cause you do sit, I read all your emails and I've actually started taking a page out of your book where. I'll add something in. Like for example, I just did a freebie swap email with someone a couple days ago and like I took a lot of her swipe copyright, but then I added it, well, Maria did, I didn't, Maria like drafted it and got it into my email program and then I just went in and added like my family and I just got back from six days in San Diego.

Like I added in like a story that kind of had like a seg into, into what the freebie was about. Yeah. So, yeah, so let's like, let's put a pin in the storytelling thing 'cause I don't wanna forget about that because you and I will, we'll go all over the place. But one other just like quick anecdote before we jump into this.

This is so timely. So I was just in San Diego, like I said, for six nights and seven days. I did not post on Instagram at all. I did post like one story just 'cause I was so, I was so present that I looked, I was just curious. And so I checked my screen time on my phone and it was like 24 minutes a day at average, which is like nothing.

I think that's all I posted was like, I'm alive, I'm here. You know, like, here's, but I still made three holistic marketing hub sales from emails. Uh, my Halle, my lead gen gal goes, no, you made five. I was like, did I, I thought it was three, but she's like, no, you made five. And all it was was 'cause it was my birthday while I was there.

And. I did a birthday flash sale last year. Love a birthday flash sale. So all I did was have Maria duplicate the email into this year. I changed a few things added on, like something relevant to this year. It took me maybe 30 minutes and then I ended up making. A couple thousand

Kate: dollars. I know. Isn't it amazing what happens when we just like put things out there?

It's actually so funny that I just was having a call with like someone we mutually know about a, a private one-on-one client and one of the things we're adding into his practice that he hasn't had yet is an email list. He has not been emailing his list. Because we were looking and I like to kind of like visually map up out practices and sort of like see the ecosystem and we were seeing that like all these things kind of had loose ends and as soon as you added in an email list, the funnel and flow of his like customer journey just.

Became so much more natural. And you know, he could be promoting his events, but then people could be joining his email list from coming to events and then they could be coming to and from working with him. And it just becomes like, I feel like this central hub of leads and clients and past clients and referral partners and it's just like, it is such a central core part, I think of most people, businesses.

And if you're not using it or using it fully as you see, you're leaving so much money on the table.

Molly: Well, I asked my coach. I was on a call with her the day before we left on the trip, so literally. We left on a Wednesday and this call was on a Tuesday morning and my birthday was on Thursday, so I was like,

Kate: happy belated, by the way.

Molly: Oh, thank you. Oh, Gemini. Yes. I know. That's why we get along school. I was like, am I crazy to try to throw together a flash sale in like a day? She's like, well, if you already have the emails from last year, like what? She's like, just do it. And I'm so glad she said that. 'cause yeah, made a couple grand. Yeah, so like why not?

So let's go back to the beginning for people. 'cause I find a lot of people are beginners. So Kate, for those of you listening, Kate works with a lot of the same people I do. We, we love our people who draw local audience. Kate has the little, very wide, you have a lot more like reiki. You have a lot of acupuncturists.

Yes. Um, I work with all kinds of hype, health and wellness practitioners. Really? Yes. But I would say, now, let's just start here. I feel like it's a little different with online coaches versus brick and mortar. When it comes to email, and so I would like to just kind of focus on more of like the brick and mortar, like local, yeah.

When I say brick and mortar, you might be, you might not have a physical space, but let's just say you draw a local, like you have a patient population or a client, whatever you call them. Practice. Yeah.

Kate: I would say versus being, like you said, like a coach or where you're building this like big online brand and big online community, email marketing is different, I would say.

Yeah, because I think

Molly: it's easier. Do you recommend people who have a draw, a local audience have some type of free like opt-in?

Kate: Depends It's, it's honestly not one of the first things I would start with, but I agree with time. It's certainly something that you can add if you're in a larger. Area. But I think from a conversion standpoint, it kind of depends what your, what your goals are.

It wouldn't really be what I would first start with if you're in like a smaller, medium sized town to create this like fancy lead magnet and, and email funnel. But if you're going to like lots of events or you go to a lot of community events and there's a, you have a way to grow that email list substantially, then yeah, I do think having something is kind of helpful, but it's not usually my first starting point.

Molly: I agree. And then also, okay, again, going back to like, let's just, let's, let's start at the very basic, like the very beginning. Mm-hmm. If you're already established, you've got your entire patient or client database.

Kate: Yeah. At least within the last two years for us in Canada, um, you can email people with implied they have implied consent to be emailed, marketing emails.

But if everyone on your e on your patient list has like expressly consented to email, then yeah. You can send away.

Molly: Well, yeah, and what I found, um, somebody I was working with here locally, they sent a few emails out like, this is your chance to opt out. Basically. Like, yes. Yeah. Like, so it just makes it easy to opt out.

Like I said, you. Don't take this as the legal advice from me. Yeah. Look up your own, where you live. Look up your own Yes. Legal guidelines. And I know a lot of practitioners just have it built into their, um, intake paperwork as well. That's the ideal.

Kate: Yes. Especially if you have the, I I always tell my clients to adjust that language of like.

Don't ask them if they wanna receive marketing emails, everyone's gonna say no. Yeah. But you wanna start to think about what are you giving them in those emails and is the style and the approach of those emails and adjust that language to, to suit. So I think right now ours is something along the lines of like, would you like to receive additional ongoing support via email to help you, like, maintain your results long term or something like that.

Um, and we get. Probably like around 65% of people opting in, which I think is quite good for your intake form's. Never gonna be everyone. No, that's great.

Molly: And I, like I said, I'm not a lawyer. Do not say, Molly told me to email, but I. I get emails from almost everybody I've worked with here, and I've never been like, I didn't think, I didn't say you could email me, because I'm like, oh, well I'm a patient there.

So like of course you're email, like I didn't think anything of it.

Kate: Yeah, and again, I think technically it's similar in the states that there's implied consent if you've been working with someone, but I do generally also find. People are not gonna go crazy if you send an email, especially if it's like your first one and you do something at the bottom that just says, you know, if you're not interested in receiving these emails, like, please feel free to opt out or whatever.

Yeah. People know how to unsubscribe from emails these days. Yeah.

Molly: Not, it's not a, not a big thing. Yeah. Um, okay, so then now let's go on to another basic. Let's talk about software.

Kate: Yeah. So for me, I just like easy integration. So I like to look at like, what booking platform are you using? And choose one that integrates with it as much as possible.

But my favorite, I, I like ConvertKit or now it's called Kit if you use something that integrates with it. But I do have a lot of Jane users and unfortunately for my Jane users, MailChimp. Yeah, it's only MailChimp. I mean, we use MailChimp in our practice and there's still a ton you can do with it, but you know, unless you wanna get into the lot of like the Zapier, Zapier, I dunno how to pronounce it, but like a lot of these different zaps and and integrations, I like to choose whatever your option is that integrates with your.

Booking platform. Um, so what, I don't know, what do you think about that?

Molly: Well, what we do for our, in, so we offer email marketing as an add-on service for our Instagram management clients. We don't offer it. Like, you couldn't hire us just to do your emails. Maybe you could, I don't know. Maybe I'll think about it, but it it, here's why I've been hesitant to do that.

I, I had, I had an old client come to me and she's like, Hey, um, this person's charging us. It was like a pretty significant amount of money. Mm-hmm. Just to send out one weekly newsletter. I could see why the person was charging that amount. Because if all I was doing for you is your emails, I've still gotta do the same amount of work of gathering information to you to create the content from scratch.

Yeah. Yes. So when we're already doing their Instagram, we send them a form every month of like, where they give us, they give us one case study and they give us one local business to highlight and they give us events or like anything time sensitive. I say we send that to all our clients. We usually only get it back from about 40%, but the other 60%, they just are like, trust us.

And some of them, some clients we literally haven't heard from in like forever. They're like, whatever. Just we know your best. It's funny. They're like, it's

Kate: better than what we would put out. Yeah. Right,

Molly: right. So we already have that information from them and we already know like what's performing well on their Instagram.

Yeah. We can, we use email a lot to drive traffic to try, because one of the best things you can do for your Instagram is actually to have your, your current patients or clients following you and engaging. That's a huge overlook step actually, if you go to molly kay hill com Yeah, if you go to molly kay hill.com/email I think is the pretty link.

Um, I have some like email scripts that you can send to your, I would love that. Like, Hey, are you following us on Instagram? Like it can't just be that generic because no one's gonna open that. But anyway, I've got some scripts. But so what we do for most of our people, if they don't have existing software or a platform that they're using.

We signed them up with flow desks. Have you used flow desks much with, I was gonna

Kate: say

Molly: I have clients

Kate: who've used it, but I haven't used it.

Molly: I love flow desks only because, well, two reasons. One, it's very affordable, so it's only, mm-hmm. Like if you use literally anyone's affiliate link, I have one. But so does everybody else and their brother.

If you use my affiliate link, you get it for $19 a month, no matter how big your list is.

Kate: Oh, that's sweet.

Molly: Yeah. Which again, then again, there's like MailChimp. I know. It's like free up until like 500 or something.

Kate: It, yeah. But like I find if you're gonna do any automation or I think even now MailChimp has taken your away your ability to schedule on a free software.

Oh, that's sucks. So, but, but yeah. But MailChimp and ConvertKit are both very inexpensive, like around that price range I find for. The amount of subscribers I find a lot of practices have. That's good. Usually we have one under 500.

Molly: Okay. We have one client on Convert or kit, whatever. I was like, what does this kit think?

I kept saying, your Kajabi page. And she's like, what are you talking about? I don't have Kajabi. And I'm like, yeah, and I, 'cause I was seeing the K and I was like, yeah. Oh, they changed the name, uh, flow desks. The other reason I like it is because it's just so easy to use. Like, because there aren't a lot of extra features and buttons.

I find that to be very user friendly. I like

Kate: that too. MailChimp not so much like I love that ConvertKit, you can do visual automations. I'm just so visual that I love seeing, you know, where things flow and I find it super user friendly. I used to use, uh, AWeber for years too, and I just find this, this is so much

Molly: better.

We had a client that used AWeber. Yeah, very um. Yeah, like I was using like, um, what was that first operating system we had as teenagers? Uh, prodigy. Do you remember Prodigy that, or what was that? That was a.

Kate: It felt

Molly: very like blinking cursor to me.

Kate: Exactly. Exactly. So, and MailChimp, it's not so super user friendly, but it's honestly, if you want to, if you're pretty much gonna be growing your email list through your patient base and you're using Jane and you don't wanna be updating it manually.

It's not the worst to use MailChimp. Yeah. I think you'll still be able to do what you wanna do.

Molly: Yeah. And what we do for our clients, because we typically, we either just do one email a month, or some clients get two emails a month. Yeah. We're not doing like patient welcome series or anything like that.

And what our clients do is they just send us a CSV file at the end of the month. It's not fancy, you know, it's not zapping. It's not, no.

Kate: Well, if you're only sending one a month, as long as your email's updated before the next email. Yeah. And you, I, I like to do a few sort of backend automations for maintenance visits and reinvigoration.

And so I like people to be in there in a timely way. But if you don't have that set up and you're really just starting with the emails, like yeah, you can manually do it right before you send the email. And it's super easy. You just download.

Molly: Yeah, it won't, yeah, it won't duplicate. Like you just go to your, yeah.

CHR. You download your list and you upload it, and it's really not hard. And it won't, it's not gonna like send it twice if you have someone's email in the, 'cause I had someone ask me that once. I'm like, Nope. It'll, it's smart enough to know these

Kate: softwares now.

Molly: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So let's actually just talk about, because there are a couple different things you can do, as you said, and I wanna point people to your email.

Email vault. Ah, yeah. Email vault. Yeah. Because you have all of this, you definitely can, you know, do like a new patient welcome a like, I love the reinvigoration, like you called it like. Rebooking campaigns to get people who haven't booked in a while. Those are definitely all things you could do. But for today's episode, we're just gonna keep it simple of like, I don't wanna do any automations, I don't wanna do a whole lot of tech.

I just wanna make sure my audience, my patient database hears for me

Kate: once a month is great. Once or twice a month, I think is a perfect cadence for like these practitioners that we're speaking to. You're. Patient base doesn't really want or need to hear from you weekly, I don't think.

Molly: Yeah. I mean, unless you're, I do have some practices that just have like a lot of events, like they do a lot of like that I could see being beneficial.

Yeah. But let's talk about the content of the emails. Mm-hmm. Because I had a chiropractor years ago who was pregnancy peds. But I was getting syndicated emails from her that were all about personal injury and whiplash. And it was just so bizarre because I was like, I think you bought the wrong content.

Yeah. So, yeah. So let's talk about if you're, if you're coaching a, a client and they're like, what would I even say?

Kate: And it's funny because I do have a lot of clients who like that, they have like a few different niches and they're like, do I need to segment them all and only send them certain stuff? I'm like, you can, but like if you're just getting started, you don't have to always do such topical content.

I think we're always really tied to the idea of very. Oh, I do pediatrics. Well then I have to do something about ear aches and allergies and colic and whatever. Like it doesn't always have to be super topical content. I mean, sometimes, but what I always like is like, let the mantra live in your head of like, how do I help my clients get and maintain their results?

And I like to use even my own email community. I always think like, okay, how do I help support this community outside of their one-on-one time with me? And sometimes that's by learning topical stuff, but a lot of times it's repositioning their mindsets or giving little motivational pep talks or some of the more like umbrella content that's still super valuable but can apply no matter what, you know, niche you're speaking to.

Um, you know, I think we all sometimes need. To like, get our heads on straight or learn a little something that we have been doing maybe wrong or like a misconception that might be holding us back. Or, um, even just learning about like a win that's happened in practice that someone can be like, oh my gosh, okay, I'm so motivated to rebook.

I've been needing to rebook. Like, let me get into it. And it didn't have to talk about, you know, like teach on a specific topic. Um, so I. That type of content, even social content. I love the stuff that is sort of mindset shifting, but I also, you were saying like you, like in my emails I always give a little update.

I personally think like an email kind of needs three things and that is like that personal taste. That's the first one. Like why people watch reality tv. Right? We just like love to get a little behind the scenes sneak peek, that little taste. I don't know. We just inherently love. That's why, you know, when we were talking before this call and you were like, oh, that podcast, I was just chit-chatting.

I don't know, people probably loved hearing from you anyway. 'cause they just want their little molly taste and so their little hit. So I like to always have the little like personal, you know, piece to it. Some value, whether it's like very actionable and topical, great. Whether it's more mindset based or pep talk style, that's great too.

And then I always like to give them their next step, right? Mm-hmm. If this resonated, if this got you going, if this taught you something, here's the next step, right? How do I. Support people outside their one-on-one time. I give them the next step, which might be booking a call with you, rebooking, finding me on social, coming to this event, whatever it might be, looking up this product that I just said I'm using and loving.

Um, so I love to give them a call to action, but really just their next step. And I find that that rounds out an email nicely, whether you do it once a month, once a week, whatever the flow is, is similar. I don't know. How do you feel about emails? You write them for a lot more people than I do. Well,

Molly: I think everything you just said was great.

And what you said about the personal piece, that's the most important thing. Because you wanted to be like, oh, Kate is sending me this email. Like this was not spit out by, I mean, and both of us use ai, I am sure. But that can be your base or like your, all your templates you have in your email vault, like Yeah, that can be the base.

And that way you're not starting at blank. Right. Talking about the blinking cursor, you're not starting at a blank screen. Yes. But then you weave in, like I said, you just weave in like a little anecdote and I can hear people being like, oh, my life's not interesting. I mean, nobody, neither

Kate: is mine. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I work from home people and I have an 18 month old. Yeah. I mean, your little

Molly: anecdotes will usually be like, Mac just started back at daycare and it's been really frustrating because he's been out sick this many, you know, and it's like, ugh. You know what I mean? Like people are like Yes. Like they see that it's like two sentences.

It's not like it has to be some Yes.

Kate: Oh, it's not a big story.

Molly: Yeah. Some like Shakespearean. Uh,

Kate: yeah. Yes. So I have a client right now and I read her email. She sends one monthly and she does a really good job. She does send it like newsletter style where there's different sections to it, almost. She always starts with like a personal intro and she was giving like a little recap on her recent trip and some of the personal reflections that came from it, and I think that that is such a nice way even you don't have to talk about things happening in your life.

You can just talk about things going on in your mind and your heart or your practice. And those are plenty. Those are never ending for all of us, I'm sure. If you feel comfortable sharing.

Molly: I even think something that just randomly popped in my head, so I'm gonna say it is like talking about how you as the practitioner take care of yourself.

People would eat that up. Like I've been to practitioners before who don't. For example, I've been to chiropractors who don't get adjusted themselves. Just one time and I was like, I stopped going because I was like, I, you've lost my trust. Like, yeah, because why would you like, she was like, oh, I just get too busy.

I'm like, so your patients are making time to be here?

Kate: Yeah. And you're telling them to

Molly: prioritize themselves? Yeah. They're busy too. So I could even think about things of like, hey, like a little anecdote about, I found myself, you know, getting into the summer and starting to get stressed and burnout. And then I had, you know, realized that dah, dah, dah.

And then I went and had, like, for example, one of my clients, she's like, oh, I just had to go have some energy work done. 'cause I could tell like I wasn't, it's just like talking about little stories like that are so.

Kate: And it, it shows that you're walking the walk, right? Yeah. And, and that's why we talk, you know, I'll talk about what's going on in our practice.

Yes. Show I can share the information and provide a real life example, but also so that you can see sort of aspirationally what's happening. And also just see the behind the scenes of my life. Yes. I love that because it kind of, it, it's like a great segue into all the pieces and so actually like often what I do, I'm a big like voice note, so I'll often.

Voice note out, like my idea or again, the topic and I just talk it out. I trans have it transcribed into an email. Um, and then I add the story after. I'm like, and, and when I think of the story, I'm like, what's the context around this? Why was I thinking about this? Why did this idea come to me? And that's usually where the little bite-sized story comes from.

And then boom and like. 15 minutes, you've added, you've got your value, you've got your little personal reflection. You add a call to action and like, this is how I use chat. BT is then to say like, here's my transcription and here's my story, or here's my email. Like, tidy it up for me. Do not, and I always say, do not take any of my words or voice out, but that's just me.

Some people might want chat BDS words, but I usually say, do not take any of my wording out. Just clean it up. And then boom, I send it off. Yeah.

Molly: And you do have to tell it that I made that mistake. I was working on this big project and I went and looked at my final thing and I was like, wait, where's everything?

I said, yeah,

Kate: I wanted that. I'm like, you don't say it better than me.

Molly: Yeah, no, I wanted that. I, I typed that in specifically for a reason. Chat. The other thing I was gonna say too is like, even if you're thinking about, you kind of mentioned this, like little case studies or anecdotes from practice. Even if it's just, okay.

Say you helped somebody with, like, I just had a client who had this really amazing case study on Bell's Palsy for one of her patients. I'm like, people can say Bell's Palsy is pretty, I would say rare. I don't know the percentage. Yeah. But still people are smart enough to take that and be like, oh, I wonder if

Kate: mm-hmm.

Molly: You could help with blah, blah, blah, and I haven't been on the schedule in a long time and I need to rebook. Yeah. Like people can make that leap. And then the other thing I was gonna say is like just local things to do around town.

Kate: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I love, and that's why I was saying, you know, links like you don't always have to have your call to action be something about you.

It can be a link to a product or a service or a local business or a local event or something like that, that I find that also kind of has the personal taste, but just, it's just like not about your own practice. Um, yeah. I love that. Sometimes people think like, oh, when I'm telling them not newsletter style, that they can't break it into sections to have like a things I'm loving section or a, you know, upcoming event section.

No, I think if you're doing one email, having a few sections is, is cool. We just want the voice, right. We just want you to be in there like you're having a conversation and talking to someone and not like, well. Gt just like, yeah.

Molly: I do think having, um, sections is like a super easy way to get started because it gives you, it takes out that decision fatigue and like, it's like, okay, I know every email's gonna follow one little personal anecdote, and then I'm gonna have a patient spotlight, and then I'm gonna have a product spotlight, and then I'm gonna have a local spotlight or like, you know, or like an event or something time sensitive.

One, uh, thing I did wanna talk about before we wrap up is formatting though, because I've had a couple clients who've come to me. I do these, like, you know, pick my brain calls and they're like, I'm like, Ooh, all your emails are ending up in promotions or spam. Because a lot of spending especially, yeah, especially flow desks, which like I said, I just recommended it, but some of flow desks, templates, I'm like, do not use that because it'll be like a giant image.

And your email? It's supposed to be, what is it, like 75% text or something? Is like the,

Kate: yeah, I, I, if any of you follow my emails, I have basically like no formatting. Like I have no header. I'll maybe put one or two, one image in, or like a gif or give whatever you say. Um, maybe, but I tend to keep mine, but I'm sending an email a week, so my emails are more like one thought, one idea.

I find keeping them, oh. It's not coming to me off the top of my head, but maybe we can put it in your show notes. There's a link that you can put your, you can basically send a test email to and it will tell you, this is good. This is too spammy. This is, and it's free. Can't think of it off the top of my head.

I've got mom brain right now. I

Molly: think it's like literally you could probably Google like spam email something.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple. So yeah, we can put those links because I don't do it every time now, but sometimes if I'm like, Ooh, is this email too like salesy? I'll throw it in and, and it is fine.

It shows up. But yes, do not make your my mom, so my, I love my mom, and then she will never be listening to this, but she has a business and I've been getting her into email marketing because I know she'll thrive in it. But she sends the whole email as like an image. And I was like, some people won't even be able to see that depending on their browser or if they're like, how they're looking at it.

So yeah, I think simpler the better and just talk to someone like you would in clinic.

Molly: And um, like I said, you don't want this giant header. Think about, um, in newspaper speak, like they call it above the fold, right? So when someone opens your email on their phone, if all they're seeing is a giant image of your logo.

They're likely a, it's gonna take a long time to load it. Probably's gonna end up in spam and they're not gonna read it.

Kate: So, yeah, and, and I don't visually mind, you know, a little header, but I don't have one. I'm like, to me, the benefits of just getting into more people's inboxes versus ending up in spam outweigh the like visual benefit of maybe having a little header.

So that's just me personally,

Molly: a hundred percent. I only have a little one from my podcast emails because. I like copied Amy Porterfield's from a couple years ago because I liked it, but for my regular emails, I don't have one. Let's talk about subject lines really quickly too, because I can just see, I have so many people, no one's opening my emails and I'm like, well, it says June newsletter.

Kate: Oh my gosh.

Molly: I'm not opening your June newsletter. And no matter how much I love you,

Kate: that's like saying Happy Friday on Instagram. Yeah. You know, on your Instagram post. Yeah. You need a bit of a hook. I think you also need to experiment because every audience is gonna be a little different in terms of what they open.

I've learned what works with mine and it's sometimes less. Cookie than what other audiences nice might like, but it definitely needs to capture people. It can't just be, this is the same thing with with Instagram, right? It can't just be the title, what is acupuncture? Mm-hmm. Everyone knows and no one cares, so it needs to be like something that's going get people excited to open the email.

BT is also great for this. I also give a ton of subject line ideas in the email vault, or you're probably subscribed to other newsletters. See what gets you opening emails. Yeah. Yeah. And use a similar formula. And I ab test pretty much every subject line I send. I don't know if you do. Oh, do

Molly: I? I don't. I don't.

But I, that's actually a great idea. I, I was just thinking about, you know, in the beginning I was saying we use email to get people, current patients and clients to follow our clients on Instagram. Mm-hmm. So instead of the subject line being like, are you following us on Instagram? I'm not opening that because I'm assuming that.

The whole email, it's you telling me to follow you. So I'm like, okay. So what we'll do instead is like, for example, for one client, we were like, Dr. Davis went viral. Like that's what we put in the subject line. Yeah. And it got spelled and people wanna

Kate: know like,

Molly: yes. What does the, because she did, it was like 4.2 million views.

It was a great reel. And so we're like, oh my gosh, have you seen this reel? Like, come check it out. And then, you know. Mm-hmm. Another one we've done is like, we did a, it was like the, the reel was like a funny audio about like. Do you wanna know what's happening in the world? And it's like this woman going, uh, I don't, and so the real was like, crunchy mom, things I don't bother myself with.

And like everybody weighed in of like, I still drink diet coke or like, I don't care about EMFs. And so the subject line was like, what Crunchy mom thing. Don't you do? Or something like that? Like mm-hmm. I, I don't remember. It wasn't like follow us on Instagram.

Kate: Exactly. And I mean, even the call to action inside your email wasn't necessarily that.

It was just like, this is a hilarious thing. Come check it out. It happens to be on Instagram. And then like, yeah, come

Molly: way in. We were like, come way in. We'd love to hear your opinion. Yeah. So also, just one more thing about subject lines I wanna say though is even if, even if somebody doesn't open it.

They're still seeing you and being, you're being brought to the top of their mind and you're like, oh, I need to book that appointment.

Kate: Yeah. Especially I find if you, if the most, most of your email lists are clients and patients, that's especially true. Right? It's just that ping in their mind. Um, which I find for the bulk of practitioners, that's who's gonna be on your email list for the most part.

And so yeah, you're ping in their mind and then they think, oh, I need to do that exercise that I haven't been doing, or, oh, I should rebook back in. But yeah, and actually the, the subject lines I find that work best for, for me are ones that are kind of more genuine, like almost what you might get if you, if someone was like sending you a one-on-one email.

Like there, there's some, I, this is why I usually ab test, I'll test like a more hook style one that might be like. I can't even think of one right now. And then I'll do another of like, checking in and then I'll put their like name. Yeah. And so it, it's like, it feels almost like a personal one-on-one email.

I find that works really, really well. Yeah.

Molly: I like putting the first name qualifier in the subject line a lot. 'cause sometimes I'll do like Kate's Instagram or like something and people open it. They're like, oh, what? You know Exactly.

Kate: They think it's like an email for them. Yeah. Which, you know, it is. I I was intentionally trying to speak to you.

Yeah. I can

Molly: almost see it being like Kate. Care plan, or I dunno, like Kate's allergies, you know, it's like, yeah. If that's, you know, people will open that. But my audience is gonna laugh at this. I've gotta go, because I'm gonna be late for my own AC appointment.

Kate: I'm gonna

Molly: be like, I think we're gonna, we've

Kate: gone over

Molly: it.

I, I know. I'm still, I'm good. I'm, I've got like two minutes, but I want you to, he, I want you to tell people about your email vault because I feel like it's a no brainer. It's such a good price. And, um, also if you wanna chat about book at Blueprint, you can do that too.

Kate: Well, I, I think the email vault, it's, it's honestly like one of my favorite things I've ever created.

It's over 90 email templates. They're literally taken from our practice from, they're proven email templates. Some of them have made us hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not now, like seven figures in my business and beyond, and that I've used for like probably. Close to a decade.

So I find they're beneficial for everyone. You can plug and play them. Whether you're emailing your list like this, there's like over a year's worth, or you wanna send a reinvigoration email or a follow up email, or you want someone to pay their outstanding balance and you don't know what to say, or you wanna do a price increase and you don't know what to say.

They're all in there. Ask for referrals, reviews, get on podcasts, all the things. Um, so I think it's no brainer and as like a little treat for everyone on Molly's listening to Molly's podcast, it's half off. So instead of 97, it's $47. I can leave the link for, I. Molly's listings.

Molly: 47. Do go buy her. Yeah. We'll

Kate: put the link in this phone.

Yeah. This is why I'm like, honestly, I've had now thousands of people buy this and I constantly am hearing like, oh, I sent this email and I got a few like, um, review Google reviews from it. Amazing. I'm like, yeah, because all it takes is just like sending just the right email doesn't have to be fancy. And now I'm giving you all the words and I truly want like every single practitioner to have this 'cause there's no reason not to.

I'll, uh,

Molly: yeah, we'll put it in the show notes for everybody. Mm-hmm. But yeah, get and get on Kate's email list too. Like you're just, like I said, I love your emails and thanks. Um, yeah, she also has a, I love writing program called Booked Up Blueprint, which is just like such a good, like well booked up. It's how you get booked up.

Kate: Indeed.

Molly: Thank you so much for your time today. Oh.

Kate: I know. Me too, Molly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you do and just being like such a light in this community of you're so genuine. Oh, I dunno if you can hear my dogs, but that's my cue.

Molly: Yeah, we both gotta go. I'm like, I'm, I'm gonna be late. Okay.

Thanks Kate.

Kate: Okay, bye.

Molly: Thank you for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified, 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.

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I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.