When asked what his biggest regret in business was, genius-entrepreneur and I Will Teach You to be Rich best-selling author Ramit Sethi answered that it was “not creating an email list sooner.”
If you ever want to private-label or formulate your own herbal products/supplements (and tell your patients about it), have a patient-appreciation party at your business, notify patients of upcoming vacation dates, and (most importantly) let patients know about seasonal tips/tricks to keep themselves healthy during every month of the year, an email list is essential.
As long as emails are not too excessive, they are a great way to keep your patients interested in you, amazed by your expertise, and just overall in their minds.
Derek Halpern of Social Triggers recently said he Facebooked and tweeted about an advanced course he was offering on how to market effectively. 300 people followed the link and read about it. When he emailed the link to his email list (even though his email list is smaller than how many followers he has for his Facebook and twitter accounts), 4,200 people clicked on the link.
People are used to tweets and Facebook promotions. Emails are much more powerful, as most people see way fewer emails per day than tweets/facebook wall posts!
Email lists are also just an overall great way to keep all your email addresses in one place!
I use AWeber for my email lists. I tried Mailchimp for a while and I wasn’t happy with it all that much. AWeber can send out “timed” posts called a follow-up series, that provides an automatic stream of emails to your list that you can space out however many days you’d like to. So no matter when someone joins your list, they’ll eventually get all the content you have to offer. Although Mailchimp is free and AWeber is paid, I LOVE AWeber and it’s totally worth it.
If you have a blog for your acupuncture site (which I highly recommend), or if you don’t, add opt-in forms to your webpage to join the list. Also, add email addresses that you obtain from your New Patient Forms for existing patients (but make sure you have their permission to add them to your list).
You will be targeting existing patients to come in more frequently (because they won’t forget about you if you send out emails with free tips about keeping themselves healthy), and potential patients to show off your expertise.
May you always have an abundance of expertise to share about this awesome medicine,
Laura