Email marketing can be a powerful tool for chiropractors to grow their practice and better serve existing patients. However, it’s important to avoid some common mistakes that can turn patients off.
This article provides 11 tips to ensure your email marketing efforts are professional, helpful, and effective. With some planning, strategic thinking, and efficient email marketing tools, you can use emails to educate patients, improve health outcomes, and fill appointment slots during slow periods.Â
Why Chiropractors Should Use Email Marketing
Email marketing delivers an impressive return on investment for chiropractors. Studies show that for every $1 spent on emails, chiropractors earn an average of $42. That’s a 4,200% return!
Beyond the financial benefits, email marketing offers numerous advantages that can directly support chiropractic practices.
- Educate patients on posture, stretches, exercises, and other healthy habits through email newsletters, guides, or video content. This builds trust and positions you as a valuable health resource.
- Send appointment reminders to reduce no-shows, filling otherwise wasted slots. This efficiency allows you to serve up to 20% more patients.
- Promote new services or patient incentive programs to fill slow weeks. Emails give you an easy, direct line to every patient.
- Build meaningful, long-term patient relationships by sharing health tips and inspiring wellness success stories.
As you can see, the importance of email marketing for chiropractors cannot be overstated. With strategic messaging and segmentation, emails allow chiropractors an unparalleled opportunity to boost revenue while also better serving the health needs of more patients. The effort pays major dividends for your practice and your community.
1. Collect Client Emails at Consultations
The first step for effective email marketing is gathering patient emails, starting from their very first visit. When meeting new patients, have intake forms that request their email and permission for communications. Set the expectation early that you send useful health information via email.
Don’t let patients leave this form blank. Briefly explain how you hope to share tips related to their health goals and recovery plan. Provide a small incentive, like a complimentary 30-minute massage, for them to fill it out on the spot. Capture this data right when you have patients’ full attention, during the initial exam.
Later when your office follows up by email, patients recognize you as the helpful chiropractor who cared right from the start. The personal connection leads to higher open and click-through rates down the road. Consistently gather emails to grow your subscriber list with each new consultation.
2. Segment Lists by Health Concerns
Once you’ve compiled a list of patient emails, you need to sort subscribers into segments by their health concerns and goals. Avoid blasting the same message out to your entire list. This comes across as spammy, irrelevant, and impersonal.
Instead, categorize patients dealing with back pain in one group, those recovering from injuries in another, and folks hoping to improve posture, flexibility, or strength into targeted segments. Some automation tools make organizing simple, or you can manually sort Excel lists based on intake questionnaire responses.
Highly tailored and personalized emails speak to patients’ actual interests and needs. For example, share lower back exercise videos with subscribers combating lumbar pain to offer actionable support.
Segmentation ensures relevancy so more patients open, read, and apply your guidance – and as the graph below shows, it also comes with a wealth of additional benefits, as well:
3. Send Relevant Health and Wellness Tips
Now that you’ve segmented your subscriber list based on health conditions, tap into those categories to deliver ultra-relevant advice. Create a content calendar mixing general wellness tips with condition-specific recommendations.
For patients dealing with headaches, share yoga videos demonstrating neck stretches to relieve tension. For weekend warriors recovering from a sports injury, explain the RICE method for caring for strains and sprains. Include bite-sized tips like icing for 20 minutes or contrast baths to reduce inflammation.
By providing targeted solutions aligned with what patients want help with, your emails act as a valued wellness resource versus a sales funnel. Useful health insights distributed at strategic times encourage more subscribers to open and read while improving their lifestyle habits.
4. Promote Office Hours and Availability
Another smart email strategy is promoting office hours and availability to fill last-minute openings. Track your patient visits by day of the week and send a monthly email if certain days consistently have openings.
For example, if Tuesdays and Fridays are slower, email subscribers at the start of the week and invite them to schedule appointments on those days. Consider offering 15% off treatments that are booked less than 48 hours in advance during slow weeks.
Driving last-minute appointments allows you to operate at full capacity rather than losing revenue on predictably slow days. Patients appreciate treatment discounts and the flexibility of quickly booking appointments. Filling your schedule while saving patients money is a proven win-win.
5. Highlight New Treatment Options
Email also serves as the ideal channel for showcasing new treatment options and services at your chiropractic office. Did you just hire a massage therapist or expand equipment offerings for muscle stimulation and decompression? Tell patients all about these offerings in dedicated email announcements.
Clearly explain any therapeutic benefits of new services while outlining what patients can expect during these appointments. Share brief bios and headshots of new health team members so patients feel comfortable working with new practitioners right away.
Driving excitement around additional services increases your conversion rate and gets more patients in your doors instead of them seeking care elsewhere. Email is the most direct way to broadcast major practice updates to your entire subscriber list instantly. Take advantage by spotlighting new tools for improving community health.
6. Spotlight Seasonal Self-Care Advice
Tap into the unique health considerations posed by seasonal changes and holidays to share targeted advice and self-care reminders. In quarterly emails, recommend stretches to relieve body aches during damp, cold winters or hydration tips to beat the heat in summer.
In the fall, advise safe stretches before popular seasonal activities like raking leaves or apple picking to prevent strains. Around holidays, send motivational messages on maintaining healthy habits during indulgent times with thought-starters for modifying recipes or managing portions of rich, heavier comfort foods.
Seasonal outreach establishes your role as a caring health counselor versus a transactional service provider. Patients feel seen and supported through emails delivering timely assistance navigating yearly lifestyle shifts – deepening loyalty even outside visits.
7. Share Food Recipes for Health
Reduce patient pain levels by educating them on inflammation-fighting foods and recipes perfect for various health conditions. If subscribers deal with joint issues or arthritis, share lists of anti-inflammatory items like fatty fish, tart cherries, or turmeric. Give easy recipe ideas to help them incorporate these healing ingredients.
For patients recovering from repetitive stress injuries or dealing with consistent headaches, provide recommendations on foods to limit like refined sugars, processed carbs, and even caffeine. Outline better snack swaps like antioxidant-rich dark chocolate instead of inflammatory chips or sugary candy bars.
Arming patients with nutritional know-how relevant to their needs not only helps accelerate healing but also shows you’re dedicated to their total well-being. Tying dietary changes to health conditions packs an inspirational, empowering punch.
8. Reward Client Loyalty
Loyalty programs promoted through email marketing creative yet another way to show patient appreciation while incentivizing repeat visits. Consider launching a simple points system where completed appointments earn credits towards future discounts.
On a patient’s half birthday with your practice, send a special coupon for 20% off their next massage or cryotherapy session. After a set number of points, they can redeem awards like free 30-minute follow-up consultations.
Reward flyers, birthday ecards, and patient referrals communicated via email make subscribers feel valued for choosing your services.
Here is an example of a loyalty program email designed to drive better customer engagement:
Loyalty incentives sprinkled consistently throughout the year encourage patients to stick with your practice while referring friends for perks. Gratitude fuels retention.
9. Automate Appointment Reminders
Appointment no-shows drain potential revenue while wasting valuable appointment slots. Combat forgetful patients and last-minute cancellations with automated email and text reminders.
Most medical practice software or marketing platforms allow configuring confirmation
messages that fire off a set number of days before each booking. Go beyond a single alert by scheduling reminders to deploy the week off, a day before, and even hours before patient visits.
Studies show appointment reminders decrease no-shows by up to 50% allowing you to recoup income while serving waitlisted patients. Automated confirmations require no additional effort while ensuring more subscribers show up to obtain the hands-on care they want from your office. Never lose income to an empty adjustment room again.
10. Retarget Previous Website Visitors
Expand your email outreach beyond existing patients by retargeting visitors who’ve browsed your website yet never booked. Install a simple tracking pixel on key website pages to monitor anonymous traffic and create custom audiences of visitors interested in specific services.
For example, if a visitor reads articles about spinal decompression therapy for golfers suffering from chronic back pain, but never ends up scheduling a consultation, you have a prime candidate for an email campaign to nurture them
Segment these golfers into a targeted email list and craft messaging specifically speaking to their problems as fellow golf enthusiasts. Share testimonials of other golfers finding lasting relief from nagging back pain through a customized treatment plan of spinal decompression therapy.
Outline how regular sessions can help strengthen core muscles and reduce inflammation for long-term solutions.
Nurturing high-intent website visitors through hyper-personalized email sequences keeps your practice top of mind for those already seeking help for their issues online. Tailored follow-up reminders subtly demonstrate how your proven care directly addresses the precise pain points initially bringing visitors to your website.
This thoughtful, high-value outreach ultimately builds familiarity and trust to incentivize golfers and other website visitors to schedule their first appointment. Meet visitors where they are in their buyer’s journey instead of going cold when sales intent is hot.
11. Track Email Open and Click Rates
Finally, properly tracking email marketing performance allows continually refine your outreach for better response over time. Monitoring metrics like open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates informs future content planning and list segmentation.
See which subject lines or health topics resonate best with patients by noting engagement levels in your email software reports. If headache advice goes ignored but back pain videos thrive, adjust your editorial calendar accordingly. Closely watch unsubscribe requests too – if certain groups ditch your emails, modify message topics or cadence for greater relevancy.
Set goals around industry benchmarks for chiropractic practices, then implement lessons from each campaign. Incremental tweaks improving open rates by merely 5% quickly multiply into thousands in extra revenue yearly. Email success floats on strategy but also depends on vigilantly learning from subscriber signals. Listen closely.
Email marketing presents chiropractors with an unrivaled opportunity to boost practice growth and better serve more patients.
By capturing emails early and then crafting relevant, valuable messaging, chiropractors educate and empower communities on the path to improved wellness. Segment audiences, showcase new services, promote office availability, and automate nudges – small efforts drive major loyalty, retention, and referrals over time. Follow these 11 email best practices to profitably strengthen your patient relationships.