How a Newsletter Profits Your Practice

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of podiatry marketing. With me, as usual, as he does every week, I am joined by Big Jim Mac, DPM, who lives in Canada, but is an American podiatrist. How are doing, Jim?

I'm doing well. I am this, you know, American Canadian, a man of two countries, podiatrists who've worked in both places. But, yeah, no. Things are good here. It's getting into the wintertime in Montreal.

So ice skating, hockey, you know, all the stereotypical Canadian things are kind of in full force now.

Okay, Jim. What's today's topic?

Yeah. So today we're gonna jump into newsletters, specifically, you know, how newsletter can profit your practice. I think, you know, email newsletters and email marketing holds, you know, several advantages for podiatry clinics. We kinda compare them to other forms of marketing. You know, the effectiveness email marketing kinda depends largely on the kinda strategy and execution people are using.

You know, kinda get into some of the reasons why maybe some people, you know, kind of profit or fail from this. I think there's before we do that, there's kind of two main forms of email marketing.

Yeah.

Kind of you're kind of more HIPAA compliant or and you're more non HIPAA compliant, meaning that like you're not for non HIPAA compliant, you're kind of giving more kind of broadcasted messages or just kind of sending out information about your clinic. And then, you know, the the kind of HIPAA compliant things will sometimes tie into a diagnosis or treatment where you're doing things like patient recall emails. I know that's something you touch on every once in a while time.

Someone who's not from North America, explain what HIPAA compliant means.

Yeah. So HIPAA compliant means you're basically respecting the patient's wishes to kind of have their health information private. Right? So in The US, there's these regulations and laws that if you, you know, share information, medical information about a patient without their knowledge, without their permission, you can get big trouble. Right?

So you're not gonna, you know, kind of broadcast an email specifically to people without their permission, but also does not tie in specific types of emails to diagnosis or to treatments, you know, unless you have kind of a a secure database that is, you know, what they call HIPAA compliant. So that's work.

You have a patient over there that has a really manky looking foot and you take a photo of

it Mhmm.

You must get their permission to say, hey. Can I use your manky foot in an email or in some of my marketing? You've you've gotta get their permission first.

Yeah. It's also one of those things. It's more kinda like how secure the information about the medical information is. Right? You're not gonna you can't basically share, like, an email with a kind of a non secure if it ties any way into kind of any kind of diagnosis or treatment.

Right? So if you're kind of if you're using kind of a standard, you know, recall email system in The US that's not HIPAA compliant where there's maybe a potential where a diagnosis in the email can kinda cross over and can be identified as that patient, that's when you run into trouble. Right? You won't get in trouble just by sending your you know, people who have opted into your email list, you know, like an update about general things about the clinic, about procedures you provide, or maybe a review that was given, just kinda general information about your staff, you're not gonna get in trouble with that. But if you're really getting into drilling into you, you know, this person had plantar fasciitis.

This patient had a wound, and now they're getting very specific targeted information about those things. That's where it gets a little tricky when it comes to, you know, having a HIPAA compliant email provider or kind of a an e e you know, EMR, like an electronic medical record that, you know, is secure to make sure people can hack into that and get information about the patient without the permission.

Okay. Yeah. That seems fair enough. Okay. Let's get back on the newsletters.

I took you

No. No. That's all good.

Off track.

It's good to have that information for people that aren't inside The US. Sometimes I'm a bit North American centric and kinda broaden my view of what's going on there can be helpful. So

Oh, we we probably have similar we both we probably we have similar laws in Australia, and I'm sure The UK I'm sure every country does. It's just called something differently, and we we refer to it differently. So it's just to make people aware that if they hear that in future episodes or if they've heard it on the past one, they sort of know what we're talking about.

No. For sure. Yeah. The first reason to kinda do it is that doing email marketing or, you know, we're talking kind of like maybe more along the long long long lines of kind of a broadcast emails to really engage specific groups of people. You know, I think, you know, maybe if you're with much, much younger people, maybe email is not a thing for them.

But I think email for our age, maybe a little bit younger than us and a little bit older, is still in a way that people like to receive information. So, you know, when you're, you know, creating email, it's almost like a branding exercise. Right? It's what do you wanna do more of and basically kinda communicating to your specific patient demographic. So, you know, you can, you know, kind of have subsets of different types of people.

You know, maybe you have a a group groups by age, groups by activity. But, you know, maybe you're we're just really into sports medicine aspect of things. So making sure that whatever you're sending out is kind of on brand or really talking to your ideal patient. Right? If you happen to do a little bit of wound care but don't necessarily wanna do it, probably not a great idea to continue to pump out emails about that.

But, you know, it it can be helpful that if you're you're treating runners, there's an upcoming marathon having running specific content in your email will really help you kind of show specific types of demographic, your expertise, and kind of a very straightforward way as, you know, email most people you know, can receive emails. It can be a channel for most types of groups of people to really, you know, understand, you know, kind of engage with the content that you have and really kind of, you know, maybe even share some of this with with you know, forward it to to a colleague or to one of their exercise partners if that's kind of the demographic going after.

Yeah. What's interesting is like, I know you told me. An email marketing includes email newsletters, but not just email newsletters. It can be just an email blast. And I remember, you know, many years ago, we got this new covering material.

It was quite bright. It was different patchy sort of colors. I hadn't seen it before at the time. And we used to have a lot of triathletes come into our clinic, and they're they're they're a nutty group of people. So I said, let's tell all the triathletes that have patients, we've got this new material, why it's so fantastic.

I said, best part about it, I said, it looks really bizarre. They're gonna love it. So we did just an email blast of just our triathlete patients. And from that, we had five of them come in and just say, oh, can I get new orthotics made out of with we had a pile of people coming to get new colors, and then we end up being able to get that material as an actual orthotic EVA material as well? And we had five new pairs of orthotics only because it was a new swanky color that no one had seen before.

Yeah. But Just

just from an email.

Yeah. I know. Exactly. Just by putting in an email, you know, and kind of just creating that awareness that it exists. Some people want that thing.

Right? So I think that's a that's a great example. Another reason is that, you know, email marketing can be very cost effective. You know, the the tools, you know, are not that expensive. They're usually only a few hundred dollars at the at the most per month or not sorry.

Per month, but per year. You know, you're not talking to, like, a huge expense. And the most important thing is that you you own that list of people. Right? So if you've been collecting emails for five years, fifteen years, twenty years with the patient's permission, you know, I've I've talked with some clinics that have, you know, to 10,000 to 15,000 emails.

So that can be a huge, you know, really cost effective way to kind of where where you own that list of of people and those emails because you're gonna have kind of a lower cost for acquisition compared to like Google Ads or trying to do kind of TV or radio advertising. You know, there's just kinda less time and effort that has to go into all those, you know, working with outside professionals. When you have, you know, an affordable email marketing platform. It can really be kind of a high return on investment for your practice. I think, you know, when you own that list and it's yours, that's not something that can be taken away.

You know, at any time, Google can kinda change the rules when it comes to Google Ads or display ads or these kind of third party marketing and and advertising platforms really can kinda do whatever they want. But, you know, email marketing can be a pretty inexpensive, you know, the they're not gonna they don't charge that much for email marketing platforms. So by, you know, owning that list, you have a kind of a very cost effective form of marketing for your practice.

Yeah. I'd actually encourage everybody who's listening to this. If you do not use email to market to your patients, have a monthly newsletter, it is such a missed opportunity. I've been doing it for years, and I've had some people say, oh, but my patients get so many emails. You know?

They'll they'll it'll annoy them. And I'm thinking and if it annoys them, they just go unsubscribe. Right. It's really, really simple. But if your newsletter is good, then they won't unsubscribe.

And and what I find funny even about every email marketing that you do, even if they don't respond to it, if every month or every couple of weeks, your business name is noticed in their inbox, and even if they just delete it, it is a constant reminder that you're there. And if they haven't unsubscribed, that means, okay, they're not interested right now. But when they need a podiatrist, they're gonna come and see you because you're constantly top of mind.

That's a good example. Right? Like, think, you know, some people are a little shy like, oh, they don't wanna receive this. They don't receive that. Well, let them decide.

Like you said, they can hit that unsubscribe button. And if they really don't wanna hear from you, that's all they have to do. Right? And I think what happens sometimes is that maybe you have a little bit of an elderly population that doesn't see because I think sometimes they'll make that unsubscribe button a little small, but and and sometimes you send out an email, you know, get a maybe one phone call or two phone calls from a maybe like a little unhappy elderly patient.

Oh, yeah. Know. They'll be going, oh, Jim, can you please take a rid of those emails?

Right. But it

can You're annoying you're annoying me.

It can cause your staff to feel like kind of a you can kind of have an overreaction to some of that stuff. Right? Because maybe

it

was a busy day in the clinic and now your staff had one phone call that day or two phone calls that day from someone that didn't like the email. So then your staff has kind of a negative association with email marketing in general. But if you have 10,000 or 15,000, if two people out of 10 or 15,000 happen to call the clinic a little unhappy, I mean, to in my mind, that that's totally worth it. It means that, like, it's being received at least and people are are noticing it. So, you know, I think you just have to kind of if you're creating something of value, you gotta kinda like brush some of that off.

You're getting like, you know, 20 calls or 30 calls and maybe we need to talk about what you're putting in your emails and figure out what's really going on there. But one or two follow-up.

Are no good. Don't put do not put the nudie pictures in. That's not not what they're there for.

Yeah. So something like that. Newsletter. So it's not something just to be, you know, really, really note noticing about. Like like you said, just it's not something that it's not gonna be for everybody and they can unsubscribe.

Yeah. When it comes to, like, you know, another really valuable aspect of email marketing is, you know, these meet email platforms are really great about the analytics and some of the the open rates and the click throughs and the conversion rates. It's really easy to see. You know, if you have a, you know, make an appointment now button or some of the articles that you've written or maybe it's a review, you can really see what's resonating with the audience you have. Right?

So you can kind of start making a list of all those things that maybe it's the topics that are really resonating well. But also you can see, well, if, you know, you got seven or eight people from that one email that, you know, hit the red you know, the make an appointment now button, it's a good sign that, you know, it's working. So it's something that you can really kinda determine how well it's working as opposed to just kinda, like, not sure where those things are coming from. So I think being able to measure it and kind of adjust your strategies as as necessary is something that can be pretty powerful with email marketing.

Yeah. And the part that's interesting like, I was just looking at my newsletter that I only just send out yesterday or the day before, And the open rate is always somewhere between 40 to 50%, which is pretty good. And and, usually, each month, I'll normally add 20 to 30 people will get added to my email database. Whenever a newsletter goes out, there's always, yeah, one or two people that unsubscribe. Always.

Always a couple of people unsubscribe. And when I look at the ones that unsubscribe, I just go, most of them, I don't know who they are. The ones who I do know who they are, I'm thinking, that was silly. Because a lot of times in my newsletters, if I'm promoting an event or doing something, I'll put a discount code, but it's only in my newsletter. So if you've unsubscribed and there was one, yeah, one of the events I did recently, and I had a code in there, had a discount code, but they unsubscribed the week before.

So they never saw it, and they paid full price. So it's and I I used to get really upset if someone unsubscribed. It used to just cut me really deep, and now I actually look forward to it. I'm like, I feel like putting in there. Please unsubscribe because it makes me laugh.

Yeah. I mean, some people are just you know, they they kinda go through that, you know, binge and purge. You know, they they subscribe to a lot of email newsletters and then they kind of

Yeah.

Unsubscribe. So that's kind of a a natural thing

when it comes to They've got more than one email address, and that's what I feel. And sometimes someone don't subscribe. And I go, oh, Jimmy, you bastard. No. I'm not saying you did, Jim.

You may have. But I'll go, oh, Jimmy, you bastard. You unsubscribed. I thought we were friends. And I used to get upset.

And then one day, I emailed someone and said, just out of curiosity, I saw that you unsubscribed. Is there a particular reason you unsubscribed? Because I'm just wanna gather some feedback. And they went, oh, because you got three of my email addresses. Different well, different things that they've either registered for a webinar or or something else.

And they said, so I get it three times. I just unsubscribe on tool.

Yeah.

I'm like, that makes perfect sense. So sometimes what you think it's like a personal digger, you know, it's just it's just just happens.

Yeah. It just happens. That's that's normal. But another reason to consider email marketing is that it's a real great way to have kind of timely timely and direct communication. You know, think like, a lot like I talked about, you know, whether it's Facebook ads or other, you know, types of marketing is that it's it's pretty indirect at times.

It's you hope they scroll past it or you hope that they see it in their browser, but it's not sitting there in their inbox. Right? So, you know, by having that kind of immediate form of communication, it can be really, really effective. You know, clinics can quickly inform, you know, their patient base, you know, about new services, new offers, new updates about the clinic. You know, these that's really, really powerful stuff.

And since people check their email multiple times a day, like you mentioned, Tyson, you can kind of be top of mind for people. You know, they see you in your inbox. Yeah. It's not like, you know so that's why it's important to have, you know, distinct kind of a good email address, but also, you know, starting off maybe some of your emails with the name of your clinic because that's maybe all they're gonna see with it. But, you know, finding that subject line that is helpful but also creates awareness can be a real benefit.

Yeah. And it's always interesting too. We yeah. We said, yeah, you'll get a little smallest amount that'll unsubscribe, but you get thousands who open it who do look yeah. They do click on it.

They open it. They may not memory one thing. They may read nothing. But it's even those that don't open it, it's in their inbox. Yeah.

And some of them would have seen it, and they may have just deleted it, not opened it. But it's but I I like the fact that you said, if you've got something really important to say today, this week, you can just give it out to him straight away. It's really, really fast communication.

Yep. And that kinda leads into our next one. It's basically like flexibility. Right? So, you know, getting that kind of having the direct line of communications, they can always hit the reply button.

But, you know, email content can kinda it can be constantly adjusted at real no overall cost besides maybe, you know, if it doesn't connect, maybe it doesn't connect as well as past emails, you might feel like it was a waste. But there there's not, like, an additional cost to send another email as opposed to, like, if you're gonna try another campaign or you're gonna try to do something else, a lot of these different paid channels, you know, you could have a thousand or a 3,000 or $5,000, like, experiment. But with email marketing, you know, you can really try to figure out what messaging is gonna work. You know, there's specific types of offers or way you can kinda display your expertise in a way that is helpful. You know, changing up some of the visuals to, you know, to having, you know, linked to a video.

Does that work better than just having an image in the email? But there's a lot of ways to kind of a b test to figure out really what resonates best with with your patients. So I think that's the flexibility and, like, you know, like I said, it's kind of a pretty inexpensive tool to have and to try to find what really works for your patients to make sure that it works for you and your clinic as well.

Yeah. And you mentioned the AB testing too, which is to let people know you can put in different headlines on two different emails and you say, okay. Send them out. Only a certain amount will go out, which everyone gets the most biggest open rate, say, in the first hour, then they go, okay. That's where we're gonna use that headline for everything else.

And that's been really valuable sometimes because you might have a headline. You go, this is a cracker. This is a corker of a headline. Fantastic. And then you have another one.

Go, hey. This one's a bit weak, but the weak one opens because it just resonates with everybody at the time.

Yeah. That's and that's the and I think about some of those AB testing tools, like you said, is just you get to test it out. It's not just completely on you to, like, you know, figure it out because you don't maybe you're not we're not always right. I hate to say it. I'm not always right.

You're not always right, Tyson, but, you know, having tools like this can be helpful to it's gonna help us figure out the best thing.

There's a t shirt that I saw. I can't remember what it was in here. It was something about some of it being right. I gotta see if I can find it.

Alright. Just Yep.

It was pretty funny.

Well, the next thing about email marketing that's beneficial is that it it helps you kinda create a consistent stream of patient education. Right? We've talked to this a lot in the past is that we're kinda in our heads all day. As podiatrists, we've gone to school. Some of us have gone to residency.

We've been in practice for a certain amount of time, but we know all the things that we do. Our staff might know most of the things that we do. Our spouse might know some of the things we do, but our patients, they might know five or 10% of the things that we do because they came to you for heel pain, they came to you for an ingrown toenail, but they not may not know that you do foot surgery or that you really enjoy sports medicine or that you do wound care. So regular newsletters can be used to educate your patients about all the kind of different type of care you provide. You can kinda help educate them about general foot health, preventative care, the different treatment options, and different diagnoses that are out there.

But this is a really, like I inexpensive way to kinda continuously educate and help create better outcomes for your patients and increase the amount of trust that you have. Because it's not only your patients that are gonna see this. Right? But, you know, maybe your patient has a spouse. They have a son or a daughter.

They have a neighbor. They have a a little league group. They have a soccer team. This can really spread. So by kind of consistently educating your patients with with email marketing can be a real benefit to your practice and to the growth of your practice.

Yeah. And I think this is even more important if you have a, like, a more of a niche a niche practice as well. So if you're sports yeah. More of a sports orientated clinic, then putting something in there that's saying, the latest rehab to strengthen your the latest exercises to strengthen your calves. Now if you have a sports focused clinic, most of your patients will wanna know that information so you can educate them on specific things that they are probably gonna wanna engage with a lot more.

Yeah. For sure. I think it is one of those things where you just wanna when you have that, it's an opportunity to kinda, like, build that expertise. Right? Like, to to kinda become that expert in that niche or in that specific segment that you wanna go after.

And, email marketing is a tool to kinda help facilitate that.

Yeah. And once again, right back to what you said earlier on, and it's a cheap way of doing it as well.

Yeah. Exactly. As opposed to some other more expensive forms. So

Well, if you picture if you had 10,000 people in your database and even if only 10% opened, which is pretty poor, If you only had 10%, that's a thousand people that opened your email. Show me a cheaper way of touching base with a thousand of your patients.

Yeah. There there there is no other way to get that kind of visibility. But

And everyone I know that uses a newsletter on a regular basis has all reported back saying that their business has grown by using by by doing email marketing in one in one form or another. It's never affect it's I've never heard anyone say, oh, bloody hell, Tyson. I wish I'd never done email marketing. It's just destroyed my business. Every patient hates me.

Never happens.

No. It doesn't happen. It's because of the the last thing we're gonna get into, and that's because email marketing really builds loyalty and retention. Retention.

I see.

The regular communication, you know, really helps kinda nurture that patient, you know, physician relationship outside of the practice. They they know you exist. They know you're thinking of them. They know that you are that local expert doing whatever you're you're kind of, you know, chosen subspecialty within podiatry is. And over time, you know, it really helps, you know, promote loyalty and encourage encourages repeat visits.

Right? So, you know, that stuff is usually, I have to pay in in a hand over fist to get that kind of stuff. But these kind of relatively inexpensive email marketing tools can really make that happen when you kind of put out a consistently valuable newsletter that connects with your ideal patients.

Yeah. No. I just like I said, you will get patients. We'll say, please take me off your database. Please stop sending me emails.

And to me, usually, any patient that ever did that to me when I had the podiatry clinic, they were not usually patients that I liked anyway. There weren't people that they came in, they just wanted a service done. They didn't want to know who I am. They didn't want to connect with my clinic. They just wanted treatment, and they wanted to move on.

And but not having them on my database anymore really did not have any impact on my business whatsoever. But the patients who would walk in and say, hey. I love that article you did on this, or that tip you gave me on this certain thing was very helpful. Focus on the positives from using email marketing and just just avoid the negatives.

No. I totally agree. I think it's, you know, it's just a really important kind of it's important to kinda integrate this email marketing to kind of a holistic marketing strategy. Right? Like it's not you're only gonna be doing this, but it can be a good kind of stair step and kind of an effective form of marketing for anyone that's kind of kinda getting the idea.

Maybe you're you're new in practice or you haven't really ventured into to doing this on a consistent basis. It is that consistency over time that, you know, creates awareness of who you are, what you're providing. And it's really crucial for podiatry clinics when you do use email marketing to ensure that you're kind of you're doing it in a permission way. You know, no one wants to make sure that, you know, don't go buy a local list or something. Make sure that it's kind of being generated from sign ups, the people coming into your practice.

But it it's a very inexpensive, effective method to really, like I said, educate your patients, get appointments, get reappointments and really kind of build your expertise in whatever niche you're practicing in.

And I remember the quote that was on that t shirt.

Alright. Let's hear it.

It was. It was. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. I may be wrong, but it's highly unlikely. I just love that quote.

That's good. And and that's even with what we're talking about this topic now. People want to listen to it and think, oh, no. I don't agree. I don't think email newsletters or email marketing is effective.

Well, we know they're wrong. I don't know. But what I've been saying, they may be wrong. It's hard to know. No.

They're wrong.

Man, if people have those ideas, you know, feel free to email us and let us know what your objections are and we can we can discuss them. But, yeah, there's I don't in my mind, there's no more cost effective way to to gain awareness and to really kind of, you know, build your practice in email marketing. I think there's a lot of value there. Like I said, you owning that list and belonging to you is getting more and more popular as, you know, search is changing. We're going from kind of vanilla Google results to this AI generative AI world, which is kinda changing the way that search works.

So, you know, by owning that relationship and kind of building that patient to physician relationship while they're not in your clinic, it's a huge value add and it's hugely valuable to you in your practice.

Yeah. And and I I really think if you're concerned that your patients get too many emails already and that's going to bug them, once again, let them make that decision. Yep. I get a number of emails in my inbox on a regular basis. And I would say 95% of them, I go delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.

But sometimes the subject line and one of the ones I delete on a regular basis will catch my attention. I'll go, oh, that's interesting. So, yeah, I don't know if you've heard of Jason Pfeiffer. He's the editor he's the editor of Entrepreneur Magazine. I had him on my old podcast years ago.

Okay.

And he's written a book which I've got, and I get his newsletter on a regular basis. I would say eight out of 10 or probably seven out 10, I delete. Don't even look at it because I'm just too busy. The others, sort of go, oh, it's a bit intriguing, and I'll just have a brief read and then might delete it. But then there was one this morning that I opened up, and I read it from start to finish, and I just went, jeez, I'm glad I don't I'm glad I have not unsubscribed to that newsletter because when I do sit down and read it, the content is freaking fantastic.

Yeah. And I believe that's what our patients do as well. Delete. Delete. Delete.

Delete. Every now and then, they've got a little bit of spare time. They click on it. They read it, and they go, shit. I'm glad that person's my podiatrist because that was interesting.

Yeah. I gotta stop swearing.

I think that's a great

place to leave it. Okay, Big Jim. I look forward to talking to you next week, and, yeah, look after yourself.

You too, Tyson.

Okay. See you. Bye now.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDonnell. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry dot marketing.