Show Notes

Kayla: Welcome back to the Designer Practice Podcast and I’m your host Kayla Das.

In today’s episode, Shayah Reed, director of Virtual Balance, will share how to integrate email marketing and blogging to attract and retain therapy clients.

Hi, Shayah. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here today.

Shayah: Hi, Kayla. Thank you. I’mso happy to be recording today with you as well. I really felt like this was a good fit for us to collaborate. So thank you for having me.

Kayla: I agree, and I know I’m going to talk about this later, but blogging is my favorite thing to do, so I’m super excited to talk about this.

But before we dive into today’s episode, please introduce yourself, where you’re from, and tell us a little bit about Virtuwell

Shayah: Yeah, okay, so my story can be a little long, so I’ll try to give you the short form here. So, I’m from Canada a small town called St. Thomas, Ontario, close to London, or maybe like two hours from Toronto. But I actually live down in Guatemala right now. My husband and I just bought land down here. So, we’re going back and forth between Canada and Guatemala quite a bit.

But, yeah, I started my career in health information management in the hospital. I worked there for about five years and it was a great career, but was lacking some passion and not really the place I saw myself being for the rest of my life. But the issue was I could see myself being there the rest of my life. So I was kind of in this pivotal moment where I needed to make a change and I always had a passion for preventative health and wellness. I taught yoga at the time. So I decided to go back to school and learn about holistic nutrition. And anyways, fast forward a little bit. I ended up quitting my career in the hospital to start my own private practice, teaching yoga and holistic nutrition, working in the health and wellness space. And I always had a desire to travel. And of course, this is remote work that I could do. So started an online business in my practice with yoga and nutrition.

My husband also has a remote business, so we decided in 2018 to sell all of our things and try working remote and travel the world. So, this was, of course, just pre-COVID, and we went to Thailand, Bali, Vietnam, we were in Costa Rica, Mexico, and that’s how we discovered Guatemala, where we live now. We absolutely fell in love with the country and decided to make this a long-term lifestyle for ourselves.

So, we’re living down here now, and I had a really interesting switch from working in health and wellness as a practitioner to now design and marketing, which we’re talking about today. But that helped me develop my niche, of course.

So, I loved all the aspects of marketing and business building of my practice. So, I kind of started helping people out for free just because I really enjoyed it and I thought, geez, I can start a second business here. So, this was in end of 2019, I launched Virtuwell Balance, which was like a virtual assistant company because it was just me at the time and I offered all different types of design and marketing services for other health and wellness practitioners. And it just grew so fast and so quickly that yoga and nutrition became a hobby for me, and not my business at all anymore. So, I went full time into Virtuwell Balance and over the last five years now, I’ve grown to a team of six women based in Canada as well, who are also very passionate about health and wellness and experts in design and marketing.

And over that time, we’ve supported over 400 different practitioners now. We have most of our client base is therapists. So, I would say maybe 70 percent of the clients we work with are therapists. And then we also work with, chiropractors, naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, but therapy is where our passion lies. And yeah, we work with clients across Canada and the U S.

Kayla; Amazing. So, first of all, what is email marketing and why should therapists consider including it into their marketing strategy if they haven’t already?

Shayah: Yeah, I love talking about this because a lot of therapists and practitioners are not using email marketing. And I feel like the ones who are this really just gives you a bit of a competitive edge to your business.

So, by definition email marketing is a way to communicate with your practice followers and your clients and potential clients through email. It includes sending out educational and inspirational email newsletters and other engaging content to help grow the know, like, and trust factor. So, this is one of the biggest pieces or benefits of email marketing is that it really helps to grow that know, like and trust factor. So, I would say if for example, you have someone maybe found you on Instagram or found you through your website. And they want to work with you, but they’re just not sure they’ve never been to therapy before– a really good way for them to gain the know, like, and trust with you is to join up your email list. This could be, maybe you don’t call it an email list, you could call it your email community, or maybe you have them download a freebie or something valuable and educational from your website to get them on the list.

And then from there, you’re sending out regular emails just to nourish them, educate them, share benefits of therapy, different modalities you use if you have a unique approach or way to doing things and just connecting with them on a more personal level, like letting them know that you understand how they feel. There’s lots of people who feel like this. It can be a temporary feeling and there’s ways to overcome it. That just helps them know that they’re in the right place. And you’re staying top of mind for them by them seeing and receiving all these emails. And it’s way more likely that they’ll end up booking with you once they get that little bit of, they call it the know, like and trust factor. So, I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of using email marketing.

And the second would be that it helps with client retention. So, the first one is like building know, like, and trust for people who are not necessarily a client yet. And then helping with client retention for people who already have been to you in the past. And maybe they’re on your email list now because they’re a client, or maybe they downloaded something from your website. But again, you’re just staying top of mind for them, and reminding them to book follow up appointments, or actually, one strategy we use with a lot of our clients near the end of the year is we suggest that they send out an email saying, like, if you have benefits for therapy that are going to expire at the end of the year, remember to book in your appointment so we can support you and make sure your benefits are used up. Those types of emails always get so many client bookings coming into different practices. And it’s something they might not have thought of or done if they didn’t get that prompt in the email. So building no like and trust and then client retention. I think those are some of the biggest benefits of using email marketing. If you’re not yet.

Kayla: I love that tip about, at the end of the year and I know like we’re in April, so have to keep that in mind for next time. But I love that because I actually know myself, like I have a couple different practitioners, not necessarily therapy, but like massage and things like that. And at the end of the year, I tend to get those emails. It reminds me, oh, yeah, like I got X amount of dollars left to my benefits.

Shayah: Maybe I should put a note on my calendar to remind myself later. Yes. That’s a really great strategy. And then also it’s just a great way to protect your content and the audience that you’ve worked so hard to build. So lately I’ve seen, which is great, a lot more therapists starting up like a practice account on Instagram and having like a therapy practice account and sharing advice, strategies, modalities, and things on there, which can be a really great way also to get clients but you don’t own the content on there. There’s so much going on with the algorithm. So, I always find it’s way easier to get in front of people. Once they’re on your email list, it’s going to land in their inbox. There is a few things you need to do on the back end as well to make sure that your email isn’t landing in their spam. But it’s way more likely that they’ll actually see an email than they’ll see a social media post too. So that’s another little point.

Kayla: Yeah, and I agree with you 100%, and I just know, this is my business coaching more than when I was doing therapy, but I make a lot more money when I send out an email to my email list than if I like post on all of my social media platforms.

Shayah: Oh yeah.

Kayla: And it’s because of the social media algorithms, right? People aren’t seeing it, and if they do see it, it’s like there’s so much other stuff clouding it, whereas when you show up in their email, you’re one email, and if they open that email, you’re that only thing on that page.

 Shayah: Yeah, that’s a good point too, like the ROI that you actually get from an email versus a social media post. And the amount of time, not only return on investment, like, how long does it take you to create a reel? I’m not a reels girlie, we do use some in our business on our Instagram account, but we don’t very much, and they take so long to create. And then, you’re kind of disappointed by the views, the interactions, the comments, like, is anybody actually visiting your website or booking a call from that, and you spend a lot of time on it.

Whereas you may spend a lot of time putting an email together but it’s way more likely that you’ll get a better return on investment for your time and appointments booked. So that’s a good point too.

Kayla: Soo we’re talking about email marketing, but I know that many therapists come to me and they’re like, you know is email marketing ethical? And I know when I first started my private practice and heard about email marketing, I was kind of like, oh is this even okay? So, I mean I have some comments on this but I want to hear your point of view.

Shayah: Yeah. I know this can be different based on where you are practicing or where you live and the different governing body that you work under, but there are a lot of rules around marketing for therapists, which is why we also pride ourselves in working with therapists, because we do know a lot of these rules and regulations. Whereas if a therapist goes to work with just a general marketing company, they could tell you to do things that you’re actually not allowed to do.

So, one of the things is outreach and cold emailing and cold DMing. You’re not allowed to just like message a random person and be like, hey, I think you need help with this. I’d love for you to book a therapy session with me. That’s like cold messaging and cold emailing. You’re not allowed to do that.

But where the ethical thing comes in here is like, they’re opting in to your email newsletter. So, they are agreeing to receive promotional content, educational content from you and they can also unsubscribe at any time. So that’s where the important ethical thing comes in. You do have to get permission to send these emails or have them opt in or sign up to your newsletter.

Kayla: A hundred percent. And I love that because not only is it about the ethical piece, it’s actually the legal side of it too. But when we’re thinking about following the legal side of it we need to ensure that there’s a unsubscribe button. We need to ensure that people are opting into this, right? We can’t just go and look through all of our clients lists and start putting them on our email list. If they opted in, and I know a lot of practice management software actually have this ability to say, I opt into a newsletter, I know Jane App, which is software that I use.

Shayah: Yes, you can do a little checkmark. Mm hmm.

Kayla: Yes. And then they’re opting in, right? So, you do have permission in that respect. But if someone haven’t opted in, you can’t just go and add a whole bunch of people onto it. I’m going to say that most therapists don’t do that anyway, but that’s the legal side, not only the ethical side of it.

Shayah: Yeah, yeah, that’s a really great point. We love Jane. That’s probably the favorite practice software that, that we love when our clients work with them. It’s so easy to integrate and yeah, it has those options on there. But something we have done with a few therapists who have been in practice for a long time and they’ve never done email marketing and they start learning about the benefits after they’ve worked with us or we’ve done their branding or website and then we talk about some marketing with them. They’re like, oh, I really want to start email marketing. I have a list of like 2,000 contacts who I’ve worked with in the past or have inquired to work with me, but then maybe never did. Can we start emailing them? And I always say like, no, you can’t just start emailing them. But what we’ve done is we’ve sent a generic email, a mass email to all of them and said we’re starting an email community newsletter. If you would like to receive these emails, you can click here to opt in and then that will take them to an opt in page. If you don’t want to receive these, don’t worry, we’re never going to email you any of this content again. So we do do one mass email to them just asking if they would like to opt into the future emails we’ll be sending. We’ve done that before as a strategy to kind of try to capture like past contacts that you have. But yeah, just moving forward.

Even if you’re not using email marketing now having that option on Jane or whatever practice platform you’re using just for people to check Yes. Because even if you’re not doing email marketing now in the future a few months from now or next year if you do want to sending out emails at least you have their consent. And again, if that’s a long wait and they don’t want it anymore, they can just subscribe.

One other tip before we start talking about blogging and how we integrate them both. When I started my business coaching, something I did at the bottom of all of my emails that come out of my email marketing provider would be a disclaimer. Is that you signed up to this email, um, da da da da da. And feel free to unsubscribe at any time. So that gives them, like, the permission to unsubscribe. Because sometimes people, if they haven’t heard from you, so, like, let’s say you do that mass email, and you haven’t met with them over a year, and they kind of forget who you are, and they’re like, how did you get my email? Right? Whereas at least now, under here, you’re saying, you have subscribed and that way they aren’t going to question, oh, okay, I must have subscribed at some point. And then it’s actually giving them permission to unsubscribe.

Shayah: Yeah, some of our clients actually on the bottom of them say like, please feel free to unsubscribe at any time. Like, you won’t hurt our feelings or like something like that. Because sometimes people know that you know when they unsubscribe because you receive notifications or you can see on your back end when people unsubscribe from your list.

And sometimes if they were your client, therapists I feel are always concerned with people’s feelings, which is great. And so, we have a lot of our clients who have brought that up and been like, well, what if someone doesn’t want to unsubscribe because– they want to, but they don’t want to because they know I’ll see it. So, we’ve had a few clients on the bottom that have said feel free to unsubscribe. It won’t hurt our feelings. You can always resubscribe later if you want. So, I just think it’s really nice, especially in the therapy field, how comforting therapists always want the marketing and the options to feel for clients. So. Yeah.

Kayla: I love that. Yeah, so blogging is my absolute favorite way to advertise my coaching practice. So, tell us benefits that you’ve seen for your clients who’ve implemented blogging into their practices.  

Shayah: Okay, yeah. So, blogging can have different types of benefits depending on what your goals and your strategy is all about. Some people have different strategies and goals and reasons why they’re using blogging. But with therapists, the main thing that, well there’s two I would say. Actually, maybe three. Okay, I’m having ideas pop into my head.

So, first one is that you’re going to have increased traffic and ranking higher on Google. If you’re using keyword specific terms in your H1 and H2 tags. So this strategy is if you want to be getting more traffic from Google and ranking higher on Google for certain terms and certain keywords you need to incorporate those and write strategically into the blogs. Also, Google just loves active websites, so the more you’re creating content on your website, the better. But if you have an SEO strategy and you’re using specific keywords in your blogs then that’s really going to help you increase traffic and rankings, too

Then the other piece is also just positioning yourself as an authority figure or an expert in a certain area. So, if you have really niched content or if you are a specialist in a niche area, let’s say you work with people with trauma and use EMDR, for example. If that’s your specialty or your niche and you just write content about that, that will also help Google match people’s searches with the content on your website way better, if that’s all your website is about. So, this is a really big benefit of niching with Google. But then also if someone lands on your website and they’re looking for information on that, they don’t just read about it on your services pages. You have an entire blog full of information that you can use to position your expertise and your knowledge and your authority on this topic, which is going to help to encourage people to want to book with you as well.

And it also just makes your overall content marketing strategy a little more fluid and seamless. We always tell our clients to start with blogs and then repurpose that content. So, a lot of people say like, I don’t have time to write blogs and email newsletters and social media posts and see clients and take notes and all these things you have to do in your practice, right? The marketing always seems to come last. So, what we want is to make the marketing strategy very seamless. So, if you start with a blog post on a topic, you can repurpose that into some content in a newsletter and then take little pieces of that to share on social media and tell people, if you want to read a whole blog post about this, go visit my website and then you’re directing traffic back to your site too.

So, just to recap, I feel like that was a lot. Blogging, if you’re using strategic keywords for SEO, can help with Google traffic and rankings. Also just positioning you as an expert or an authority figure in a certain area. And then helping your overall content marketing strategy, just being a little more seamless all together.

Kayla: I love that. So now, how can listeners integrate email marketing and blogging to attract and retain therapy clients?

Shayah: Okay, Kayla, I love that you said to attract and retain because that’s exactly what we’re doing here. You’re basically using blogging to attract and then email marketing to retain. That’s kind of what it comes down to here.

So, like we said, the blogging strategy is going to be lots of content on your website to make you look like an authority figure, an expert, or a specialist in the area. It’s going to help bring traffic in from Google. You’re going to repurpose that for social media. So that’s the content that’s really attracting people. Right?

And then when they’re on your website, we want to have different places and options for them to get onto your email list. So, you can have something that just says join my email list or join my email community where I send out monthly mental health advice and insights to support you in your journey, something like that.

But if you can also create like a download, like a downloadable guide or a checklist or some kind of a resource, sometimes it’s more likely people will join an email list if they’re signing up for something like a freebie opposed to just, you know, it might be beneficial to join your email community to get your monthly newsletters which they will if they sign up, but it’s always nice to offer something for free too.

So, once we’re attracting people with the content in the blog, then they join the email list and that’s where we turn them into clients or retain them hopefully from the emails. So that’s the attraction and retention strategy, how it works together.

Kayla: There’s two things that I want to comment there. First of all, I find that email and blogging are kind of like this circle. When you have an SEO optimized blog, like you said, you’re attracting people. So, people are coming into your website, and if each blog even has like a freebie or some sort of lead magnet that’s related to the particular topic, you’re getting them to sign into that freebie. Then they’re on your email list, and then you can start emailing them and then they start seeing you. And you mentioned the know, like, and trust factor earlier in this episode. And then once they start seeing you pop into their email over and over and over again, they’re like, oh, I think I want to reach out to this person.

Now, this topic is a little bit beyond this episode, but even if you start adding say passive income streams into your practice, so maybe you’re a therapist in Alberta. But you want to start having digital courses on something. You might get people to sign into your email list that might not even be from Alberta. Now, you might not be able to work with them as a therapist. But if you have a digital course that anyone could buy, when you’re ready to sell, even if they’re not from Alberta, maybe they’re from B. C. or Ontario or wherever, you have a larger base of people who you can sell to, if that’s your goal.

Shayah: That’s a great point.

Kayla: The second piece I want to talk about is the lead magnet piece, and I truly believe there should be some sort of freebie, and I’m going to give you an example. I have on my webpage. I have join my newsletter at the end of the blog page. I think I’ve probably had like, five people ever sign up for nothing. Like, just say sign up for my newsletter. However, I have free guides, quizzes, webinars, like all of these types of things existing. That is how I build my email list. I want to tell you that, honestly, the sign up for my newsletter, if you have that on your website and you’re like, it’s not working, it doesn’t work for anyone. So, having a lead magnet or something free that’s enticing is going to be more attractive and going to attract more potential clients than sign up for my newsletter.

Shayah: Yeah, absolutely.

Kayla: So, Shayah, you have a free resource that you’d like to share. Can you tell us a little bit about what it is and how it can help listeners?

Shayah: Yeah, so we have our Therapist Content Kit which I think will be super helpful for you guys and discussing what we’ve talked about today. It’s going to help you create a content marketing strategy that is re-purposable starting with your blogs.

So, one of the things that we like to say is just stay consistent because there’s a lot of people who over commit to blogging and content strategies and they’re like, I’m going to do two blogs a week. We’re like, okay, let’s just start with one a month, which is super realistic. So, if you can create one blog post a month, repurpose that into a few social media posts and share some of the content in your email newsletter.

And this whole strategy starts with some SEO researched blog topics. So in this download that we put together, actually, speaking of free downloads, this is one of our most downloaded resources ever. And we always get a lot of really great feedback from it. So, we actually did, I worked with the SEO specialist on my team and we put together a little bit of research on.

It was general like therapy SEO researched terms, because this is not going out to a specific specialist in therapy. So, we have some different terms in here. So, some of them might not all be applicable to you, but I think we have like 10 different SEO research blog topics that you can pick and choose from and use that as a starting point to create some blogs for your website.

And then we also have some strategies in there just teaching you best ways to implement and further optimize your blogs and your email newsletters. So, if you’re new to any of this content marketing, I think it will be really helpful.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention we do have a discount for all of your listeners or anybody from your community. If you are interested in working with us on your branding, website, or digital marketing pieces, you can inquire on our website through our application form. And it does just ask on there, where did you find us or where’d you discover Virtuwell Balance? If you just put in there Kayla Das or Designer Podcast, then we’ll know where you came from and we can apply 15 percent off on our services.

Kayla: So, to sign up for Shayah’s free Therapist Content Checklist, check out virtuwellbalance.com/therapist-content-kit.

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

Shayah, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today to discuss how to use email marketing and blogging to attract and retain therapy clients.

Shayah: Thanks Kayla.

Kayla: Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s episode and I hope you join me again soon on the Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.

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