Brand Your Practice Podcast | How to Create an Email Newsletter For Your Private Practice

**This is a replay of a previously recorded webinar**

If you don’t have a newsletter you’re missing out on a MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY to grow your brand. Email is still alive and it’s the #1 way to build trust with your ideal client and build your brand. Here, I share a simple step-by-step process on how to create, design, and send an email newsletter.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Brent Stutzman

owner of Brand Your Practice, Inc.

What is Brand Your Practice Podcast?

Many mental health professionals open a private practice to help more people and make more $$$. The problem is they lack a clear plan to generate growth and attract new clients.

In this podcast we interview private practice owners and digital marketers to give you business development and marketing strategies to grow your private practice or your caseloads.

At the end of the day, we want you enjoy the freedom of having a pipeline of new clients and becoming the #1 trusted private practice in your community. Because when you build a sustainable & profitable private practice you can create a life you love!

Who is this for?
✔️ Therapists
✔️ Psychologists
✔️ Psychiatrists
✔️ Private Practice Owners

If you're in the people helping profession this podcast is for you!

all right good morning

everybody getting people

into this to the chat

stream all right we got

some viewers here great so

yeah welcome welcome

welcome welcome in a couple

things here is in the

comment section let me know

you can hear me okay and I

have a couple starter

questions to get us going

Get some of my slides ready to go.

I'm really excited about this webinar.

I probably spent... I probably spent...

20-some hours getting the

slides ready and kind of

thinking through the process.

And it's going to be a full webinar,

so lots of details are

going to be coming at you.

But you can always watch the

replay and go back over it.

That's kind of my idea is

when I like to do webinars

is to give a lot of

information and you can

always go back and watch it,

make it really practical

and straightforward for you.

So, yeah, let me know if you can hear me.

Say, I can hear you in the chat.

That would be great.

Otherwise,

I'm just talking to myself in my office.

I'll wait a few more minutes

for people to jump in since

I did start a little early today.

Other thing you can do,

let me know if you can hear me,

but put a one in the chat,

in the description,

in the comments there.

Okay, good.

Thanks, Jess.

You can put a one in the

chat if you have a newsletter.

Put a two in the chat if you

don't have a newsletter.

And as we go along,

I would love for you to put

questions into the chat.

So when I go to questions,

there's a few ready for me

to answer because I do

expect this one to go the full length.

All right.

Thanks, Anthony.

All good.

Put a one in the chat if you

have a newsletter,

two in the chat if you

don't have a newsletter,

and cue some questions up

for me along the way.

I'll wait one more minute,

and then we'll get going.

Something to fill the time

with is that it's...

It's trying to be spring here in Chicago.

It's like trying so hard.

Some of the magnolia trees are coming out.

Or plants or flowers have

started coming out of the ground.

But then it's getting cold again.

So it's going to be in the 30s and 40s.

And spring breaks right around the corner.

And I'm hoping it warms up

just enough so our kids can

just play outside a lot.

We can have some campfires at night.

So looking for some time with the family.

But man,

spring is trying to break forth in

Chicago,

and it's just struggling a little bit.

All right, so let's go ahead and jump in.

A couple housekeeping things.

So the webinar today is how

to start an email

newsletter for your private practice.

Many of you know about the

group practice scaling

summit coming up in Chicago

that I'm hosting.

It's in Oak Park.

Thank you, Anthony.

Number two.

All right.

I see that you don't have a

newsletter yet.

And OK, so, yeah,

the group practice scaling

summit is coming up.

It's for group practice owners.

I'm limiting it to 50 and

it's going to be kind of a nice, intimate,

small setting.

I like to think of it as

like a TED talk that you

can hear some great content

and then ask a lot of

questions and learn from

the wisdom of the group.

Lots of great topics.

I'm going to be talking

about three dashboard

metrics every group

practice owner needs to scale.

Alexandra Hare from Optimum Joy.

She's got a practice of 50

people working for her,

and she's going to be

talking about how to create

team culture that retains

clinicians and grows your brand.

My wife, Susan,

is going to be talking

about how to create an

in-house training program

to scale your clinical team.

And then

Nate's going to be talking

about financial numbers and

then a special guest,

Dr. Kathleen Kelly is going

to be talking about how to

offer intensives,

counseling intensives for

your private practice and

her system and how she does it.

So, uh, if you're a group practice owner,

check it out.

It's just a day and a half.

Um, this, the, um, 30 on LI.

Okay.

Um, let's see here.

Um,

Therasass, yes.

Today's webinar is sponsored by Therasass.

I'm going to show you how

Therasass can actually help

you build a newsletter too.

So stay to the end.

All right,

here we go on how to build a

newsletter for your private practice.

Here's what private practice owners want.

Practice owners want a

powerful sales funnel that

consistently provides a

steady pipeline of new

clients coming to their practice.

And a crucial component of

that sales funnel is an email newsletter.

So practice owners want a

simple and easy system to

create that newsletter that

builds a brand,

a newsletter that can build

trust at scale,

a newsletter that will

further position you as a

trusted guide with current clients,

but also with those who are

not ready to buy your services yet.

The problem is, however,

is that practice owner's

time is your time is

limited and you may be

confused on what to write about.

Maybe you're even a little

cynical about email marketing.

Maybe you're frustrated by

the technical setup of a newsletter.

Well, here's the deal.

If you don't have a newsletter,

you're missing out on a

massive opportunity for

growth and to grow your brand.

And here's why.

Here's the image I refer

back to quite often.

So people come to your

website and they have this,

they have curiosity around your services,

right?

They're asking, can you solve my problem?

And then they get into the

enlightenment stage.

If they say, yes,

I think you can solve my problem.

They're asking, can I trust you?

And you'll see here that email

and even a lead generator

can be assets to help build that trust,

okay?

So that's where they're at

in the buying stages of

your sales funnel and where

a newsletter plays an important role.

Here's some other things

that it's important why you

need to have a newsletter.

So I've heard from a lot of

course creators and 95% of

their sales of courses come from email.

Almost 100%.

40% of B2B,

so business to business marketers,

say email newsletters are

most critical to their

content marketing success.

73% of millennials prefer

communications from

businesses to come from email.

I want to show you this

other crazy statistic.

This is email marketing

revenue from 2020 to 2027.

So you'll see in 2023,

there was $10 billion from

email marketing.

Of course, this is buying stuff,

but I want you to know that

email plays an important

role in growing a business.

And they're projecting it's

only going to go up and up and up.

And it's true,

everything that I'm reading

from marketers, just everywhere,

is that email marketing is

becoming more and more important.

And here's why.

So engagement rates.

So I don't know exactly how

this study ended.

measures engagement,

but they're saying TikTok

has an engagement rate of at least 5%.

And then you have Instagram, Facebook,

and Twitter at less than 1% engagement.

That could be a, you know,

touch on an ad or, you know,

a comment or something.

There's lots of ways you can engage,

but I think the overall,

what they're saying here is

that engagement rates,

at least for the meta

platforms and Twitter are low.

However,

When it comes to email,

and this might be a little

difficult to see,

but when it comes to email,

can I zoom in here?

Yeah, there we go.

You'll see here in 2022 and

2023 that email open rates

average was about 28%.

And then what you'll see

here on click-through rates,

this red line down here, this is why.

So if there's a link inside the email,

they click on it, is you're almost at 3%,

which is important because

if you remember the last slide here,

the social media is less than 1%.

So your engagement rate goes way up.

And that's what you want.

You want people to engage

with your content.

Rand Fishkin at SparkToro argues,

he compiled a bunch of data,

and he's arguing that

Google's click-through

rates and social media

engagement has fallen.

Email has remained a marketing workhorse.

He argues that, accordingly,

that statistically,

it's better to trade 1,000

new social media followers

for one single email subscriber.

He says,

that's how lopsided the exchange is.

And this is true.

Like in my own services I

provide for my clients, like I rarely,

rarely touch social media

because it's pay to play.

You have to pay Meta and

TikTok to see your posts.

Essentially TikTok's a

little more generous on the

organic engagement,

but eventually every one of

these services, social media services,

it's going to be pay to play.

All right, so here are the stakes.

What are the stakes?

As I said in my sales funnel

webinar not too long ago,

if you don't have a sales funnel,

you're not going to grow or

you're gonna at least struggle to grow,

okay?

So here it is.

Email is an essential part

of your sales funnel,

which we talked about.

Social media is on borrowed land,

meaning if social media

changes one aspect of their

algorithm or if Google

changes an aspect of their algorithm,

You could just completely disappear.

Your stuff will not be seen.

And I've seen it happen.

You will see influencers and

other people on social media.

They're going to try to get

you over to their email address.

They're going to use social

media to then promote maybe

their lead generator or

their lead magnet to get your email.

The other thing is email is

still sacred space.

And it allows you to speak

directly to your audience.

So that's what's at stake.

It's about building your brand.

All right.

So I'm going to let you know

if you stay to the end of the webinar,

I'm going to I'm going to

show you Therasass,

how it can actually help

build your newsletter and

be your intake CRM.

But it's also I have a

really great discount where

you basically get four

months free of Therasass.

So stay to the end and I'm

going to show you that and that discount.

One more thing on your

newsletter and why this is

important is that it

positions you as an authority, right?

So you get right into the

email inbox where you can

speak to your ideal client.

It's going to demonstrate

your ability to teach.

It's going to build a

relationship with that

reader and build that trust and intimacy.

that they need to be able to

trust you to buy and

schedule an appointment with you.

It's also going to help

build a relationship with their inbox.

And what does that mean?

It's basically if you do it

right and the timing of your emails.

So if you're consistent

every day of the week or, you know,

a certain time of the week

or certain time of the month,

they're going to be

expecting that email from

you and they're going to be

expecting to hear from you.

That's the power of email.

Couple of things about me

that could be helpful.

Is that seven years ago,

my wife came home and she said,

I wanted to start my own

private practice.

And for those who know the story,

I did not have a marketing degree.

We, as you can see,

we had twin girls who were under two.

My wife was pregnant with Simeon.

I think she was seven months

pregnant with Simeon.

We lived in Chicago.

And so in order to live in Chicago,

most couples,

most families need two

family incomes to be able

to financially make it work for them.

And we couldn't live on my

salary alone with our growing family.

And so we needed to make this work.

So I went down the rabbit

hole of marketing, website building,

all the things.

And Susan said, if, if,

if I was going to launch

this private practice, she says,

I want it to be a hundred

percent private pay.

I just want to work with

kids and I need you to do

all the marketing and branding.

So that's what I did.

And creating videos and then

having a newsletter was a

major part of that.

And so here's where we are today.

My beautiful family.

And now Kid Matters,

just to kind of close that story loop,

Kid Matters has nine clinicians.

It's 100% private pay.

It's grossed a million in revenue.

And we have over 3,000 email subscribers.

And I will share one quick story.

We had some friends over a

couple weeks ago for dinner.

And we had like a two-hour

conversation with them.

They're at our house.

The kids were playing together.

It was a lot of fun.

And towards the end of the dinner,

the mom said, you know, Susan, I actually,

I've been reading your

email and watching your

videos for the past two years.

And she said they've been

incredibly helpful for her

as a parenting a young boy.

Email newsletters absolutely

work and they build your brand.

So this this is very kind friend.

She knew about Susan way

more about her because

she's been engaging with

Susan through email for the

last couple of years.

So today, seven years later,

I just saw about seven years into this.

Now I have I've launched

over seven or 12 private

practices across the

country and scaled them up.

at various capacities.

I consider myself a

full-stack marketer and a

full-stack content creator.

So I've done all the marketing things,

and I'm going to be showing

you today more about the newsletter.

My mission is to help grow, launch,

and scale 10,000 private

practices by 2030.

And I have a couple of businesses here.

Play Therapy Toolbox,

which is an e-course for play therapists.

Therasass,

which is a CRM private pay

practice for those who want to launch,

grow private pay practices.

And then brand your practice,

which is the services side of things.

And they all have an email newsletter.

They all have a lead

generator in order to

collect emails and build a

relationship with you all.

In fact,

you all came to this webinar

because of an email, most likely.

All right.

Here's the plan for the day.

The plan is we're going to

go over the four common

types of newsletters.

And then we're going to jump

into frequency, length,

and different topics that

you can talk about.

And then I'm going to do a

little bit of a live demo

building a branded newsletter.

I'm going to show you a

little bit behind the

scenes how that works.

All right,

so I'm going to just switch over

to a bigger picture here.

All right,

the four common types of

newsletter content.

And I want to say this

before I jump in one more, in my opinion,

I think private practices,

their newsletters at

minimum should be providing value,

value in a way that's

really helping potential

clients and current clients

solve a problem or a host of problems.

And I recommend that most

private practice

newsletters should be on

like 90% of them should be

educating or informing.

And there's like maybe 10%

of entertaining if you want, but really,

again,

Building that trust through

education and information

to potential clients or

your current clients is

just going to build your

brand trust like crazy.

All right, here we go.

The first kind of newsletter format,

I call this long form.

These are short stories.

They can be opinion pieces

or like letter to the editor type pieces.

They typically are just one

topic at a time.

They're not usually flashy newsletters.

It's just a bunch of text and that's okay.

And an example of this would

be a lot of people on Substack.

Uh, I,

I highly recommend Brandon Meeks on

Substack.

He writes about Southern

culture and it is beautiful.

I mean, the,

the brother can just write and

there's times I just cry

after reading his, his stories.

Uh, and I, I think if you're going to be,

you know, writing a lot,

then I think you need to be

reading other people who

write better than you.

And so, um, I found him, I don't know,

somebody recommended him

and I've been recommending

to a lot of people, but long form.

This isn't a,

he just writes short stories

and something about Substack.

And this is also to show how

important email newsletters are.

Substack has a 20 million

monthly active subscribers.

They hit 2 million paid subscriptions.

So I think I pay,

I think there's free content from Brandon,

but I pay like five bucks a

month because I think his

content is so valuable and

I'm learning how to be a better writer.

And I'm also just uplifted

and encouraged through his work.

Um,

there's more than 17,000 writers that

get paid on Substack and

the top 10 authors on

Substack made 25 million per year.

And just to show you that

email is not dead.

All right.

So maybe some ideas for long form,

long form ideas for

practice owners is you

could take a mental health

topic and go really deep.

So think of it as like a

very in-depth blog post.

It could be very long.

You could have images if you want.

Um,

you could also take a mental health

topic and tell a story about it.

So if you're passionate about, um,

treating trauma,

you could make a story around trauma.

Maybe it's a two or three part story, um,

and use that as part of your newsletter.

It's not common, but, um,

if you're passionate about

writing a short story

telling this could be, this could,

this could be you.

All right.

The second one is I call the launch pad.

The Launchpad email or

newsletter is really, it's a short email,

and the goal is to click on

a link that will lead to a

blog post that you wrote or

maybe it's a resource that you created.

It's mostly to get people to your website.

It could also be a resource

you're wanting to share somewhere else,

but it's very short, text-based usually.

Here's an example.

This is from Neil Patel at neilpatel.com.

Most of his emails are very,

very short and it's just

one or two links out

usually to one of his resources.

He also said,

I thought this could be

helpful for us is that,

I think I'll share this later actually,

but he did this test where

what's the length of an

email and his emails,

he finds that works well

for him is usually 99 words or less.

and that's where he gets the

most engagement,

most people clicking on his stuff.

So that's one idea is the launchpad.

So maybe for practice owners,

you could create a simple

text-based email that acts

as a launchpad to get

people to your website.

Maybe it's a blog that you've created,

or maybe it's a, hey,

we hired a new clinician,

and it goes to that, to the profile page.

All right, let's go to the next one here.

is the curated newsletter.

So this is like a digest of

news or products,

usually in a very specific industry.

There's usually multiple links to articles,

sponsors, or affiliates.

It's a very simple design.

Or it could be a highly

designed newsletter,

so lots of images and graphics.

So let me give you a couple

ideas here of what this looks like.

The Morning Brew got

hundreds of thousands of followers,

of subscribers, and what they do

is they talk about the financial news,

stock markets, businesses,

things that are related to

really just the US economy,

the world economy.

And they do it in kind of a fun way.

It's highly stylized, lots of pictures,

lots of graphics.

It's a mix of like pithy

opinion statements and then

links to their own articles

or links to articles that

are all over the internet.

They have sponsorships,

they have affiliates, it's all in there.

It's the morning brew.

So you can subscribe to them

if you want some ideas.

The other one is another

example is the free press.

And this one is particularly

their TGIF roundup.

It happens weekly on a Friday.

The morning brew is daily.

The TGIF email is every Friday.

It's a roundup from the news

that they've curated from

their website or from other websites.

It's usually very funny

opinions of what's

happening into the world.

Sometimes it's lighthearted,

sometimes it's not.

But basically their formula

is you'll see that there's like an arrow,

right?

So you have an arrow,

a bold kind of a hook

And then there's a little bit of opinion,

but you'll always see that

there's a link somewhere

inside of this paragraph.

So what does this mean for

practice owners?

Well, curate ideas for practice.

So you could start a

newsletter where you collect articles,

social posts, news, statistics,

other blogs, and you can share that,

but it's typically all

around an idea or a topic.

So it could be around anxiety.

It could be around parenting, OCD, ADHD,

something like that.

You could build a beautiful newsletter,

just curating information

from around the internet or journals or

and sharing it with your

audience that way.

So the next one I'm going to

show you is the branded,

I call this the branded email newsletter.

Highly stylized.

It's 90% focused on your

brand and products.

There's a consistent sending schedule.

And what you'll find is it's

really a combination between long form,

launchpad,

and the curated newsletter styles, okay?

There's a lot of overlap

between all three of those.

So let's jump into the

Brighter Vision example.

So many of you have a

Brighter Vision website.

I'm gonna be doing a

Brighter Vision webinar on Tuesday.

So here's their newsletter they sent out.

You'll see at the top here,

you'll see there's a branding section.

Then there's a feature blog.

Like here's, we want you to read this.

They have an upcoming.

So this is going to be, oh, look at that.

There I am.

How to position your

business as the number one

trusted private practice in

your community.

Okay.

Yeah, that is me.

There I am.

Brent Stutzman.

Reserve your spot.

And then here's other

content that they link to

on their website.

And this,

I believe this could be weekly or

semi-monthly.

All right.

So I'm going to show you a

walkthrough of mine.

So you'll see up here is...

We have the branding.

So I call it the insider

growth tips for private practice owners.

I got an image.

So I,

what I typically do is I have like a

short story or something

that links to something

that's already in the newsletter.

It's being highlighted.

But there's sort of like a little,

you know, a word from me, right?

So I'm trying to build that

relationship with my readers.

I have my sponsor,

which is the group practice

scaling summit.

And then I'll have a featured resource.

And then it continues.

I have these other called

external resources that are

called Clickworthy.

So I'll put together other

stuff that I've done,

a social post I've done,

a YouTube short I've done,

or I link out to other

resources that I found on

the internet that are helpful.

We also have this thing

called the team culture building.

So my virtual assistant, Layla,

who sends out this email every Friday,

we're a virtual office.

So every Friday we get

together on Zoom and she

asks a question around that

helps build culture in the team.

So we include that question

in our newsletter.

And then again,

another resource highlight.

So it's a pretty long email.

Towards the end,

you're going to see my face,

a couple other and say, hey,

connect with me on LinkedIn

or book a coaching call.

And I have this thing called

the superscript.

I can't remember who did this,

but this is at the very bottom,

sort of like the PS.

So if they get to the very bottom,

there's an opportunity for

you to share more information.

So I say, hey,

if you want additional resources,

Whether you're launching, growing,

or scaling, click here.

And it's just a way that

we've organized our

information on our website.

So that is my newsletter.

And you can see here how long it is.

You do not have to do this.

Let me show you another example.

Therasass is a little bit shorter.

You have the branding up here at the top,

featured resources,

which is our YouTube page.

channel and videos we've created there,

a new resource that we've created,

and then here's a little promotional,

right?

So it's a little bit shorter.

And then we have a brand.

This is one of my clients, Pivot,

and we have a very short

newsletter for them,

but you can see it's branded at the top.

We have a featured resource

and we have a superscript right there.

Very simple.

And that's sent out monthly.

All right.

So ideas for you all.

You could do something like that,

but you just got to keep it

simple and use templates to save time.

All right, so I'm going to stop there.

I'd love for someone to kind

of throw a question in here

for me in the chat if you

have a question regarding

the newsletter before I

jump into frequency, length, topics.

So if you have a question,

I don't know what the delay

is between the chat and how

long it actually takes to come through.

So have that question, pull that up.

And I'll stop once I see one.

I'll keep going,

but I'll stop once I see a

question and respond to it.

Okay, frequency.

Frequency.

So a couple of ways you can

think about frequency,

you can think of as like ad

hoc or timely.

So, for example,

if you want to have an that's not weekly,

maybe you could do

something around Mental

Health Awareness Day or

when you hire a new

clinician or if there's a

local event or a tragedy.

that's also a really great time to,

or sorry,

that's also a good time to send

out an email.

If you live in a small community,

tragedies happen all the time,

and maybe you can use your

email to bring comfort or

clarity around that situation.

I know occasionally there's

a death of a young child in

our community from sickness

or a tragic event.

And Susan will use her

newsletter to be able to

speak to that a little bit

and provide some resources on grieving,

things like that.

You can also send the yearly, you know,

deductibles are resetting.

So heads up about that.

New Year's informed consent reminder.

No EHRs.

A lot of EHRs will not allow

you to download all your or

they will not allow you to

send mass emails.

But you could download a

list of your of your EHR

from clients from your EHR and upload it.

into a newsletter and send

out a mass email saying, hey,

sign all your consent

papers for the new year.

You could highlight,

if you have a new blog post,

if you don't write every

week or every month, but you have one,

you can highlight that.

You can highlight a Twitter

post or an inspirational quote.

All right, where do we get a template,

Elaine asks.

Great question.

Most email service providers,

which we'll get to in a minute,

will have templates for you

to use or you would be able

to easily create one.

And the Therasass email

builder will do that.

And a lot of email service

providers like MailChimp

will do that for you too.

And I'll show you that in just a minute.

Good question.

All right, so should, you know,

newsletters that are

evergreen using automation.

So a lead magnet automated series,

and I'll show you this more

in detail later,

but you could have an evergreen,

meaning it's not necessarily, it's not,

Timely meaning like a current event,

but something that's evergreen,

meaning anytime you can

share this information or a

newsletter anytime during the year,

and it's going to be applicable.

So when somebody downloads a lead magnet,

they can get a series of

emails from you over the

course of a few days or a few weeks,

or it could be over the next 20 weeks,

however long you want it.

That's what an evergreen

newsletter looks like as it

relates to frequency.

Okay, let's talk about sending times,

the highly debatable sending times.

When is the best time to

send your email newsletter?

Typically, from the research I found,

Tuesday through Thursday in

the morning is when you get

your most engagement rates.

But it also depends on your audience,

and you do need to test for yourself.

Just always be testing to

see what the best time is.

You know,

my favorite newsletters actually

come on Friday and Sunday evening.

The ones that I spend time

reading that I make sure I

get to because I think the

content is great.

Fridays and Sunday evenings is for me.

For me,

I would recommend pick a time and

be consistent because you

are training your audience

how to interact with your brand.

Frequency, best time.

So this is from ConvertKit.com.

And you can see the number

of emails sent by day in 2022.

So you see Tuesday, Wednesday,

and Thursday being pretty high days.

Friday as well.

So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

and Friday is when the most

emails are sent.

So you see here Sunday,

like that could be an

opportunity for you to send

it on a Sunday because the

inboxes may not be as full.

You know, it just all depends.

You have to test it out.

I have another question from Anthony.

Some email generators abuse the inbox.

Yes, they do.

So that's why you want to be

providing valuable content

so you're not abusing

people's inboxes and people

will click on it and read it.

Let's go to the next slide here.

Oh, I got to zoom out.

There we go.

All right,

basic target metrics to be

hitting when you are

sending out a newsletter.

So you have your open rate.

So when somebody actually opens the email,

the click through rate is

when somebody actually

clicks on a link inside of it.

And the bounce rate is how

many emails don't actually make it,

but you're sending.

So they're like phony emails.

So this is the health and

wellness sector and then education.

So anything above 40% is

going to be a good open rate.

That has to do a lot with

your subject line.

So making sure it provides

enough interest for somebody to open it.

The click-through rate, it changes.

Sometimes you will have a

newsletter that doesn't

have any links in it.

Like those opinion, like the long,

the short form emails or the longer form,

they may not have any links at all.

And that's okay.

That's okay.

And a bounce rate of,

Anything between less than

1% is going to be really good for you.

So make sure you have a clean email list.

And the length, you know, the format,

long format, curated, branded,

it just depends on your

audience and your testing

of how long your email should be.

Here's that test from Neil Patel.

This is what I wanted to show you.

So he said, this is back in February.

We recently ran an A-B test

to find the perfect email length.

And here's what we learned.

Emails containing 100 to 250

words consistently got the

highest click rates above

3.5% in our experiments.

Next came emails with 99 words or less.

and emails with 250 to 500 words.

Emails over 500 words

performed the worst with

click rates under 1%.

Now you remember Neil is

just straight text.

Like this is literally his

email that he sent.

And he said he tested this with several,

like 26 different companies

in different industries.

And he just goes to show

that it's important to run

your own tests because what

works for him may not be working for you.

You know,

think about how you consume

emails and how you consume newsletters.

Do you want to be short, long?

Do you like the highly designed ones?

You know,

and also just depends on like how

you want to do it too.

All right.

As it relates to topics.

So my kind of the Venn

diagram here is like, what are the ideal,

your ideal clients problems

they're facing with?

What are you, what are they facing?

Those are some topics you can get going.

The other thing is like your

own mental health interests.

So what are you interested

in the area of mental health?

Is it neuropsychology?

Is it all this really

fantastic research that's

coming out with the brain?

Uh, is it somatic, right?

All this other research

about the mind body

connection and how people

heal from trauma.

It really has to start with

the body before you get

into the mind and all this stuff.

Um,

Could it be parenting?

Could it be something else?

I don't know.

Could it be helping veterans

recover from trauma?

Whatever your interests are

and then your ideal client

in the middle is that's

where your newsletter is going to be.

Because you want to be able

to like write about things

you're interested in, right?

It keeps you writing,

but it should be at least

addressing problems that

your ideal client is experiencing.

So there's your newsletter.

I think we talked a little

bit topics already,

but I want to share a little bit more.

So if you're a child therapist,

write about parenting or

childhood development.

If you work with trauma clients,

write or curate around that.

If you work with couples,

talk about communication and intimacy.

Maybe there's a new staff hire,

mental health awareness, testimonials,

support groups that you're starting,

mental health apps.

I'm starting to work on a

really big blog post right

now on AI tools for private

practice owners.

This stuff's coming out all the time.

Maybe there's a Q&A session.

You know,

if you have a lot of common

questions that people are

asking you in session,

you could use those to

write or you could ask

people to write in their

questions and you can answer them.

Maybe you can curate the

best mental health books

for kids or for adults or

for relationships.

People love people love book

recommendations.

You will get a lot of

engagement from that.

All right,

so the action item here is just start.

Maybe just pick the third

Wednesday of every month to

send out an email to your newsletter,

to your subscribers.

All right,

so now I'm going to be talking a

little bit how to build

your own email list and newsletter.

So I'm going to get a drink of water here,

but I'd love for you to ask

another question.

Just put it in the chat.

If you have a question,

I'd love to answer that.

And if I have a little queue in there,

that's gonna be helpful too.

I can answer a bunch at once.

So now we're gonna be

talking about like how to

build your own email list and newsletter.

It's starting to get more practical.

So we're going to be going

through is how like how to

choose an email service provider.

We talked about opt in and

consent and we're going to

talk about contacts.

OK,

that's kind of where we're at for that.

We're at for the next session or section.

All right,

let's talk about email service providers.

OK, we're talking ConvertKit, HubSpot,

ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, MailChimp,

and also adding Therassass

there on the bottom right.

Now, what these will provide,

and this is going back to

Elaine's question,

they're going to provide

you with a template builder,

an email news builder that you can use.

They're also going to be

setting you up with a sending domain.

They most likely will

connect your website domain.

Let's just say brandyourpractice.com.

This is what, or like Theris asks,

you know,

I'm going to have a separate

email domain.

It'll be like a subdomain, like Theris.

Let's just say like

replies.therasass.com or

go.therasass.com or

MailerLite will set this up.

It will kind of use your email,

your domain as like a masking,

but underneath there's a

subdomain going on.

And that's to help with

sending rates and making

sure that Google and others

will trust your newsletter

as a safe newsletter.

They will also probably act as a mini CRM.

So this is a client

relationship management tool.

So manage all those contacts.

There's going to probably be different,

depending on the plan,

there's going to be

different automations built in.

The other thing that's going

to be important to consider

is HIPAA compliance.

So if you are going to have

patient emails in there and PHI,

then you're going to want a

HIPAA compliant option.

You just have to look and

see which ones offer that.

I think ActiveCampaign does.

We do at TheraSAS,

we are HIPAA compliant as well.

All right.

So there's that.

Let's keep going.

All right.

Let's talk about opt-in consent.

So opt-in can generally be

defined as a situation

where contacts themselves

submit their email address

to an organization and have

the expectation that

they'll receive marketing

emails as a result.

Okay.

So you want consent email

providers are cracking down

on this even more.

And so what does that look like?

So this is actually a form from Therasas.

I'll zoom in a little bit here.

It says,

I understand the use of email and

SMS text messages are

inherently insecure and

thus pose a risk to the

security and

confidentiality of my

protected health information.

And I consent to Kim Matters therapist.

This is really just that.

That part is just to cover you.

But Kid Matters therapists

or staff communicate with

me via email or text message.

So I consent to that and

they have to click on that box.

So when they consent, then they're saying,

hey, you can send me messages.

They can always unsubscribe if they want.

Here's another example is you'll see here.

Let me scroll down a little bit.

is this is built on TheraSAS as well,

but you'll see a lot of forms like this.

So that get free access,

this is like consent.

Send me emails with that information,

with this helpful tool, okay?

Okay, so how do we build your email list?

So, for example, with Therasass,

I recommend people having a

button on there like that

will that inform consent,

but also you could say,

would you like to receive

our best mental health

advice through email?

And from the very beginning

of the intake form of the

client lead filling that out,

they're not even a client yet.

They're just raising their hand saying,

I'm interested in services.

You can say, hey,

would you be willing to

allow me to send you some

emails more about our

practice and offerings?

And there you go.

You can start building it.

Even if they don't become a client,

you can start building that

relationship with them.

You could use a lead magnet,

which I'll show some examples.

I'm going to be doing

another webinar on purely

just lead magnets,

ideas that you could use.

But a lead magnet is helpful

and you get consent just

like that last image I showed you.

Or you could also download

your EHR contacts if you want,

because they've already

most likely they've already

consented for you to

communicate with them

through the EHR and email.

And so you can send them

helpful information in your newsletter,

too.

All right.

Because you've waited.

Uh, thank you for waiting so far thus far.

So the bonus is 40% off Therasass.

We're running a March special right now.

The code is March 40,

and that gets you basically

four months free of Therasass.

And why this, why Therasass, I like, uh,

Therasass is because it really combines,

it can combine your intake CRM.

So you can quickly qualify

people who are raising

their hands for services.

You can quickly qualify them,

communicate with them,

see if they're a good fit.

And then they can move into

your EHR if they do become a client.

But you could also build

lead form magnets or lead

magnet forms and design

emails and send emails from Therasas.

So it really combines them

into two and then you can

integrate them so easily,

especially with that checkbox.

And we are HIPAA compliant.

And HIPAA verified.

All right, so let's,

I don't see any questions.

So I'm going to move right into the demo.

So what that means is I need

to reshare a different part of my screen.

I think it's this one here.

Okay,

so I'm gonna look over here on my

other screen for this demo.

So this is the Athera SaaS email builder,

and this is gonna look very

similar to a lot of other

email service providers as well.

Don't worry about this.

These are just instructions that I provide,

say how to use this and how

to update it and test

before sending the contacts.

But you'll see here,

you can put your logo right here.

This is a simple drag and drop builder.

So you can just move things

around real easily.

What I like about this here

is we talk about building trust at scale.

This is a custom field that

will just pull the first

name inside of TheraSaaS and say, hello,

you know, let's say, hello, Brent.

And then you can write a

little section here, a brief introduction,

and then you can sign off.

And then you have different

sections you can easily design.

Welcome a new team member,

or here's some other helpful resources.

Check these out.

So you can design a really

beautiful email.

And there's a lot of just

custom elements that you

can drag and drop in here,

call to action buttons, things like that.

OK, so yes, I can actually show this.

I forgot this.

Does their SaaS have

templates for other kinds of providers?

Uh, I am a speech and language,

but I don't have like, you could just,

you can customize this however you want.

So I, you know,

there's assets primarily of therapists,

but you can, you know, uh, you can, uh,

easily use this and

customize it for yourself

for speech and language

pathology for your services.

It's all very simple.

And I use this for a lot of my clients.

I just use a template and

redesign it for them real

quick because there's a template.

Now that you have a template,

you can send campaigns for it.

yeah the code the code again

let me set up let me throw

up my banner here there we

go I'm trying to learn the

stream yard a little bit

better so thank you uh for

asking that question

anthony I think that was anthony

Yes.

All right.

So let's go to the next one here.

So here's another example of

an email builder.

So when new clients submit, say, hey,

I'm interested in an appointment.

You can use a template like this and say,

hey, you know,

what is play therapy and

how can my child carries it

as a play therapist?

And also here,

I want you to meet the rest

of my play therapists as well.

So just another example of a

branded newsletter that you can use.

All right.

So now we're going to talk a

little bit about the form

and the consent.

Okay.

So this is a inside their

SAS and other email builders.

You're going to,

you're going to be able to

build a form on the backend

and then you're going to be

able to embed it on your website.

So this is what this looks like.

I'm going to put this link

on it in case you guys are interested.

This is a lead generator.

So this is the intake course

that I've created.

And you can just experience

that and funnel hack it if you want.

Reverse engineer it for your own practice,

how it goes.

But this is the consent right here.

Get free instant access.

Name and email address.

But it all starts with the form.

Also here,

this is a TheraSAS form that a comment,

this is a template that all

practice owners who use

TheraSAS get this form to

help qualify and communicate,

at least quickly qualify leads.

I think it's helpful.

You'll see right here,

how would you like to

receive our best mental

health advice sent to your email?

We got consent here and we

also have consent here to

email and then also to text message them.

But I also thought this is really,

this is great to,

how did you hear about us?

And you can capture referral

sources right off the top,

which is really helpful for

your marketing.

So this is how you get

consent to be able to send

emails to them.

I think that's really important.

There's a lot of people who don't get,

I get emails all the time.

I was like,

I never signed up for this email address.

I must've been on some list.

And then I hit the spam button.

All right,

let's get to the automation side

because this is where it's

really important because

you are busy practice

owners and you don't have

time to do all this.

So let me take you,

this is the backend of

Therasass and the automation builder.

So every automation is

kicked off when somebody

fills out the form that's

here for the how to convert

calls in the clients.

That's the trigger for the automation.

And then I'm going to get an

email that says, Hey,

somebody signed up for your

free calls into clients email course.

Right?

So that email goes to me.

Some other things happen on the backend.

I'll,

I'll hit them with a tag

that says this person

downloaded the course so I

can easily search them in

my CRM inside their SAS.

And then what I'm going to

do is they are then going

to get a series of emails from me.

So they're going to get the

first email right away.

I'm going to be using a

template right here.

The subject is you made a great decision.

I feel like I'm going to put a,

I'm going to put an

exclamation point there.

I'm going to hit save.

Make sure that goes.

All right, so that's the subject line.

Let me show you what that

email template looks like.

So I created this template right here.

You see the branded right here.

Let them know they're in the right place.

And I'm going to share with

them all the things that

they're going to be getting

from this email course and

bonus training and some

other teaching here.

The five essential qualities

of an intake coordinator.

So that's what they get.

This is the first email that they get.

And then there's a wait step.

They're going to wait a day

and then you're going to

get email number two.

I'm going to wait another day.

Email number three.

And you'll also see here

that there's people inside

of the funnel right now.

These are live happening.

So this person's on a wait step.

I'm going to click on this

so you can see the different email rates.

So 100% have been delivered.

81% have been open.

That's the open rate.

So that's a really high open rate.

And 18% have clicked into it.

Look, I even got some replies in there.

So that's good.

0% bounce rate.

So you can see all the

different statistics about

this right here.

You might be able to dive in even more.

So, okay.

So that is the automation behind that.

And this is how you build trust at scale.

You have an email newsletter

that helps solve a

particular problem or a

series of problems for your ideal client.

You're building that trust

and it's all automated.

So what I've done,

is when somebody submits a

new client appointment form

using their SaaS,

what I'll do then is set in

an automation email where

they get like a welcome email

And then they might get

another email that says, you know,

that might pull in a few Google reviews.

It could also then say,

here's a couple of

resources from our website.

That might be email number three,

because they're most likely

not gonna be scheduled right away.

There might be a little bit

of a wait in between.

So that's where, you know,

that's just the beginning

of how to use automation.

If you have a lead

generating PDF or a lead magnet,

you can even build it longer.

You can build a 50 day email

list or newsletter if you

want and use automation.

So that is a little bit

about newsletters and how

you can start one for your

own private practice.

Let me go back to answer any questions.

So yeah, if you have any questions,

please put that in there.

I'll put the code back up

here for Therasass.

I will also do this here.

I'll put the code in it.

So it's March 40.

I'll also go to TheraSass.com for you.

If you click on the Get TheraSass,

schedule a demo call with

me and see if we're a good fit.

I am on spring break next week.

So it might have to be a

week for the following week in April.

And then I can send you a...

Actually,

that doesn't make sense to have that.

If you're just totally

convinced that Therasass is for you,

let me share that link.

You can also shoot me an email.

It's brent at therasass.com.

But I'll send you a link as well.

If you're like, yes, sign me up.

I want that March discount right away.

So make sure you only choose one.

I'll put that link right in there.

Let's say you're the essentials.

A lot of people use the essentials.

March 40.

That will work for you.

Okay?

So that's how you do that.

Let me know questions in the chat.

Shoot me some questions if you'd like.

I'll go back to this right here.

trying to think if there's