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Most therapists don't take a business class in graduate school, let alone go on to get their business degree.
Without any formal education on how to run a business (because that's what starting a private practice is), they're left to figure it out on their own. Until now.
This is Heard Business School. Hosted by Michael Fulwiler, we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy, together.
We'll see you in class.
Avivit Fisher (00:00):
I think that email marketing, for some strange reason has been extremely underutilized in mental health, in private practice. And I think if you leverage it as a private practice owner, you will be ahead of your competition. You'll be ahead of other therapists.
Michael Fulwiler (00:22):
This is Heard Business School where we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy together. I'm your host, Michael Fulwiler. In this Office Hours episode, I'm joined by Avivit Fisher, the founder of REdD Strategy, a business and marketing consultancy for therapists. In our conversation, we dive into all things email marketing, including using email to get clients how email marketing can lead to other income streams and what therapists need to know about HIPAA when it comes to email marketing. She also shares her approach to building marketing funnels that aren't dependent on social media algorithms and vision for creating sustainable client attracting strategies. Here's my conversation with Avivit. Enjoy Avivit Fisher, welcome to the show.
Avivit Fisher (01:16):
Thank you so much, Michael. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm so glad we are finally able to chat like this.
Michael Fulwiler (01:23):
I know it feels like three years in the making. We met at the Mental Health Marketing Conference. So quick plug for that event. For therapists who are interested in kind the leading conference on mental health marketing, you were one of the original attendees, right? How did you first hear about the Mental Health Marketing Conference?
Avivit Fisher (01:45):
I started REdD Strategy with the idea of serving small businesses, and then through my personal story, I decided to focus on therapists and private practice, and it was about 2017. So I had this idea, I saw how therapists present themselves. I saw the need that I thought, but I needed to kind of validate this idea. So I started searching if it exists. And at that time, not a lot of people were focusing on marketing for therapists, but I did find a conference in Nashville and I think it was the third one. And so I was like, I'll just fly. I'll just attend and see if it's worthwhile. So this is how I found out about it. I just went to the conference.
Michael Fulwiler (02:31):
That's so funny. I have a similar experience. I remember I started my business, which was a marketing consulting company for mental health companies in 2020, and I just went on Google like people do, and I searched mental health marketing just to see what was out there. So they're doing something right with SEO, right? So Mental Health Marketing Conference came up. So anyways, we're going to spend today talking about email marketing, which is something that I know you and I are both super interested in and we just get to nerd out about it, which is going to be a lot of fun. So really just at a foundational level, what is email marketing? So how would you describe what email marketing is to a therapist?
Avivit Fisher (03:17):
How would I describe it? It's a relationship building tool. That's how I would describe it, because it allows you to have sort of like a one-on-one conversation at scale, and it allows you to reach people in their inboxes. And if we all examine our own behaviors, we all check our emails all the time. So it allows people to enter their virtual home almost and talk about things that are important to them. And talk about yourself a little bit as well.
Michael Fulwiler (03:52):
I love that idea of email as a relationship building tool. I think when some people think about email, they think about it as a sales channel or a marketing channel. And yes, email marketing is a type of marketing, but it's really about building a relationship with your subscribers and building trust with them, which we're going to talk about how to do that. For therapists who are interested in getting started with email marketing, but they're not doing any email marketing today, what would your recommendation be for them in terms of how to get started?
Avivit Fisher (04:27):
I think that they probably already have the basics of an email list, right? Because they probably have a database of emails of people who contacted them for an appointment or former clients. And I would say that we can start there before anything else. We can send an email to the people whose emails we already have and ask them for a permission to add them to an email marketing list. So the reason I'm saying that you need to ask for permission because I do believe in permission marketing, permission email marketing. I don't believe in buying an email list is a good practice for email marketing or maybe before called outreach, maybe if you have a sales team, but not for email marketing. So if you are deciding to add your colleagues, your former clients, whoever contacted your practice to your email list, you need to send them an email saying that and give them an option to opt out basically. So this is where I would start really. What do you think, Michael? You agree?
Michael Fulwiler (05:40):
I love that idea. I think it's a really interesting reframe of, well, I don't do email marketing. Well, you probably are, you email right in 2025. You probably have an email address. You probably have email addresses of people who've submitted a consultation form on your website. I think any colleagues. And so just creating a simple spreadsheet, whether it's a Google sheet or Excel sheet of all of the contacts that you have, and then inviting them to join your email list, I think is a great place to start. When you talk about a marketing email tool, what are the options and what do you recommend between say, ConvertKit or MailChimp or Substack and those types of what's called a ESP email service provider?
Avivit Fisher (06:28):
Well, I'm really partial to ConvertKit just because I love it and it's convenient for both newsletters and email marketing to set up automations. I think everybody starts with a MailChimp when they start first just because it's kind of user-friendly and it has templates, and I think it used to be free accounts for up to, I don't know how many subscribers, maybe it's still the case. I just like ConvertKit for its simplicity. But also it depends how you are planning to use email marketing. If you are planning to use it for your private practice as a means to attract leads. I would go with an email marketing platform, ConvertKit, Constant Contact. I think they also are saying that they're HIPAA compliant and we can talk about it later if you want. If there's MailChimp. I mean they're all kind of similar, but if you are planning to build a brand for yourself, like an authority building tool, and if you want to send out newsletters, which I see a lot of therapists do that, and the brand that you're trying to build, maybe you're planning to write a book, maybe you are planning to be a speaker, then Substack is a great option because it's a publishing platform that's also a newsletter, I think beehiiv.
(07:57):
Yeah, so that's what I would recommend.
Michael Fulwiler (08:02):
I would agree. I think a lot of people get stuck in trying to pick the right tool. And my advice would be just pick something. I think if you're not sure which one to pick, I would probably recommend MailChimp just because in my experience, it's the easiest to use. There is a free plan, I think up to a certain number of subscribers. Similar advice I would give to therapists about building a website. Just start on Squarespace, get your website created in the future as your website grows. And if you want to invest more in SEO, you can switch to WordPress or a different platform that maybe has more features and functionality. But as you're just getting started, I would say just pick something and you can always move over later. And so don't get stuck there.
Avivit Fisher (08:53):
And to your point about Squarespace, I think they have their native email marketing feature too. So you can just use that. I mean, it's easy.
Michael Fulwiler (09:02):
I've seen that as well. With Wix and Squarespace, you can just send emails directly through their platform. So once you've decided, okay, I'm going to create a MailChimp account, I'm going to reach out to people who I already have their email addresses, ask for their permission to add them to my email list, then what?
Avivit Fisher (09:23):
Right. So after you gain permission to email, you can start email. You can decide, okay, make a decision, mental decision. I'm going to be emailing my list, let's say once a month, although I recommend a little bit more frequently, but that's the first step that I would say. So what do you put in this email? Well, you reintroduce your practice. Maybe you talk about the things that would be important for your list to know, maybe who you work with, how you help them, a little bit of a brand building exercise. Maybe introduce yourself, maybe yourself as a therapist, maybe your point of view and so on. So this would be the second step. And obviously an existing email list that is kind of not going to be enough. So you would have to build your email list. So incidentally, I'm teaching a workshop on building your first email list with hundred subscribers.
(10:20):
But I would say you kind of have to plan out your steps in a sense that, alright, think about why would people exchange their email address to be on my list? What would compel them? Because I see a lot of therapists have on their website an option to subscribe to the email list, but it's a very stay in touch, subscribe to it and you'll find out our news. That's not a good enough offer in 2025. That's why would I want to do that. So decide what you can give people in exchange. Maybe it's a video, maybe it's some kind of list of tips. It doesn't have to be complicated. It can be a PDF or something like this. Well, we call it lead magnet obviously as we know it's a freebie. But for that, you really need to understand first of all who you are trying to attract.
(11:21):
What is the ideal client? So everything goes back to the basics of who are you trying to attract to your private practice, who can afford your services, who you enjoy working with, and build your enticing freebie for that audience. And if you are not just starting out, if you have been in practice, you probably have traffic going to your website already. So what I say to people who hire me or I talk about this, so a lot of therapists do invest in SEO because SEO, everybody understands the importance of that. But I'm saying that if you already invest in SEO and you don't have a way to capture this traffic in some way, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. So the chances that somebody is going to land on your website again are low. So if they subscribe because you have this amazing lead magnet, you can keep building this relationship via email and continue the conversation. That's a very long-winded answer to your question. I hope I answered everything.
Michael Fulwiler (12:32):
No, it's great. And what you're alluding to, which is where I want to go next, is the idea of a marketing funnel. And so just at a very high level as you are explaining a potential client or even another therapist who's looking for a referral, I have an interesting client, they're not a good fit for me. So I go to Google, I'm going to search maybe anxiety therapist, New York, something like that, or whatever the search term is, they land on your site. Then what happens? And so if for a potential client, maybe I'm not ready to sign up or book a call yet, but this looks interesting to me. Oh, there's a free resource or worksheet I can download. Let me put my email in to get access to that resource. So now that person has moved onto your email list. And so could you talk a little bit more about the relationship between your marketing funnel and email and how the two work together?
Avivit Fisher (13:30):
So in my opinion, everything you're doing in terms of marketing has to lead to building your email list. That's just the truth because algorithms change on social media platforms. We see shifts with SEO obviously because of ai. So everything needs to lead to build your email list. And this is what all the experts are saying, the money's in the list. We know that I see a lot of situations where kind of therapists doing everything fragmented in some. Okay, so they have let's say an Instagram account and then maybe LinkedIn or maybe YouTube presence or an SEO. And all of this is kind of being treated as a separate thing, but we need to look at it as you creating a digital ecosystem, like a Monopoly board you building, you're buying properties on your Monopoly board, eventually all those properties need to lead to one source and that is your website where people can either book an appointment with you right away or subscribe to your email list.
(14:38):
So this is how I look at it because I think that when we say marketing funnel, it seems a little complex and a little intimidating and also then it becomes like a question, okay, well I'm on social media, how does it translate really into clients? Okay, I'm making reels, I'm posting, but what does it even mean? So I say to my clients, first of all, your bio page and it should have a link to subscribe to your email list. All your posts should encourage people to subscribe to your email list because in the email is where you have a direct conversation with the subscriber because once somebody opens an email, I mean they might be distracted by other things at their desk, but they're going to be reading it. They're going to be either reading it or deleting it, but hopefully they will be reading it.
Michael Fulwiler (15:28):
Yeah, I think what you're saying here is really important. Something that we've talked about on the show is the difference between a borrowed audience and an owned audience when it comes to marketing. And so when you're building an audience on social media, so on Instagram or TikTok, that's considered a borrowed audience because those people follow you on a third party platform and when you post something, most of them aren't going to see it. Three to 5% engagement rate on a social media post is typically pretty good, but when you email somebody, you have a direct relationship with them, right? Email's not going anywhere. And typically in a newsletter that I send, I'll get 40, 50, 60% open rate. So the likelihood that someone sees your email is much higher than they see your social media post. And so we talk about moving people from your borrowed audience to your owned audience, and a great way to do that is through resources. I'm curious, what other strategies have you seen successful for getting people from social media to just sign up for your email list?
Avivit Fisher (16:40):
The whole transition from social media to email list? That's a tough one actually, not. It requires consistency. Besides being direct and asking people, subscribe to my email list because I'm going to be sharing an interesting point of view or I'm going to be sharing a tip. You could share actually a link to your freebie, your lead magnet. I did also some cold app. I would send DMs to people when they would connect to me. Let's say on LinkedIn, I would start a conversation and send a DM and I would say, if you're interested in this topic, you actually would really enjoy my lead magnet, my marketing for therapist guide I have. So there's one. I think that the best way is actually doing Facebook ads, but that's a little bit advanced in my opinion, but that's the most effective way. But besides that, what I think is that your lead magnet should live on your Google business profile, on your social media profiles. It should be inserted into your blog posts with easy way to download. It should be everywhere so people can easily opt in.
Michael Fulwiler (17:55):
Something that you do that I've noticed is you tease your newsletter. So the day before you send it this week, I noticed you're like tomorrow in the newsletter I'm sharing and it's sort of like a cliffhanger. So then I'm like, oh my gosh, okay, so let me go make sure that I get that. So there's an opportunity to do that, right? So if you're on social media posting about what you're talking about maybe in your newsletter or that week or that month, and something that I've also started to experiment with because my newsletter is actually pretty short, is I just take the whole thing and I post it on LinkedIn, just the copy of it, and then I'll link to read the newsletter online. And so that's just another way to repurpose it as well. And then one more tactic that I would recommend here is doing webinars, like free webinars or also a really great way to build your email list. Think about what can I give people? You mentioned a video as another great example just to collect their email address, giving them some sort of value and then getting their permission to sign up for my list.
Avivit Fisher (18:58):
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned webinars because yes, there are great list building channel and especially if you partner with a company or another person who has an email list or has a big email list. So not only is it a tool to build your authority and to showcase your skills as a professional, but also it does, I mean, first of all, people who register to your webinar automatically, you get their email list. And also if you don't have access to a registration page within the webinar, you can tell people that you're going to be sharing your resource after a webinar, please leave your email address. So there are many ways to do that. Speaking of your newsletter, actually I found about it before we met in person and I was reading it and then I saw that you're coming to the mental health conference and I was like, I have to talk to Michael, sort of like-minded in that sense. So you never know, newsletter opens or emails open doors to relationships, to referral sources, to speaking opportunities to a lot of things.
Michael Fulwiler (20:11):
Absolutely. It's a way to share your ideas. I've heard this metaphor of being a lighthouse where it's like you're just sort of broadcasting your thoughts and ideas and it'll attract people who are like-minded, right? If I see something that you post and it's like, oh yeah, I totally agree with that, or even something maybe I don't agree with, there's a different way of thinking about something where it's like, oh, interesting. And then that starts a conversation too. And so I think it's just about putting your ideas out on the internet, and I think email is a great way to do that.
Avivit Fisher (20:48):
Yeah. Also, I'll say this, when you post something on social media, people start commenting. And so a lot of times people will get involved in the engagement. Social media is built for engagement, will get involved in the comments and your point of view will get lost. When you are sending an email, you can be bolder in terms of sharing your point of view, and the reader is not going to be distracted by all the comments that happen on social media. So you can hold their attention for a little bit longer, I think.
Michael Fulwiler (21:24):
Definitely. And I have people who respond to my emails of, and I'll even sometimes put that at the end, what do you do? Hit reply? And then that starts in the conversation too. There's also a benefit of that if people are replying to your emails, then it helps with your deliverability too, so it's less likely to end up in spam. So something you'll see in a welcome email when someone, if you sign up for someone's email list, they'll send you a welcome or confirmation email and it'll say, hit reply and tell me one question that you have, or something like that. And part of it is probably because interested in just engaging with their audience, but also it helps with deliverability. That is one thing that I wanted to make sure that we touched on was the welcome email and the importance of the welcome email. Could you talk a little bit about that and why it's often overlooked?
Avivit Fisher (22:18):
First of all, you want people to sign up to your email list not by accident. And so you need people to confirm that they actually want to be on it. Actually, in terms of a technical point of view, I actually do not know all the specifics. I know that all the email marketing platforms recommend to send a confirmation email and not to just sign up without confirmation. I think when you, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think when you confirm it signals to the platform or your inbox, I think that this person wants to hear from you, and so it doesn't send your message to spam. That's how I understand it, but that I'm not an expert on.
Michael Fulwiler (23:05):
Yeah, so I think there's two pieces here. So one is when we talk about double opt-in, when someone subscribes or fills out the form on your site, they get an email that's like, please confirm, and then you have to click the button. So they're basically opting in twice. So that helps to reduce spam and people like bots just kind of crawling to your website and submitting your form. But the other benefit that I see with this confirmation email is, I'm not sure about your experience, but in my experience, my welcome email when someone joins my newsletter is the highest open rate email. It's like 85% open rate, and often people send a welcome email, it'll just say You're in, thanks for confirming. But if 85% of people are opening that email, that's a great opportunity to maybe reintroduce yourself, maybe give them a next step, maybe share a resource. Something that I do is just reset expectations of you'll be hearing from me every Tuesday. This is what I talk about. If you want to book a call with me, here's the link. So I think it's an overlooked thing that I think can be a big win.
Avivit Fisher (24:15):
And actually I help my clients write a welcome sequence, I think a welcome sequence, this is what you're talking about. So yes, a welcome sequence, email sequence, what I mean by sequence, a series of about five to seven automated emails that are being triggered right after somebody signs up to your email list or downloads your freebie, and then this welcome sequence with those emails. They're kind of dripped over a certain period of time. So I like to keep them going pretty frequently in the beginning because I think that when somebody signs up to your email list, they're much more engaged, they're more interested to hear from you. And so what I see, a lot of people will send out the welcome email to just you in like you said, and then they go quiet for a week or two weeks and people forget why they signed up for your email unless you remind them.
(25:12):
Yes, I agree with you. I think it's a wonderful opportunity, first of all for a soft sale. So with your first email, the way I typically created is the first email allows people to download whatever they are signed up for, gives the next step what to expect. They know if I'm going to be emailing every day for a week, I want them to know and not be irritated. And also I'm giving a PS and I say, if you want to talk, let's schedule an appointment. So I give a link to the appointment. I did add another step to the welcome sequence that I learned, and actually I've seen great results. I learned it from somebody, an email expert. I added another email that comes out a few hours after the first email that asks a question, Hey, did you look at this freebie that I sent you already?
(26:12):
It kind of nudges people. And then I also ask a question because let's say my freebie has to do with marketing for therapists. What have you tried already? And I give a few options because a lot of times people ask a question in the email, like you said, what are the main challenges that you've had with your marketing or something like that. It's a really hard question to answer when you ask an open-ended question, it's hard to answer. So I give options and people reply to that much more. So I added this extra step literally three hours after the first email comes out, and I see much more engagement and response from that.
Michael Fulwiler (26:53):
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(27:50):
That's really interesting. I love what you're saying here. So instead of just sending one welcome email, you're talking about a welcome series. I also think that we tend to overestimate how much people are annoyed by emails. I think we feel like, I know I'm speaking for myself when I say we, it's like if I send more than one email a week, people are going to get really annoyed and unsubscribe. But I think the reality is there's so much noise and I dunno about you, but I get hundreds of emails every day. So if I got two emails from you in a day, or if I got an email today and an email tomorrow, I probably wouldn't be that annoyed by it, especially if it's something that I signed up for. And honestly, I might even appreciate the extra nudge because oh, I was going to look at that, and then I got busy and oh yeah, thanks for the reminder to go back.
(28:37):
I know that's something that we talk about at Heard when we get into tax season and there's a lot of deadlines and we need forms and things from therapists. It's like we're sending sometimes multiple emails a day, and I always worry where people are going to be annoyed, but the feedback we get is like, thank you so much for all these reminders. And so when it comes to frequency, I'm curious how you think about that, especially with this welcome series. You said five to seven, typically, is it daily? How do you think about spacing it out?
Avivit Fisher (29:06):
I think that the first three emails I sent daily and then I start to reduce the frequency a little bit to every two days, every three days. So I kind of ease out. I also have a weekly newsletter that I sent out on Fridays, so I set up my welcome sequence to never send anything on Fridays because it's hard to control when people are going to sign up. So you can set it in the settings to exclude Fridays from sending, which helps reducing the unsubscribes. I would say unsubscribes are going to happen. They're painful because we work so hard to attract new subscribers. I know that, but I have people who have been subscribed to my newsletter for years and they open every one of them.
(30:00):
And they open most of the emails and they don't get annoyed. It's really about how much value you deliver and it's about the quality of your emails. So bad email marketing in my opinion, is when you focus on yourself all the time and self-promotion, maybe sending even fluff, like maybe random thoughts or something like that. Nobody is really interested in that, unfortunately. That's the harsh truth. Things need to be relevant to your audience, and this is why I recommend starting with the ideal audience in mind. And therapists have a lot of data on what's interesting to people. They know exactly what people, what pains them, what they want, and what they expect in life. So that's a lot of information to pull from.
Michael Fulwiler (30:55):
Definitely. I think you need to earn people's trust to open your email. What I like to say is that in order for someone to take action from your email and sign up for something or buy something from you, they have to open your email first. And in order to get them to open your email, they need to expect some sort of benefit or value from it. And so if you're just sending links or self-promotion or it feels like an ad, people are not going to open it because they're not going to expect value from it. I've been writing my newsletter now for almost five years, and I have therapists who tell me, oh, I love your Tuesday newsletter. And it's like, it's not the name of it, it's Therapy Market, but I send it on Tuesdays and they just know Michael's in my inbox every Tuesday. So there's come to expect that there's going to be value, they're going to get something from it, and I think that's super important. I'm curious, what are some other common mistakes that you see or things that you would describe as bad email marketing?
Avivit Fisher (32:02):
So when it comes to, let's say newsletter specifically, I made this mistake before myself. I just wanted to overdeliver with the value. I wanted to stuff it as much as possible. So this is the resource, and what happened was, and I got this feedback from my readers, was drinking from a fire hose. It was too much. It was hard to take in and too many things to click on. And I think this is why your newsletter is so good, is because it's short. It's like bite size. It's not overwhelming. And my newsletter is a little bit different because I have a curated section, so I pull interesting things from that I find, but I reduced it significantly. Another thing that I see, I used to be a graphic designer for over a decade. I was a graphic designer, so I pay attention to design. And I would say that emails that are overly designed that have too much on the layout, too many graphics, too busy, it's harder to read them. So to me, simplicity is key. So it's better to have a bear only text email than have too many things going on at once.
Michael Fulwiler (33:19):
I totally agree everything you're saying. I agree. When you look at my newsletter, even the newsletter that we send from Heard, we have a graphic or kind of just a banner at the top so people know, oh yeah, this is Therapy Marketer, or this is the Heard newsletter. But otherwise it's mostly just plain text because you have people feel overwhelmed. I think it could be nice to include a visual, maybe like a graph or something like that helps adds value to the content. But yeah, if it's just a lot of graphics, it kind of feels like, oh, there's just a bunch of ads and that can be distracting. Something that I'm a huge proponent of, and I don't know if other people use this term, maybe I made it up, is the idea of a micro-newsletter. So it's a really short, concise newsletter, and my perspective is that when it comes to email, keep it just to one idea, one call to action.
(34:14):
What's one thing that you want people to take away and that's really going to be effective and it's going to stick. I think that's one approach. It's not the only approach. I've had success with it, I use it, but I think also what you do, and I almost think about a Morning Brew or other types of newsletters that almost aggregate and bring together resources and news, and here's what's going on. Almost like it's summarizing that those also can be effective too. So it just depends on your approach and strategy. But I would agree that less is more when it comes to email. I think the reality is that most people are reading emails on their phone, something like 85, 90% of people read email on their phone. So when you think about if I send this really long email, I'm just not going to read it on my phone, maybe I'll just kind of scroll through it.
Avivit Fisher (35:09):
So you better say something very significant if it's going to be a long email. What I'll say also about Welcome Sequence, I experimented with many different types of emails within my welcome sequence, and it's important to keep in mind the person's journey to get to know you. So I think that a big mistake that I know I made and I see other people make is keep delivering value without asking a person to take action. And by taking action, I mean schedule an appointment, book a free consultation, whatever it is, you keep delivering value is great, but ultimately email marketing exists to fill your caseload. Ultimately it exists to solve your services. So we need to know, okay, so first a person needs to know me, then they need to, like what I'm saying, they need to trust that I'm going to be the right therapist for them. And that's when you're supposed to ask for like, Hey, listen, we talked for a while. How about we talk in the one-on-one or in person or whatever?
Michael Fulwiler (36:21):
Absolutely. And it's also a great opportunity in a newsletter, whether it's on a monthly basis or more frequently to say, I have a spot open on my caseload. Here's a link to book a free consultation. Or in my group practice, we just hired an associate and they're now accepting new clients, or we just started taking this new insurance, for example. So there's opportunities to share that sort of news through your newsletter with a call to action to kind of convert people. This is bringing up for me. We also had Whitney Goodman on the show. She's sit with wit on Instagram and has an audience of 500,000 people, and she said, people don't sign up for her courses and buy her products from Instagram. It's all from email. And she's tried to promote her stuff on Instagram and just people don't buy because it's just not the behavior of people who are on Instagram. And so she's able to move people from social media to her email list, and then she'll send out an email and say, I'm offering this course, or I have this new product and you can get X off if you sign up by Y date. And so creating some urgency with some incentives there helps to drive sales. And that's been my experience in my entire career in marketing is email is the best way to drive revenue and sales and for therapists to get clients. So...
Avivit Fisher (37:45):
I've also seen marketers do a very interesting thing, but email in a signup, they also ask for, that might be not for therapists, but they also ask for information to be able to send direct mail to clients. But it's probably for therapists that would not be, it would be kind of a controversial thing. But yeah, direct mail is another way to attract subscribers to your email, for sure.
Michael Fulwiler (38:12):
Absolutely. That brings up hipaa, which is something I want to talk about. So I know when I talk to therapists about email marketing, a concern that a lot of people have is, well, what about hipaa? Is that HIPAA compliant? Do I need to worry about HIPAA compliance? And so when it comes to HIPAA and email, what do therapists need to know?
Avivit Fisher (38:30):
I think for marketing purposes, it doesn't have to be HIPAA compliant because are basically broadcasting a message unless you, I mean, you just don't share any details about any particular case or any particular client. So in that respect, no. The issue arises, and we spoke about it before, is when people decide to click on the link to schedule an appointment with you. So then, I mean this transition, I don't know how sensitive it is once they sign up on your form to book an appointment with you, obviously the communication, individual communication goes to your other email service like Hushmail or something like that. But yeah, if you want to be extra cautious, you can choose Constant Contact. I think they're HIPAA compliant, but the research I did, they're not specific email marketing platforms for therapists like HIPAA compliant, so I haven't found them.
Michael Fulwiler (39:31):
Yeah, my understanding is that someone subscribing to your email list is similar to someone following you on social media, right? They're allowed to do that. If it's someone who is a client of yours, you have your informed consent, you have a conversation with them and say, you are allowed to follow me on social media. This is what you might see. You're allowed to subscribe to my email address. I will not communicate with you on that channel or platform. You want to avoid that dual relationship. And so if you have a client who responds to your newsletter, my recommendation would be just wait. And then you could bring it up in the next session. Similar to if a client is just emailing you, unless you have a HIPAA compliant email, it's something you probably just wait and you bring up in the next session. So my general understanding is that it's really not that much of a concern. And I would say if it is something you're concerned about, just include that in your intake paperwork.
Avivit Fisher (40:30):
Yeah, I agree. I would be much more concerned about HIPAA compliant instant payment apps than email marketing.
Michael Fulwiler (40:39):
Yeah, definitely. I'm curious, what is your most controversial take or hottest take about email marketing?
Avivit Fisher (40:47):
I think it'll outlive most of digital marketing channels. I don't know if it's original or my hottest take, but that's my insight. I think that email marketing, for some strange reason, has been extremely underutilized in mental health, in private practice. And I think if you leverage it as a private practice owner, you will be ahead of your competition. You'll be ahead of other therapists. Yeah, I don't know if it's such a controversial take, but...
Michael Fulwiler (41:21):
No, I think it is. I think what I see on LinkedIn from the thought leaders, people say email's dead. There's too many newsletters. We've reached saturation, and I just don't agree with that. I think email will continue to be effective. I think that there's a lot of bad email and bad email marketing, and there's a lot of noise, especially now with a lot of AI generated content. So there's just a lot of noise. So I think if anything, it's become more difficult to stand out. But if you have clarity on who your audience is and who you're speaking to, if you're delivering value that is helping them to solve real problems, that's not going away. And I would say my perspective on that is I think email is actually still underrated. It's not.
Avivit Fisher (42:17):
I agree.
Michael Fulwiler (42:17):
Yeah. So I dunno if that's controversial. We agree on it, but I think it's still underrated.
Avivit Fisher (42:22):
I dunno, why would email be dead? Everybody's checking their emails multiple times a day. As I said, even direct mail is not dead. And that's been existence since what? The eighties? I don't know. I looked at my direct mail. I keep postcards when they're relevant to me. I don't think that it's going to be dead. Blogging might be kind of dead. I don't know. But email even that, it's hard to know. I think that if you listen to really authority figures in the marketing space, I don't know Neil Patel, like big names. They all say that email marketing, that email lists are very important. It's something that you own. It's something that's not dependent on a third party algorithm and so on. Yeah, I mean, your email cannot end up in spam, so don't send bad emails, send good emails.
Michael Fulwiler (43:20):
That feels like a great place to end here for therapists who are listening and nodding along and saying to themselves, wow, this sounds great. I'd love to learn more. How can they work with you?
Avivit Fisher (43:31):
So very easily, you can go to reddstrategy.com. That's my main website. There are many ways to work with me, three ways to work with me. You can join my community, which is reddacademy.com. You can find REdD Academy Network. I share a lot of tips and advice over there. You can download my free guide, Marketing for Therapists. You will receive my welcome sequence also with a lot of tips and subscribe to my newsletter. And if you want to schedule a consultation with me, I can help you build your own marketing funnel that is not dependent on algorithms, our algorithm changes that is evergreen, and that will keep building the pipeline of ideal clients for your practice.
Michael Fulwiler (44:23):
Amazing. Highly recommend reaching out to Avivit. That's reddstrategy.com. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Avivit Fisher (44:34):
My pleasure. Thank you.
Michael Fulwiler (44:36):
Thanks for listening to this episode of Heard Business School, brought to you by Heard, the financial management platform for therapists. To get the class notes for this week's episode, go to joinheard.com/podcast. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll see you in the next class.