Benefits

Newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with your clients. Sending a regular newsletter reminds people about your existence, and encourages them to call up for that long overdue treatment. Even better, a newsletter can also educate people about what conditions you treat. You’ll be amazed at how few of your clients know and understand the full scope of your work. As well as repeat bookings, a piece in your newsletter might result in a client booking for relief from headaches (as well as their usual relaxation massage); or they might recommend you to a friend with sciatica.

Planning your newsletter

So you’re convinced - a newsletter sounds like a great idea! Let’s take a few minutes to think about what you hope to achieve, and how you might do it.

• What are you hoping to achieve by sending a newsletter? Are you looking for repeat business, new clients, more referrals, or something else? The content of your newsletter will be guided by your aims. If you start out with clear goals then you can measure how well it is performing, and take steps to improve performance later if you need to.
• How often can you commit to creating and sending your newsletter? Monthly is probably ideal, but quarterly is more realistic for many of us.
• Do you have the time and writing ability to create educational pieces in each newsletter? (If not, there are other options - I’ll be covering these in my next post.)
• Do you want to include special offers and news of upcoming events etc?
• What format will you use? Do most of your clients have email, or would a traditional paper based newsletter be more appropriate? Do you have time to address and mail a traditional newsletter?
• Do you want to use photos, graphics or fancy formatting? For paper formats, you need to consider whether your word processing software can handle it, or will you need to buy a desktop publishing package? With an email newsletter, you’ll need to send what’s known as HTML format if you want to include anything other than just plain text.
• How much money do you want to spend? For a paper newsletter you need to consider the paper itself, ink (plus a printer of course!), envelopes and postage. Email newsletters are usually cheaper than paper formats depending on how many people you have subscribing. It’s also possible to send email newsletters for free using your own email program if you don’t mind a bare bones solution.

Summary

A newsletter can be a great marketing tool for your practice, as long as you have the time and money to invest in it. If you can’t commit to writing and sending a newsletter regularly, then a newsletter is probably not for you, but if you do have the time to put into it, then a newsletter is well worth the effort.

In future posts, I’ll discuss who to send to, working out what to write, as well as how to set up an email newsletter.

You might also want to check out the sample massage newsletter that Alexander discussed before.

Catherine Doyle

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Founder, Soothed - web design & online marketing for natural therapists
Editor, natural bloom - sharing the inside story on holistic health

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Tags: massage newsletter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 6:12 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.