Posts Tagged ‘ Chiropractic email advertising ’

What is the overall theme or message you send to the public with your Chiropractic marketing? Have you ever thought about it?

I would guess from most of the Chiropractic advertising I see, that many Doctors of Chiropractic DO NOT spend a great deal of time thinking about what message they are conveying with their advertising.  This leads to sporadic spurts of Chiropractic advertising confusion.

Most Doctors of Chiropractic simply don’t know WHAT they are trying to say.  It’s not because they have nothing to say.  It’s because as Doctors of Chiropractic we know how valuable Chiropractic is and we are passionate about telling the world!  We have so much to say we try to communicate all of our messages without much thought to order or consistency.  This all leads to two common Chiropractic marketing pitfalls: inconsistency and confusion.

One of the most common Chiropractic marketing mistakes is inconsistent advertising.  Many Chiropractic practices run many different ads in an illogical order.  While the ads themselves make sense, they don’t work well with the ad that ran the day before or the week after.  For example, one advertisement promotes Chiropractic as a treatment for back pain.  The next ad might focus on nutrition.  The next ad focuses on neck pain or headaches.  Another ad might discuss the importance of children receiving Chiropractic care.  If your ads run months apart it may not be much of an issue.  However, if you run many advertisements close together this can be problematic.

I’m not saying you can’t promote all of these aspects of your practice or Chiropractic.  I’m simply saying you need to do so in a logical manner.  If you want to discuss pain and injury then by all means pick one series of ads and focus on pain and injury.  Run your 3 or 4 different advertisements about pain and injury before jumping to another topic.   Another series of ads might discuss wellness and preventative care.  If you offer unique treatment or services like acupuncture, spinal decompression or massage then discuss those in a logical order in another campaign.

With some careful attention to detail you can even work in transition phrases to help ease your audience into the next topic.  While this may seem like overkill, it sends a well organized and consistent message to the community.

The second major mistake many Chiropractic practices make is trying to send too many marketing messages in one advertisement.  We’ve all seen (and probably ran) those ads that attempt to discuss all of our Chiropractic greatness on a postage stamp sized area.  One advertisement is not the place to list all of your skills.  Listing your practice name and a bunch of phrases like nutrition, pediatrics, acupuncture, laser therapy, decompression, geriatrics, sports injuries, auto-injuries, personal injuries, orthotics and underwater basket-weaving is not effective advertising.

Consistency is key in Chiropractic marketing.  If you are one of those rare jack-of-all-trades in the Chiropractic profession, by all means promote all of the benefits of your practice.  Just do yourself a favor, and do it in a consistent manner.  One of the worst things you can do is try to promote EVERYTHING about your practice in one advertisement (or even in one ad campaign).

Start by picking the top 2 or 3 aspects of your practice and focus on promoting those in a single ad.  Once again, if you have a lot to promote break it down into different ad campaigns.  Make a list of everything you want to promote and then design individual advertisements to promote everything on your list.

Last but not least, make sure you aren’t contradicting yourself with your marketing. Are you practicing what you preach?  Are you getting adjusted? Are you taking the supplements or using the same exercises you promote to your patients?  You’d better be, or at least be prepared with a good explanation why you aren’t!

Are your advertising messages contradicting each other?  I’ve seen Chiropractic practices say one thing in an advertisement one week and turn around two ads later and say something in complete opposition.  Nothing places doubt about Chiropractic, and your practice, faster than sending contradictory messages in your advertising.

Consistency is key in Chiropractic marketing. Take the time to design a logical and well thought out marketing campaign and you have a much better chance of creating Chiropractic marketing success!

10 Tips to Streamline Your Chiropractic Patient Testimonial Videos

Like any other aspect of your Chiropractic practice, you need to streamline your Video Chiropractic Patient Testimonial process. A video patient testimonial is a highly valuable marketing tool, but obtaining it shouldn’t disrupt patient flow and other activities within your practice. Let’s look at 10 easy ways we can make the process more efficient.

1. Delegate Responsibility: Decide who will be responsible for the patient testimonial process. It’s usually a good idea to have one or two people trained and educated on the entire process. These individuals should be the only ones filming the testimonials etc. Having specific individuals responsible for the process leads to consistency and efficiency. Having 2 individuals well versed in the process allows for life to continue on in the event a staff member is ill or otherwise absent from the practice.

2. Determine who will be approached: Not every patient is going to be a candidate for a video Chiropractic patient testimonial. The ideal candidate is a happy and long term member of your practice who’s been through the acute stage of care and has decided to stay with your practice for wellness or maintenance care. A patient with an outgoing personality is always a plus as well.

Be sure to sit down in a meeting with your staff and discuss the importance of knowing who to approach.

3. Determine WHEN to approach patients: Once you and your staff have defined the right type of patient to approach, you need to discuss when, and when not, to request a testimonial from them.

If a patient is going through personal tragedy (such as a death or divorce), experiencing an acute flare up of their condition, or just disputed a bill with your office then NOW is not a good time to be asking for a testimonial from them. Knowing WHEN to ask is probably just as important to know who to ask.

4. Keep records: Make a notation of which patients have already supplied, or declined to supply, a testimonial. It’s certainly acceptable to “try again” with a reluctant patient at a later point but don’t be too pushy. Repeatedly badgering reluctant patients or constantly asking patients who’ve already supplied a testimonial is going to offend and alienate your patients.

5. Come up with a script: You need a plan and direction for the entire patient testimonial process. One great way to do this is to develop scripts. These don’t necessarily have to be rigid scripts followed verbatim by staff. Simply give your staff an idea of how they should approach patients, a general idea of what to say, and plan out the ideal patient testimonial process. If you don’t like the idea of a “script” consider this an outline or guide for the entire process.

The most important aspect of your patient testimonial script is going to be how it guides the flow of tasks. Concern yourself less with telling staff what to say and more with guiding them on the order you’d like things performed. Your script should outline where patients are taken to complete testimonial release forms and how the patient is guided through the entire process.

6. Decide on a length: Decide on a desired length for each testimonial. In general one to two minutes is usually ample time for a patient to get their point across. Anything longer runs the risk of losing the attention of the audience. Of course you can vary your requirements as you see fit, but defining a soft cap on testimonial length can streamline the process and keep patients from rambling.

Determining a limit on the length of time required of the practice to obtain patient testimonials is another great way to keep things moving efficiently. In general the entire process shouldn’t take any more than 5 or 10 minutes. Let your staff know what you expect of them.

7. X marks the spot: If you’ve decided to set aside a dedicated location for your testimonials you can further expedite the process by marking where patients sit or stand, and where cameras and lighting should be placed. Taping an “X” on the spot you want the patient is a great way to speed up positioning and camera adjustments.

You can take further actions such as permanently mounting lighting in place or mounting a camera on a tripod and preventing it from being bumped out of position.

8. Be professional: While many practices have a very loose and fun atmosphere, you should maintain a great deal of professionalism in the video testimonial process. Maintaining this professionalism will help prevent staff from going “off track” with friendly and talkative patients and will result in higher quality testimonials.

9. Thank your patient!: Be sure to thank patients for taking time to provide their testimonial. Following up with a “thank you” post card in the mail is a great way to express your gratitude.

10. Practice: Although it seems a little weird, you need to practice the entire process a few times before approaching patients. Getting together with staff and going through a few dry runs is a great way to make sure everyone understands the process and procedures. Take a lunch hour one day and run through the process with some mock patients.

These are 10 simple tips to maximize the efficiency of your video Chiropractic patient testimonial process. You and your patients are very busy. Keeping the entire process running smoothly and quickly will keep your practice and your patients happy. It also increases the likelihood that other patients will participate once they see it is quick and painless.

So now that we’ve covered the advantages and disadvantages of the Chiropractic video patient testimonial, let’s look at how you can get started.

What  exactly do you need to get started?

1. A Digital Camcorder or Mini-Cam. You may have an older tape style camcorder that you can hook up to a computer, but it will not work as well. It will require more steps to convert the video, and the video quality will be pretty terrible compared to modern digital and HD quality.

Digital is definitely the way to go here. I highly recommend a HD (high definition) camcorder. If you can’t, or won’t, afford a full blown camcorder you can purchase one of the smaller mini or pocket camcorders which are now available in HD. I’d recommend at least 720p HD quality but 1080p is better yet. You can find one of these smaller mini camcorders at your local superstore, office store, electronics store, and dozens of sites all over the internet. You can easily find one in the $100-$150 range.

One great place to start your digital HD camcorder shopping is at Amazon.com. They are probably the most trusted online store and a great source for some good deals on a huge variety of products. Use the search box below to search for digital camcorders or anything else you’re interested in. Chances are they have it!

2.  A Computer: You’re going to need to own, or at least have regular access to, a computer or laptop capable of handling some basic video editing tasks. You need the computer to access, edit, and upload the video files.  Processing, transcoding, and working with video files can be a pretty resource hogging task, so I recommend a newer computer and not the 9 year old dust box in the basement!

Minimum computer requirements will vary greatly depending on just how crazy you want to be with your video editing.   Newer Intel dual core processors, at least 160-250 GB of hard drive storage space, and 2.0 GB of memory are a decent starting point capable of handling the medium to basic video editing needs of the typical Chiropractor.

This is just  my personal opinion, but I highly recommend HP brand computers. Every HP I’ve owned has been extremely reliable. I still have one that has seen heavy daily use for 8 years!

If you are looking to purchase a laptop for your video editing, I’d highly recommend Toshiba laptops.  I’ve never owned anything else and have never had any issues. Check out some of their great deals currently available at the link below:

3. Video Editing Software: Some sort of video editing software is recommend but not absolutely required. Many of the digital camcorders come with some sort of very basic software to allow you to clip or crop out portions of your clips and combine different clips.   Many new computers also include free basic video editing software which may be enough for your needs.  These  may be all you need to get started if you don’t have the need or desire to make many custom edits to your videos.

Some of the more high quality third party video editing programs will allow you to add post production polishing touches like adding text over your video, adding background music and overlaying logos and other special effects.

4. A Clean, Attractive, and Well Lit Area for Filming. Many Chiropractors elect to dedicate a small room, or corner of a room, solely for the purposes of shooting patient testimonials. A sort of “mini studio” if you will. I think it is a great idea. Having your chiropractic video patient testimonials all shot in the same attractive area gives a sense of unity to your testimonials and looks very professional.

If you have a busy practice I highly recommend filming your video patient testimonials away from the action. Although you may be tempted to want to show how great your practice is, all of the foot traffic and patients performing active rehab exercises in the background is distracting. I’ve seen many great chiropractic video patient testimonials ruined by staff repeatedly walking in and out of frame, patients checking in and out, and other distractions.

It’s all a distracting mess that takes away from the happy patient telling the public about their success with your practice. Don’t let the procedures of your practice take away from the patient’s message. Besides, you can always shoot another video  dedicated to showing all of your practice action in detail!

5. A Website:
Although a website isn’t an absolute necessity it gives a great place to post your videos, and more importantly, more information about you and your practice.

6. A Free YouTube Account: Hosting video on YouTube is free and a MUST. It’s simply the most popular video site and allows you to create your own channel to host your videos. It’s a site with millions of members and you need to be using it to promote your videos and your practice.

7. Other Free Social Media Accounts. Once videos are posted on YouTube and/or your website or blog you need to promote them. You can link to and spread the word about your videos on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and more. Many of these sites also allow you to post your videos there as well.

8. Procedures. Like any other part of your practice you need to come up with a general game plan for your Chiropractic video patient testimonials.  Having a game plan for patient testimonials will make for higher quality and more efficient procedures.

9. Patient Permission. Many Doctors of Chiropractic overlook this. The fact is you should be getting written permission and a release form from patients. You need to be specifically getting permission to use their testimonials in your marketing. Asking them verbally isn’t enough. Some doctors choose to simply ask and get the release verbally on video at the beginning of the testimonial. While this is certainly better than not documenting the fact that you asked, I still recommend some sort of patient release form.  We’ll be posting a free sample form template soon!

10. Time and Creativity. Like anything else worthwhile; filming, editing, uploading, and promoting Chiropractic patient testimonials takes time.  You need to be willing to devote the time and effort to make your efforts successful.

11. A Written Alternative. While many of your patients are outgoing media hounds willing to jump at the chance of being on camera and potentially on TV or the internet, some are not. For a multitude of reasons many patients are camera shy and prefer to not give a video testimonial. Offer these patients a form to provide a written testimonial. A glowing written testimonial is better than none at all!

I’m often asked by Doctors of Chiropractic if I think patient testimonials are a good idea.  Done properly, I think they are a wonderful idea and one of the best ways to build social proof in the world of Chiropractic marketing. In this series of articles we’ll be discussing Chiropractic patient testimonials, video testimonials, social proof, and more. I’ll also be providing some handy tips along the way on how to best accomplish all of this. I’ll even end by providing FREE downloadable permission and release forms to allow you to legally and ethically use your patient testimonials.  So enough introduction, let’s get started!

Patient testimonials fit right into an area of Chiropractic internet marketing that has become a hot topic of late: Social Proof.  Social proof is nothing new. It’s simply a new buzz word and spin applied to an age old concept.  On the most basic level, social proof is little more than providing reviews ,testimonials, and other evidence to prove that your product or service is effective, accepted, and well liked.

Patient testimonials are obviously an ideal technique to build social proof. While print or text testimonials are effective, the best idea is always video. If you can’t or won’t work with video testimonials than you should try and at least use photos along with your testimonial.  Most people tend to dismiss plain text testimonials as simply being made up. A photo of the individual along with their testimonial is a better idea since it puts a face with the text and helps to establish a little more credibility.  The king of all Chiropractic patient testimonials is without a doubt, the video testimonial.

We have become a very visual society. We tend to place more trust in something we can see and hear for ourselves rather than simply reading.  Video testimonials are probably one of the best ways a Doctor of Chiropractic can build social proof. Although they require more work than other types of testimonials, it is well worth the extra effort.  We’ll  take a look at some of the benefits and disadvantages of video testimonials in our next post.

Are you running proactive or reactive Chiropractic internet marketing?

Chances are you’ve probably never even thought about it. Marketing is marketing right? Your attitude and approach to your Chiropractic marketing can have just as significant of an impact on it’s success as the marketing content itself.

Due to the daily time demands of a Chiropractic practice, many Doctors of Chiropractic simply run their marketing with a reactive approach. What the heck is reactive Chiropractic marketing? In the most simple terms it is when a Chiropractic marketing strategy simply reacts in response to changes.  While reacting to changes in a market is an important aspect of any marketing  program, it can’t be the sole foundation for your advertising efforts.

Don’t get me wrong, you definitely need to react to change.  You need to analyze ROI and the effectiveness of your marketing.  No one is telling you NOT to respond to change. The problem is most Chiropractors work exclusively in reactive marketing mindset. They develop tunnel vision and break things down to a black and white world consisting of one problem and one solution.   This leads to marketing that is two steps behind and can be devastating to your Chiropractic success.

Let me give you some quick examples. Let’s say you run a newspaper ad. It runs for one or two weeks with minimal results. Due to the expense and the dismal results you pull the plug on your newspaper marketing because it “doesn’t work”.

Another example can be seen with the current state of our economy in America. All across the country times are tough and things are slow. Many practices are reacting to this by simply scaling back or eliminating much of their advertising to control costs.

While the above examples may seem like perfectly acceptable ways to react to a situation, they are not proactive solutions. In actuality they are simple responses made with little thought about the future of your Chiropractic success.  At best they are short term solutions.

So what’s the difference between proactive and reactive Chiropractic marketing?  As we discussed before, reactive marketing is simply taking a black and white approach to your advertising.  You see a problem and pick an easy solution. This creates quick fixes and limited opportunity for growth. It’s patching a hole, slapping a band-aid on the situation, and waiting for success to find you.

Proactive Chiropractic marketing takes things to the next step. While it may be necessary to apply a short term fix, proactive Chiropractors are constantly thinking outside of the box. They are always looking for alternative solutions, ways to create opportunities, anticipating changes, and always thinking about the long term.

Proactive Chiropractic marketing avoids the easy knee jerk reaction to a situation.  Rather than canceling that failing newspaper ad, the proactive Chiropractor is more likely to spend time making changes to it until they find what works.  Instead of cutting back on their advertising budget during a slow economy, a proactive  practice will stay the course or even increase their advertising budget. If current advertising isn’t creating the desired results, the proactive Chiropractic practice tries new and creative marketing techniques to create success.

Are you running proactive Chiropractic marketing? Or are you simply going with the flow and reacting to change after the fact? While reactive Chiropractic marketing may work in the here and now, it can actually be a barrier to your long term success .  Now is the time to take a critical look at your Chiropractic marketing.  Stop reacting  and start creating the  success you desire!

As we were discussing in  part 2 of this series, we are intelligent enough to infer the different meanings of words when used in a different context but unique article creation software often is not.

Many of these programs create unique versions of an article simply by swapping words for their synonyms which can produce some sad content.  Let me drive my point home by examining how these unique content creators can take your content and chop it up into an ugly mess of meaningless text.

Let’s suppose you wanted to rewrite the following sentence and produce some different variations of it:

While walking the dog, Bill saw a bug and smashed it.

Now let’s say in an effort to save some of your valuable time, you simply plug this sentence into a unique content creation program or website.  For the sake of this article we will assume the only words that would be reworked would be the words “walking”, “dog, “bug” or “smashed”.

I decided to head over to one of my favorite sites, http://thesaurus.com, to pull up some common synonyms for the 4 words in our example. Here are a few examples of what I found.

• Walking: advance, amble, ambulate, canter, escort, exercise, hike, lumber, stalk, shuffle, stroll
• Dog: canine, bitch, cur, doggy, bow wow, hound, pup, puppy, mutt, pooch, flea bag
• Bug: disease, germ, virus, bacterium, failure, error, insect, malfunction, glitch, annoy, harass
• Smashed: bang, blast, clobber, shatter, pound, intoxicated

You can probably already identify the problem. Most of these sites and programs just aren’t intelligent enough to know when and where to properly make changes to content.  They will often just blindly swap out a word for its synonym with no regard for context or proper usage. The results are frequently awkward and often even somewhat comical.  Using our list of synonyms many of these unique content creation programs would alter our original sentence and create gems such as:

• While ambulating the canine, Bill saw a insect and intoxicated it.
• While hiking the bitch, Bill saw a error and blasted it.
• While strolling the fido, Bill saw a annoy and banged it.
• While shuffling the hound, Bill saw a germ and shattered it.
• While escorting the pooch, Bill saw a disease and pounded it.
• While cantering the mutt, Bill saw a malfunction and clobbered it.

While the content above is definitely 100% unique, it is also 100% useless. Keep in mind this is only one sentence.  Just imagine this mess occurring on a larger scale and garbling text everywhere within the content of that 1500 word article you wrote. Yikes! Although you may be able to get this useless drivel and a link published, it is probably eventually going to cause more harm than good. This content will be shared, discovered, and read by your prospective patients and clients.  What will they think when they read it? I’ll leave you to ponder over that question and I’ll be back to wrap things up in the next post!

Now that everyone has recovered from their Independence Day break, I wanted to take a moment to update you on some  new and exciting changes we have coming very soon at the ChiropracticPR.com blog.

We spend a great deal of time creating content and writing articles that help you market your practice via the internet and social media, but we don’t feel it’s enough.  We’d like to introduce you to products, software, services and tools that can help better manage the day to day activities of your chiropractic practice, improve the health of your patients and much more.

We’ll soon  be introducing a new category, or categories, of posts here on the ChiropracticPR.com blog.  Why? Due to the nature of our work we spend a great deal of time surfing the internet and communicating with a wide variety of companies and websites.  As a result we often encounter some very cool products, services, and websites that we want to tell other Doctors of Chiropractic about. What better way to do this than in our blog?

When we come across a cool product or service that we think can benefit you or your Chiropractic patients we’ll blog about it.  If we come across a product or gadget that is way cool we’ll post a short blurb about it on our site.

Posts about Chiropractic marketing and social media are great, but even as Chiropractors, writers, and bloggers we need to break up the monotony.  So be on the lookout for more editorial type posts, discussion forums, product ratings and reviews, and “off topic” posts.  We want to create fun and dynamic content to both educate and entertain our Chiropractic readers.

If things get too far off topic, or if we stray to far from the world of Chiropractic we’ll definitely pull the plug and go back to the basics. I sincerely doubt this will happen.  Since we have a passion for Chiropractic everything will end up being related back to our wonderful profession in one way or another.

If you have an idea for a topic, website, or tool you’d like us to blog about leave us a comment below or contact us with more information.  If you’d like us to take a look at review your Chiropractic (or non-Chiropractic) product, service, or website on our blog simply contact us with details and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Stay tuned!

-Dr. James

Pause for a moment and imagine what BJ Palmer would have done with the power of the internet. Envision the Chiropractic marketing tactics he would have employed if he had access to the entire world via instant electronic communication. Can you even fathom what BJ would have done with YouTube and Facebook? Can you imagine the insane SEO domination campaigns Dr. Palmer would have waged!? What I wouldn’t give to read BJ Palmer’s Official Blog! Just imagine what he could have accomplished with access to millions of people with a few clicks of the mouse or some simple keystrokes.

My point here is the vast majority of the Chiropractic profession is missing the boat. I’m amazed how many practices still don’t have a website. I’m even more amazed how many practices are content with using the same website they had designed in the mid 1990s. I’m probably just as puzzled and perplexed by the large number of Chiropractors who simply dismiss web 2.0 and social media as a passing fad.

Many Chiropractors are happy to dismiss the internet and social media as unimportant, a waste of time, or a passing fad. If that was true would huge corporations and fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, or Boeing even bother with a Twitter account or websites?

Wal-Mart, by the way, currently has no less than 15 official Twitter accounts and profiles in use to promote the U.S. side of their business alone! I haven’t even touched on how many major corporations and huge companies have blogs, or facebook accounts. That all seems like a lot of time, effort, and money to invest if social media and the internet aren’t beneficial forms of marketing!

Even those Chiropractic practices with a website and accounts on most of the main social media sites probably aren’t using these tools to their full potential. Chiropractic internet and social media marketing is a dynamic and immensely powerful tool if used correctly. However, a stale website or social media profile that sits without attention or updates for months are essentially as useless as no internet presence at all.

With the internet and social media, we have at our disposal the most powerful marketing and patient education venue we’ve seen in our lifetime. Ask yourself if you are using these opportunities to their full potential. What would BJ do? Would he sit on his hands and let these amazing opportunities pass him by? Would he half halfheartedly fumble together a website or blog, leaving it sit without attention, and call it good?

I’m confident BJ Palmer would tap into the immense reach and power of the internet and social media and take it to the next level. Not only would he fully utilize all of the Chiropractic internet marketing opportunities available, he would create revolutionary new opportunities for himself and our profession. BJ Palmer would have used the internet and social media to promote Chiropractic care across the globe and he would have done it in bold new ways amazing even by today’s standards.

Are you using the unique opportunities provided to you with the internet and modern technology? Are you seizing the moment and fully immersing your Chiropractic marketing plan in the internet and social media pool? If you aren’t, NOW is the time to start. If you ARE doing something, now is the time to step up and double your efforts! Yes, keeping up with the constantly changing demands of Chiropractic internet marketing is a challenge, but it’s a challenge worth meeting.

BJ was fond of the saying, “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise”. Would his attitude be any different toward Chiropractic internet marketing? The opportunities are there, we all just need to spend more time seizing them and less time making excuses.

-”Nuff said”

Now that we’ve created your email list settings it’s time to add your email addresses.  Before we get started we need to discuss what email addresses you can use in your MailChimp list.  MailChimp has a great article explaining what you can and can’t use. You can read that list here and I would NOT begin my first Chiropractic email marketing campaign without reading it.  It’s required reading!

On the most basic level you may only use email addresses the owner has specifically  granted you permission to use.  If you’ve bought the email address, pulled it from a website, or otherwise found or paid for the email address you can NOT use it.  In fact, you probably can’t even use a patient’s email address if you they gave it you on your patient intake forms.

Why not?  More than likely you never specifically stated what you would be using their email address for, and more importantly you never asked for permission to use it.  If you did, you’re fine.  However, if the patient simply entered their email address in a space on your intake forms you can’t start sending email marketing without specifically obtaining permission to do so.  Don’t panic because there’s a solution. You simply need to get permission to use the email address.  This can be accomplished with our opt in forms we’ll create later, or even a permission form incorporated within your practice. More about all of that in a future post. For now let’s see how you can begin adding email addresses to your empty list.

One of the fastest ways to import email addresses is if you are lucky enough to already have them in a Microsoft Excel file or a comma separated or tab delimited .txt file. If you do, you can simply use the “import” function or just cut and paste the email addresses from Excel. The MailChimp.com import function allows you to import your existing email address list from sources above and also from places like Google Contacts, Eventbrite, Capsule, Highrise and other sites.

To use the import function simply log into your MailChimp account, select the “Lists” tab and then under your desired list simply click on the “import” link.

If you aren’t lucky enough to have an email list setup in one of the formats discussed already, you’ll have to manually enter your email addresses. It’s a little more time consuming if you have a lot of email addresses but there’s really not a way around it. To manually enter email addresses into your MailChimp list do the following. First log in to your MailChimp.com account and click on the “Lists” tab. Next, under your desired email list click on the “add people” link. You’ll then be taken to a screen to allow you enter an email address along with the option of entering the person’s first and last name. Notice the warning that you must have permission to use the person’s email address!

Since you’ll no doubt be acquiring email addresses manually via your practice intake forms and other sources, I recommend creating a database file if you have access to Excel or a similar program. If you don’t have Excel, OpenOffice.org might be a free alternative. If you have Microsoft Office, or something comparable to the Excel program, I highly recommend you create a simple file to store all your manually acquired email addresses.

A simple one column file to store the email address would be fine. You can also create a more complex file, simply create a separate column for each additional information field you would like to keep track of (One for patient first name, last name, address, phone number etc). This file would then be a database of your manually acquired email addresses. Provided you have specifically obtained permission to use these addresses, you would then simply import them or cut and paste the list into your MailChimp list on a regular basis.

One of the cool things about MailChimp is it will automatically catch any duplicate addresses and help you automatically clean your email address list when you import or add new email addresses!

There you have it! You can now begin building your chiropractic email marketing list. In our next post we’ll create our email newsletter opt-in forms. These forms are great because they’ll automatically add your new members who subscribe to your email newsletter using these forms! In the meantime start creating those lists and database files!

Your new MailChimp email address list is setup to store a member’s first and last name, and email address by default.  If you want to store more information about your chiropractic email list members, such as their mailing address of phone number, you’ll need to add a data field to your list and create some additional merge tags. Don’t worry because MailChimp.com makes the entire process ridiculously simple.

If you aren’t already logged in, log in to your MailChimp account.  From your dashboard click on the “lists” tab. Next you’ll see all the lists you’ve created. Under the list you’d like to add fields for, place your mouse cursor over the link labeled “settings” next to a wrench icon. In the dropdown menu click on “fields and merge tags”.

You should now be at the screen below which will allow you to add data fields. You can choose to add fields to store patient addresses, phone numbers, images, dates, and more.

Click the “Add Field” button next to the green plus sign.  A list of choices will pop up.  Click the choice that corresponds to the type of field you want to add. For example the patient’s address or phone number. You should see your existing default fields (email address, last name, and first name) and then the new field you just added at the bottom.  Now click in the box that says “untitled” and change the name to a name the you will easily identify. If you just added a phone field type “Phone” etc.

The column labeled “Required?” and the last column dealing with merge tags effect things like your sign up forms you’ll create later.  If you wish to make a field required check the box next to that field.  A new subscriber will now be required to provide that information to successfully subscribe to your email list. For example, if you added a phone number field and checked the “Required?” box, everyone signing up to your email list using your MailChimp sign up form will now be required to provide a phone number to complete their sign up.

In the final column labeled: “Stick this tag in your content:” you can set up merge tags that will help automatically merge data into your content.  Don’t worry because it sounds more complicated than it is.  Basically merge tags are tags used to tell software where to automatically insert data from your email list.  Merge tags automatically store your new subscribers in your email list  and also can be used to automatically insert their name and other information into emails and other areas.

In the final column you can enter a name for the Merge Tag for the new field you just added.   This will come in handy when creating sign up forms and other content.  You can leave the default name like “MERGE3″ as is or create a more easily identifiable name such as PHONE or ADDRESS. This will be used later when we create your email list opt-in, or subscribe, forms.

That’s all there is to it! You can continue adding additional data fields or proceed if you’re satisfied.  Click here to go to Part 8: Adding your email addresses.

-Dr. James

*All screenshots above are from MailChimp.com and are used with permission.  MailChimp was created by The Rocket Science Group  © 2001-2010. All rights reserved.