The Power of Newsletters: Strengthening Patient Relationships in DPC

Today's episode of the "My DPC Story Podcast" previews the My DPC Story paid community Patreon content. Host Dr. Maryal Concepcion explores the potential of newsletters for growing and maintaining Direct Primary Care (DPC) practices. She emphasizes the importance of this communication tool in strengthening patient relationships, driving engagement, and boosting referrals. Dr. Concepcion outlines key benefits such as reinforcing unique value propositions, providing educational content, and facilitating engagement through wellness tips and updates. She discusses timelines and talks about leveraging tools like ChatGPT to streamline content creation. Key performance indicators like open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes are discussed to track newsletter effectiveness. Dr. Concepcion also provides a sample yearly content schedule aligned with national health observances and offers actionable ChatGPT prompts for generating high-quality content (CLICK HERE to get access by signing up for a FREE Patreon account. The handout is now available for BOTH the free Patreon and paid members). Whether you’re new to newsletters or looking to optimize your current strategy, this episode is packed with practical advice and resources to help DPC physicians use newsletters to enhance the patient experience and communication!

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Transcript

0:57

Hey there. My DPC story listeners. Welcome to another episode of my DPC story. Today, I'm diving into a powerful tool for your practice, and that is newsletters. I'll be sharing actionable prompts to help you better connect With your patients and community. Keep in mind. This episode is a sneak peek of the exclusive content available in the, my DPC. The story patron community. because I've gotten so many questions. As to what makes the patron episodes different from the regular feed. In addition to recordings like this. Every guest who has been on the podcast. Starting in season four. Has an extended version of their interview in the form of exclusive questions better exclusively available in the patron community as well. And there are even more recordings and behind the scenes content, you won't find anywhere else. If you're a listener who's wanted to hear updates on our previous guest. DBC doctors like Dr. Nitti. Have come onto the Patrion to give updates on their practice years later. So I do hope that you join us in the Patrion. And you can find that link in the show notes or@mydpcstory.com. Another announcement. Don't miss out on our upcoming smart goal workshop with Dr. Amber Beck and Howard and myself on January 25th. We'll help you turn your goals into smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound so whether you want to get clarity on your goals or just chat live with us. We hope to see you at the smart goal workshop. You can find all the details for that event on the eventsPage@mydbcstory.com. And there's still more. Have you checked out our new digital interactive magazine, all about DPC. It's packed with practical tips to help you grow your DPC practice, including marketing strategies, articles on goal-setting diversifying your income and more. Thanks so much for listening. Now let's get to that Patrion exclusive preview.

Maryal Concepcion: 2:42

Thank you Patreon members for supporting the work the podcast is doing. I hope you enjoyed the main feed interview this week. Now, here's some extra content recorded especially for you. Enjoy!

2:57

Today, I'm going to be talking about a tool that is often under utilized, but has immense potential for growing and maintaining your DPC practice. And that is newsletters. So if you've been wondering, should I be doing newsletters or am I spending too much time on marketing? This episode is geared towards you. I'm going to be talking about why newsletters are important, how much time you should spend on them. How to think about evergreen content, tracking your success and how to use newsletters to engage both current members and potential future patients. Plus. I'll share a sample schedule for the year to get you started. So first thing, let's start with the big question. Should you be doing newsletters? And the short answer is yes. In DPC. Your relationship with your patients is your strongest asset. You're not relying on insurance reimbursement or high patient volume to keep the lights on. You're relying on the trust and connection you have with your patients. So newsletters are direct line to your patients, even during the times of year that they might not be in your office, seeing you, or communicating with you in your portal. Newsletters can reinforce that relationship outside of the clinic and remind your members of the value they're getting. So another way to put it is you could think about a newsletter as a monthly or whatever cadence you'd like touch point with your patients. And it's a way to remind members that you're there, you care, and you've got their back. It's also a way to keep your practice top of mind for referrals. When I say this, what I mean is that people love to share good content. And when your members forward your newsletter to family and friends or the content that are, that you've linked here, newsletters that's organic marketing. You can't buy and keep in mind when a person sends to friends and family. That helps not only your practice and your community, where your practice is located, but also the movement as a whole. So three things that newsletters do really, really well. One is that they reinforce your value proposition. Like Your members likely love to be reminded of what makes your practice unique. That could be same-day visits. That could be telemedicine. Whatever it is, make sure your members know about it. Newsletters can also provide education. So say for example, your visit and I'm about to laugh here because visits can be much longer in DPC compared to a regular fee for service clinics, but still, if you want to provide extra material, that is pretty much universal for anybody wanting to learn more about, for example, lifestyle medicine. Or prevention or evidence-based health topics like vaccines. these are things that your patients would probably benefit from hearing about multiple times. And it can be a nice reminder of what conversation is still in their memory, but they're reading about it, which reinforces your care. Newsletters can also drive engagement. So whether it's scheduling a wellness visit joining a walking group, talking about seasonal allergies newsletters create opportunities for your patients to help you take action. Sharing news about your practice with their community, friends, family, et cetera. Now. How much time should you spend on a newsletter? So here's the truth. That definitely depends on where you are with your newsletter journey. A newsletter does not need to be a huge time sink. However, you're not writing a novel. You know, our attention span is much shorter than it used to be because of things like social media, easy access to texting, et cetera. So I would say aim for 30 minutes to an hour per month to write format and schedule your newsletter. And if that sounds like a lot, Think about it in terms of breaking that down into 15 minutes, to write the content and absolutely maximize your use of Chachi. GBT or any, AI that you might be using to help you in your content journey? 15 minutes to format it based on whatever CRM or email customer relations management system or email server you use. And then 15 to 30 minutes to schedule and prove it. But again, I go back to simplicity, keeping it simple, sticking to a template, whether you're using a Google BAA business suite. A separate CRM reuse the content when you can. And remember that Don is better than perfect. And with a newsletter, these are not things that, you know, you're not going to get graded on, like we did an elementary school. This is literally a quick reminder of, Hey, my doctor is still there even though I haven't seen them. And Hey, V these are useful things in this newsletter that I could use. And. It's a monthly way to get in that inbox and into the quote unquote digital face of your patient. And a note here that there is a myth that emails are dead. Emails are not dead. Many people believe that emails have lost their effectiveness, however, research shows that email marketing still has one of the highest returns on investment in the digital space. So for direct primary care practices, like ours emails provide a personal trusted communication channel. Like I mentioned, The patients do actually appreciate. Your members have chosen to invest in your practice and they want to hear from you. So remember that they want to hear from you not the marketing team of the local corporation. So when I mentioned evergreen content, this is something that translates into something that you can repurpose and reuse. Topics that don't expire. So think prevention, tips, again, lifestyle advice. FAQ's about your practice. And common health myths debunked. So, for example, why you should get an annual wellness exam. What does an annual wellness exam? Actually look like. Five tips to manage stress in your daily life. What is direct primary care and why does it matter? These are things you can use again and again, either in feature newsletters or on social media, if you repurpose the content even further beyond your newsletter and put it into your social media channel. Now pro tip on this plan, your content around national health observances to keep it relevant. So for example, February next month is heart. Health month may is mental health awareness month. Building your schedule around these themes helps you stay relevant. That's staying evergreen. When I mentioned how effective emails can be. It's really important that you think about what parameters are you going to use to track your emails, to see how effective they are. And you can also use this to compare newsletters to different newsletters. most email platforms like MailChimp or constant contact will give you metrics. And these metrics are really good to keep in mind if especially if you haven't chosen a CRM. Again, customer relations management, or if you're looking to change. So things like open rates, click through rates and unsubscribes are important data to see with each newsletter so the open rates, that's how many people are actually going to open your email? A good target is around 20 to 30%. Click through rates. How many people are clicking on those links that you put in the email itself? Two to 5% is a, is a pretty good click through rate and unsubscribes. If you're seeing a lot of people unsubscribing, this can actually clue you in, into, Hey, it might be time to adjust your content. So definitely look at these numbers, and. Have as part of your marketing strategy, ways to get this data. So these are things to just keep in mind, if you are. Wanting parameters to monitor how effective your newsletter and email campaigns are. I mentioned earlier also that newsletters can go out to your members, but they can also be used to engage. Future members. So again, engaging current members by sharing practice updates, health tips, reminders. Awesome. When it comes to new members, consider putting encouragement to your members. For forwarding the newsletter to friends or sharing it on social media. This could be done so many ways. Encouraging your members to forward the newsletter to friends or sharing it on social media can also help expand the reach of your newsletter without even having those people subscribing necessarily to your newsletter. You can consider using a referral incentive, like a free month for both the refer in the new member. So it's definitely another way to really think about driving referrals. Encouraging current members to stay engaged, attracting new members and driving referrals. Having a very clear call to action. So CTA. Like schedule your wellness visit today, share the newsletter, et cetera. Dropping in or reminder of you, your value, like unlimited visits, direct access, personalized care. However you want to word it for your community that has worked for you. In. You're buzzwords about direct primary care. And again, this is where you can use data to say like, Hmm, this one got more clicks on. You know, this term, lifestyle, wellness, whatever. Um, versus a annual wellness preventative visit, for example. Now I'm going to put this in the show notes, but definitely this is going to go through 12 months of content ideas. So don't be too intimidated. And remember, you can pause, rewind, and it'll again, be in the show notes. But when it comes to sample newsletter ideas. this is something I worked through with Chachi PT to give me some ideas based on national health observances, like I mentioned before. So for example, January the time that this episode is coming out, new year, new health goals, February heart health month, March nutrition as medicine. April stress awareness month. some people even this start thinking about allergies, pre seasonal treatment here. May women's health month, June men's health month, July skin health awareness, August back to school health. Uh, any, you know, free school offerings that you might be having collaborations you might have for vaccine clinics. September suicide prevention, awareness, October breast cancer awareness, November diabetes awareness month. December holiday health and safety, and also keep in mind other things like happy doctor's day or the anniversary of your clinic. And going back to that evergreen strategy. Having the newsletter have an extension. That's your content, but put in the social media form. Something to think about is like going back to the January idea, new year, new health goals. You can definitely work with your AI to build out. Strategies. And you can even say to your AI, like Chachi. BT, for example, free tool. You can say, I need you to compare this to. Particular industries like concierge medicine in Ohio, or something like that. So you can play around with different ideas to see if your message changes, depending on what information you feed the AI. So for January new year new health goals, have you scheduled your wellness check yet? Our members get unlimited visits and personalized care. Hashtags are important here. So hashtag new year new you hashtag DBC wellness, hashtag prevention first. This is where Dr. Aliya Guppta is excellent at talking about how she personalized her social media to her community when she was growing. And I believe it's around 20 to 30% of her practice memberships came from reaching out on social media. So other hashtags to use. Definitely you'll see this in the, my DPC story hashtags. Hashtag direct primary care, hashtag DPC, hashtag DPC doctor, um, other things that you can try or hashtag personalized care, hashtag lifestyle medicine., Now with all that talk about chat, GPT, I wanted to put in here. Three examples of chat, GPT prompts that you can use to generate high quality newsletter content pretty quickly, again, trying to stay within that 15 minutes and especially that will go faster. The more evergreen content you have. So the first one create a monthly health newsletter for direct primary care practice include an educational section on a timely health topic. A reminder of the practices, unique services, and a clear call to action for members to engage with the practice. A second example. Generate evergreen content ideas for direct primary care newsletter focused on lifestyle medicine prevention and patient education include tips that are easy to share on social media. And a third draft or referral focus newsletter for direct primary care practice that highlights the benefits of membership includes a member success story. And encourages members to refer friends with a special incentive. So that's just a really big overall rundown of newsletters. There are simple, effective way to stay connected with your members. Drive engagement and grow your practice. So start out with whatever you're comfortable with. That might be small. That might be an overall plan to help make sure that you have content for the year, but keep it consistent and watch out impacts your patient relationships and practice growth. Again, I'll put those sample newsletter schedule into the show notes along with those chats, GBT prompts. And I hope this is helpful if you've done your own newsletters for the year, Or if you have any questions. Leave me a voicemail at the contact page at my DPC story or. Put a note in the Patrion shot. And I'll look out for those there. I Thanks for tuning into this episode of my DPC story. I hope today's prompts inspire you to start or improve your practices. Newsletters, because communicating directly with your patients is such a powerful way to grow relationships and your practice. Before you go, don't forget about all the resources available to you that I mentioned earlier. If you've enjoyed the episode, there's even more waiting for you in the, my DPC story, Patrion community. With those exclusive extended interviews, exclusive full length interviews. Practice updates from previous guests. And insights to help you on your DPC journey, just like this episode. And another plug for if you're working on goals come to the smart goal workshop with myself and Dr. Amber Birkenhauer on January 25th. We'll help you turn your goals into something actionable and achievable because setting a goal is one thing, but creating a smart goal makes it real. Learn. More and sign up on the eventsPage@mydbcstory.com. And again, don't miss out on the new interactive digital magazine about DPC packed with marketing tips, goal-setting strategies and ideas to diversify your practices, income. Whether you're just starting out or looking to grow. These resources are here to support you in every step of the way. Find more about the podcast.\ Look for guests by specialty or by geographic location on our mapper find the links to sign up for the patron community. Get your copy of a magazine and sign up for the smart goal workshop. all@mydbcstory.com. And as always, if you're looking for DPC news on the daily checkout, DPC news.com.