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Read All About It: Patient Newsletters
By Pamela A. Keene

How do you create a competitive edge for your practice? How do you get new patients to come in the door and what can you do to keep them coming back?

Marketing experts agree that communication is the direct pipeline to loyalty, especially when you have a great product or service. If you can make your newsletters personal and fill them with valuable information for patients, you can increase profitability and build a practice with life-long patients.

Keeping in Touch
Many patients first come to chiropractors to solve immediate problems, such as back aches, headaches or leg stress. They may only be interested in taking care of the challenge at hand, but while you’re working on these patients, you’re also educating them about the benefits of regular care to help them hold their adjustments and move toward a healthier lifestyle.

There’s a fine line in how much you can educate—and how much the patient will retain—during office visits. You can stretch your reach and build your patients’ confidence in your abilities by reaching out to them on several layers—brochures, websites, e-mails and newsletters. These tactics can help you keep in touch with patients after they’ve left your office.

“One of the best ways to stay in touch with patients is through an informative newsletter,” says Peggy Woodruff, marketing consultant in Atlanta. “The keys to success are to commit to a regular publication schedule, keep articles brief, focus on the educational value to the patient and provide a reason for the patient to keep the newsletter for reference. It also helps if you can include some sort of offer to bring a patient back into the office or to reward for a referral.”

Patient Education
Successful chiropractic practices not only treat patients, they educate them. “Your practice is a reflection of what you teach, what you say to patients when they come in and what you provide them to help education them,” says Cheryl Langley, D.C., director of coaching with The Family Practice in Marietta, Ga., a consulting firm that specializes in helping chiropractors grow their practices. “When you can educate patients to understand the benefits of adopting a wellness lifestyle for a lifetime of care, the rewards are great.”

Eric Plasker, D.C., CEO of The Family Practice, has created a system of patient communication that can help convert new patients to lifelong patients.

“By using a system within your practice, you are setting up a way to be consistent in all areas and to reduce the stress of continuing to reinvent the wheel,” Langley says. “A system of patient education with a newsletter being one component of that process can be very productive.”

Langley recommends doing brief newsletters more frequently. The Family Practice produces a set of 26 newsletters that can be branded with each chiropractor’s personal information. These one-page newsletters are handed out to patients as they complete their visits.

“Newsletters can also be delivered via e-mail,” she says. “So many people have access to the Internet; electronic newsletters are instantaneous and cost effective. They can even be printed out and mailed to people who don’t use the computer.”

Langley endorses the “call to action” approach in any newsletter, giving patients a reason to reach out to your practice. “Use the phrase, ‘ask your doctor about X, Y and Z the next time you’re in the office,’ or tie the call to action into a significant event, such as back to school for children,” she says. “Use your newsletter to feed your patients’ knowledge base, to educate them and to provide ongoing support.”

Connectivity Makes ?Relationships Personal
CJ Mertz, D.C., founder of Waiting List Practice in Austin, Texas, coaches chiropractors across the country in ways to maximize their success.

“The No. 1 factor that has proven to have the most positive influence on practice growth is connectedness,” he says. “That’s why a newsletter works, because it acts along with other vital components as the glue to keeping everything together. People love to feel like they belong to something versus just going someplace to get adjusted.” Newsletters and other regular communication with patients keep the connections going.

“Statistically they will stay longer, refer more people, and invest more confidently when they feel part of a team, club, family or movement,” Mertz says. “A newsletter lets you tell individuals stories—the single most powerful aspect of a newsletter—and thereby inspire hundreds of people.”

Newsletters should focus on the patient whenever possible, either telling success stories or sharing information that is of value to the reader. Especially when a practice creates a larger newsletter with multiple pages that’s produced bi-monthly or quarterly, there’s room for a wide range of information.

“A quarterly newsletter written properly in this way is much more effective than a monthly newsletter that seems to be more focused on you and your practice,” Mertz says. “Make your content about your patients and give them knowledge that they can apply to their benefit.”

Patient Retention and Profitability
Whether you’re doing a brief bi-weekly quick-hit newsletter or a more detailed monthly or quarterly publication, the best way to be effective is to develop a regular schedule and stick with it.

“When a patient knows to expect communication from your practice, you’re building a strong relationship,” Woodruff says. “The timing is not quite as important as consistency. If you don’t think you can handle producing a newsletter every month the way you would like it to be, opt for every other month or once a quarter. Consider supplementing a larger newsletter with intermittent bulletins, either by e-mail or as one-page self-mailers.”

Woodruff suggests creating a format and developing a couple of regular features that patients can look forward to in each issue.

“There’s a lot to be said for good, concise communication,” she says. “You’re building relationships, but remember that unless your messages are patient-focused and provide worthwhile information from their point of view, your publications may end up in the trash.”

Mertz agrees, “The golden rule of newsletters, as it is with all patient communication, is to make the content all about them—knowledge that they can learn and apply that benefits them,” he says. “The money you invest in doing a quality newsletter is well worth it. Do the math and you will see that the value of doing a patient newsletter will far outweigh the costs in terms of good relationships, patient education and retention.”

The Write Stuff
If you’re penning your newsletter, strengthen your writing skills with these tips:

Write simple sentences. Keep sentences under 30 words, expressing one idea. Shorter sentences can lead to a newsletter that is clear and easy to understand.

Don’t forget your audience. You are writing a patient newsletter, not a peer-reviewed journal. Use simple language, and do not overwhelm your readers with clinical text.

Use an Active Voice. In active sentences the subject performs the action expressed by the verb. Typically, active sentences are shorter, more efficient and more powerful than passive sentences. Passive sentences may not read as well as active sentences.
Examples: (Active Sentence) The dog bit the boy.
(Passive Sentence) The boy was bitten by the dog.

Keep it Factual. Identify opinions in your text and source any research.