Bodywork Buddy Blog : Are You a Victim of Your Own Email Practices?

You may be hurting your email marketing and not even realizing it. Email marketing services such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact rate and measure your email list by how many opens, unsubscribes, and spam reports you get. Anti-spam laws require that you have the ability to unsubscribe from your emails, and also that people on your list have opted in or asked to receive your emails.

If you're not doing those 2 things, you're actually not in compliance with the law. For an industry that seems so concerned about HIPAA laws (when in most cases MT's are not even considered a covered entity for that law, but that's a whole 'nother post...) it's kind of ironic that massage therapists don't seem to worry at all if they're complying with email laws.

Many massage therapists are unknowingly hurting the health of their email marketing list by doing this 1 thing:

Adding every contact from their address book to receive their marketing emails.

I know this is happening, because I receive several emails a week from therapists I've never met.

For lists I've never opted in for.

Often times from therapists who live states away from me.

I'm in their email contacts because they've used Bodywork Buddy in the past or currently, and they've just added all of their contacts to their email marketing list. Now, while I don't necessarily mind getting these emails, because I like to see how therapists are marketing themselves .... some other people are probably not going to be so understanding.

So first of all, why would you want to market yourself to someone who doesn't even live in your state? That person is likely never going to use your services.

Maybe you're thinking: What's the harm? It's easier to just import every contact than to build a list with an opt-in or to sort out who in your contacts are actual clients.

But if people aren't opening your emails, or are unsubscribing, or worse: reporting your emails as spam - it is going to hurt your email deliverability overall. Meaning that it could ultimately negatively affect the likelihood of your legitimate clients receiving your emails.

So - if you're wanting to have awesome email marketing that results in clients scheduling appointments - clean up your list to include only people who have opted in to hear from you. Do yourself a favor and:

Add an email opt-in to your website.

Add an opt-in to your health history/intake form.

Ask them at their appointments to opt-in.

Anything!

Just don't randomly add every person you've ever emailed to your list to do a blanket email for your services.

Just.
Don't.

If you read my posts, you know that I don't blog just to rant about things. I'm writing about this because I want you to be successful! <3 Ok and maybe to rant a little bit...