The single most important thing you can do as a ‘marketer of massage’ is to grow and nurture your list of leads and clients.

The second most important thing you should do is to continually ‘follow up’ and build a relationship with your lists via your own monthly massage newsletter.

Here’s why a publishing a regular massage newsletter is so important…

1) It gives you the ability to build trust and credibility with both your leads and your existing clients.

2) It positions you as an ‘expert’ in your field.

3) It gives you a way to promote special offers to your clients that ‘call’ them into your practice, when times are slow.

4) It gives you a way to promote/sell other related products and/or services - a way to make an alternative income stream besides massage.

5) It gives you the perfect vehicle to ‘educate’ your leads and clients about the specific ways that regular massage with YOU can benefit THEM.

Plus, statistics have shown that it can take as many 7 contacts from you or 7 exposures to your marketing, before you are able to convert a ‘Lead’ into a ‘Client’.

A newsletter is the most effective way to make regular contact without feeling like you are ‘intruding’.

For those of you who don’t yet publish a newsletter for your leads and clients, it must sound like a daunting task. But the truth is, it doesn’t have to be. It can be very basic and still be very effective.

Remember, the main purpose of a newsletter is for making regular contact with our leads and clients and building a relationship with them by providing them with helpful information and at the same time making them special offers that bring them into our massage practice.

Here’s what a basic newsletter should consist of:

1) A warm, welcoming introduction. 
2) 1 or 2 short ‘content-rich’ articles with valuable health and wellbeing ‘tips’.
3) A couple of testimonials.
4) 1 or 2 promotional offers.
5) A warm conclusion that basically finishes with,

“Thanks for your support and I look forward to seeing you soon!”

That’s really all you need. Don’t worry, once you’ve read through this post, you’ll see how easy I’ve made it for you to publish your very own monthly massage newsletter.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE
For years I have been a big advocate of ‘e-newsletters’ as opposed to ‘printed newsletters’, however I have recently changed my view on this completely!
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Here’s why…the lack of ‘ DELIVERABILITY!’

The spam filters of all the major email service providers have become extremely strict due to the proliferation of unsolicited/uninvited email (i.e. spam) by unscrupulous ’spammers’.What this means is that many legitimate and ‘expected’ emails are either being blocked outright or put straight into junk mail folders, where they are highly unlikely to be seen, let alone opened and read.

So, for all the benefits of sending your newsletter via email (i.e. fast, free, convenient etc) these benefits are greatly diminished if a large percentage of your emails aren’t actually getting through. So you may think that your 100 subscribers (or whatever number you have) are getting your newsletter, but in reality it’s probably much less!

Unless you are able to track your emails, you would have absolutely no idea that this is occurring, but I bet you’ve noticed that the response to your emails is not as strong as it was before. That should give you a clue right there.

So how bad is this problem of ‘deliverability’?

Well in addition to running Touch Of Aloha, I usually have several different online projects going, and I have a different email list for each.

Over the last several months I have been paying close attention to my email stats as I track every single large emailing that I do, especially my e-newsletters.

What I have noticed is that only about 65% of my emails are getting through to my subscriber’s email accounts (the rest are blocked) and of this 65% only 50% are actually being opened.

I would guess that a large portion of the 15% that were unopened were actually delivered straight into the junk mail folder but I have no way of knowing for sure.

Early last year my email stats were all up in the 90% range and higher. So you can see that there has been a considerable drop since then.

In fact only half of all my emails are potentially being read, and I’m not the only one who is experiencing this. Several of my friends who are very experienced Internet Marketers are also experiencing similar results (or lack there of) with their email newsletters and other promotions.

The crazy thing is, everyone on my email lists are ‘double opt-in’ which means they first filled in a form on one of my websites and then they clicked on a confirmation link in an email that was sent to them, making sure that I had their permission to email them.

What’s sad is that it’s only going to get worse as spam filters get even stricter, particularly if you send attachments with your emails, which I know many of you do. I’ve received half a dozen e-newsletters from Touch Of Aloha graduates this week (please feel free to include me on your mailing lists by the way) and all were sent as attachments and all were delivered straight into my ‘junk mail’ folder.

Now I always check my junk mail folder for legitimate emails, but do your leads and clients? Maybe they do, but probably not consistently, which means that your email will most likely be purged after 7 days and they would never have known that it was there.

Even if your subscribers ‘whitelist’ your email address by placing it in their contact list/address book, there is no guarantee that your emails will get through to them.

And, even ‘ IF‘ your email actually gets through to their Inbox, you still have a high chance of being ‘lost’ in a pile of other emails and even if they do open it, you’ve got just a few seconds to hook them in to your newsletter before it gets deleted.

Then there’s that small but significant percentage of people who only check their email once a week, or once a fortnight and yes even once per month!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that email and e-newsletters as a marketing medium is dead. Far from it, but a definite trend is occurring and e-newsletter publishing is nowhere near as effective as it once was.

Considering how our newsletters are such a vital part of our ‘Internal Marketing’, we ‘ need‘ them to be as effective as possible!

So, contrary to my previous advice, I’m now recommending that you switch to publishing a ‘print’ newsletter that you post out to your leads and clients every month. The sooner you do this, the better!

You should definitely still use email, in fact you might like to send your newsletter via email AND via post. But I suggest that you focus on using email more for ’spontaneous’ special offers that you announce to your “Very Best Clients” (i.e. all of your clients!) ‘in-between’ issues of your newsletter.

I gave you an excellent example of an email I have used effectively on numerous occasions, in the post called ‘Building Your Personal Goldmine’. By all means you’re welcome to use it!

Now I know that publishing a ‘print’ massage newsletter is going to be more time consuming and will actually cost you some money in ink, paper, envelopes and stamps etc, however the real benefits of the print newsletter now significantly outweigh the ‘potential’ benefits of the e-newsletter.

For example, you can pretty much guarantee that provided you have the correct mailing address, your newsletter WILL be delivered and has a very high probability of being opened and read (i.e. not lost in a sea of other emails all competing to be opened and read).

Plus, your print newsletter has the potential of being given much more ‘attention’, often being read multiple times and by more than one person as it floats around the house from the coffee table, to the kitchen, to the bathroom etc, before being tossed out. (Yes it’s sad, but your newsletter will ultimately end up being ‘recycled’. The good news is that there’ll be a new one to replace it every single month.)

This will increase the impact of your newsletters and also the response you get from them, which is ultimately what you want.

Now as I’ve already said, a print massage newsletter will definitely be more work for you, particularly if you have a large list, but what I’ve done to help you is I’ve designed a complete Massage Newsletter Template that you can download and use over and over again.

All you need to do is customize each section of the newsletter with your own information (i.e. testimonials, offer, photo, business name and address etc) and your done.

This single page template will make it much easier for you to actually be ‘consistent’ and publish your newsletter EVERY month, which I know has been a challenge for many of you.

The reason we send out a newsletter on a monthly basis is because at the very minimum we want both our Leads and Clients to at least to be ‘thinking’ about having a massage with us at some point every single month!

The more we think about something and imagine it in our minds, the more we are likely to ‘act’ on that thought, which is exactly what we want our readers to do…take ‘action’ and book in for a massage!

Anyway, I’ve created a video for you where I take you through all the significant sections of the newsletter, explaining the marketing angles behind them, as well as how to customize each section with your own information.

You can watch the video now by clicking on the following link:

http://www.massagemarketingmastery.com/video/newsletter.html

Please Note: This massage marketing video is 18 minutes long. So make yourself a cup of tea and get comfortable!

Once you’ve watched the video, you can then download your customizable Massage Newsletter Template.
 

Here’s the Newsletter Template for Female Massage Therapists:

http://www.massagemarketingmastery.com/files/newsletter_template_female.doc

Here’s the Newsletter Template for Male Massage Therapists:

http://www.massagemarketingmastery.com/files/newsletter_template_male.doc

I hope you found this information useful and that you will make the commitment this year to publishing your own massage newsletter for your leads and clients every month. It really is the most powerful massage marketing strategy available!  

James Thomas
Marketing Director & Co-Founder
TOUCH OF ALOHA