Podcast

Michael shares his favorite tips for improving your email communications so you look like a business superstar. Also, Allissa makes an error: Dirty Dancing was filmed in the Catskills. Not the Adirondacks.

This episode is sponsored by:

• ABMP
• The Jojoba Company

Transcript:

Sponsor message This episode is sponsored by ABMP, Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. Supporting the largest community in massage and bodywork, ABMP goes above and beyond great liability insurance to make it easier for you to succeed at what you love. ABMP membership combines the insurance you need, the free CE you want, and the advocacy and personalized customer service you deserve. Join the ABMP family and learn why more massage therapists and bodyworkers choose ABMP membership than any other association. Expect more at abmp.com.

Allissa Haines Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Massage Business Blueprint podcast, where we discuss the business side of massage therapy. I am Allissa Haines.

Michael Reynolds And I am Michael Reynolds.

AH And we’re your hosts, and we’re super glad you joined us for this, which I believe is — is this going to be our last episode —

MR It is.

AH — of 2017?

MR Last one.

AH Holy moly. Michael, what do you got planned for new year’s?

MR Nothing yet, actually. That’s a great question. We’re barely making it past planning for Christmas; so we don’t really have anything specific. We’ll probably just go to our — there’s a couple we hang out with has a couple of kids; they love playing with Eli. So we’ll probably just do that like we do every year. So nothing is set, but that is my expectation. How about you?

AH I am going to upstate New York with Dr. Boyfriend and the kids, and —

MR Lovely.

AH — his family does a game night on New Year’s Eve, and this will be my first time participating in that; so I’m super excited. And I also —

MR So what is —

AH Huh?

MR No. Go ahead. Go ahead. No. Finish your thought, because I have a question, but go ahead.

AH His family’s really sweet, and I’m excited to get to hang out with his aunts who I’ve only met once, but they’re enchanting, and I’m really excited.

MR So without going too far off on a tangent, tell me about upstate New York. I never really understand what people — obviously, it’s north of the — northern part of the state, but what is in upstate New York? Is it just —

AH Well, the Adirondacks, first of all.

MR — What is that? I don’t know what any of this stuff is.

AH So that’s a big bunch of mountains. I think that’s where the movie Dirty Dancing was placed. That’s where it was located.

MR I’ve never seen Dirty Dancing.

AH Oh. Oh no.

MR This is awkward.

AH It is. You’re going to have to see the old one with Jennifer Grey, because there’s a new one coming out soon —

MR [laughs] I have not seen either one.

AH — and maybe it already came out. Uh. You’re going to need to see it, because it’s classic rom-com with music and Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey and a little hint of politics and that guy who was also on Law and Order, but who’s name I can never remember, but I saw him in a bar in New York once. Anyhow, yeah. I know that his family is just a little bit past Albany but not as far out as Syracuse. We’ll have to have Andrea Lipomi on as a guest again and tell us more about upstate New York, because she actually grew up in Rochester. One of our friends, Bobbi, lives in Rochester; I’ve visited her. It’s a lot of interesting stuff. I know we drove by the old Beechnut baby food factory; it’s a lot of manufacturing. I think there was — an Air Force base is up there. His family actually is in Rome, New York, and there’s this amazing restaurant — it’s an Italian restaurant — oh my God, you’re going to love this. So I can’t even wait for Dr. Boyfriend to listen to this episode now. So there’s this restaurant in Rome, New York, where on the menu they have something called a used meat sandwich.

MR Huh.

AH But they don’t describe what it is, and so when I was in upstate New York where his family has a lake house — this really funky-little-cabin-on-a-lake thing — we were having this conversation, and I was like, “What is in it?”. Walt actually got on the phone called the restaurant to ask. And it is a sandwich with the meat that they’ve made to flavor spaghetti sauce. So they make this amazing spaghetti sauce, and it’s got pork and beef and a couple other things in there to flavor the sauce, and then before they serve the sauce, they pull the actual meat out, and you can get a sandwich made from this meat. And I cannot wait. We are going to stop at this restaurant, and I am going to get a used meat sandwich. So that’s my new year’s plan. [laughs]

MR Wow. Okay. I just always hear about upstate New York —

AH Circle that right back around, didn’t I?

MR — and I don’t really. I don’t really know what it is. So okay. Cool. Well, we failed at our mission of not going off on a tangent too much, but that’s okay, because I learned more about upstate New York, and I’ve never been there; so it sounds kind of cool. Is it lots of nature and stuff? Is it just kind of — you said mountains, nature, stuff like that?

AH There is. I’m not familiar enough to know. I know there’s a lot of manufacturing; I know that there’s the Adirondacks — a huge — it must be a state or national forest, I don’t know.

MR I’ll just follow your Instagram.

AH Yeah. You should definitely follow the Instagram.

MR So we probably have a topic today.

AH We do. And, Michael, why don’t you tell us what it is, because you’re in charge of it.

MR I know. It’s my turn, which is why you started things off today; so I guess I better actually have something to talk about. Today — this actually came up because there’s been a lot of chatter in our premium group about this topic, and it’s business email and, specifically, business email etiquette. Though we’re also going to have kind of a little bonus topic built in, which is kind of some tech stuff about how email is setup and G Suite and some options. Anyway, we’ll start with etiquette and go from there. Officially, we’re talking about business email etiquette for massage therapists. Again, this came up a lot recently in our premium Facebook group, and it’s just kind of one of those things that is kind of a life skill in general, if you’re in business, that we talk about sometimes.

Email has been around for a long time. It is one of those standard tools that many consider even old-fashioned now, because it’s been around so long that we’re all used to it. It’s kind of like the phone; it’s just a default communication mechanism. There are ways to be good at email in a business context and ways to be bad at email in a business context. So this kind of ties into all of the discussions we’ve had in the past about branding and how you present your business. Ideally, there are lots of different little ways that you can focus on your massage practice to improve the perception of your brand: things like your logo, your website, how you answer the phone, how you treat your clients, etc., all this stuff, how you market your business. So email etiquette is one of those little things that is often overlooked, and so I’m going to start by going over some specific points related to email etiquette and how to focus on being good at representing yourself and your business via email.

First off, just starting — the discussion in the premium group kind of started with this topic, and so this particular — or this particular point, and that point is branded business email versus personal email. The first thing I want to talk about is how to brand your email. So a lot of people in their massage practice are still using their Gmail account, their Hotmail account, their AOL account. If you send an email through the website, they’ll respond at “Hey. I’m Amy Smith at aol.com” or something, and that’s their email they’re using for business. [clears throat] Excuse me. There’s nothing disastrous about that; it works okay. But it is a way of — your business doesn’t look quite as professional as it could if you were using a professional, branded, business email account. An example would be — Allissa, I’ll use your massage practice, hainesmassage.com. Your email is allisa@hainesmassage.com. Your website is hainesmassage.com. So whatever your website address is, whatever your business name is, you want to have branded email that matches that. Again, it works fairly similar; it’s still just email, but it comes across as hey, this is a legitimate, professional, polished business that actually has really business email not just from a Hotmail account or something. That’s one of those little touches that can really improve your brand perception. And it’s actually really easy to get. We’ll talk about it more at the end, but Google business email is $5 a month for one user account, and it’s pretty straightforward; so there are easy options for setting this up.

Second, use a descriptive subject line. When you’re emailing prospective clients or networking partners or anyone, really, in a business sense — I see lots of horrible subject lines or even blank subject lines. A lot of people just leave it blank, or they put something totally — they’ll put something too short or too long. They’ll put “Hi” in the subject line, or they’ll put the entire message in the subject line, which is ugly. So use a descriptive subject line; be sure to fill it in. Put something that actually gives the person you’re sending it to context about the message. It seems like a no-brainer, but I still see so many subject lines in emails that start with “Hi,” or it just says “Question” or whatever, and it’s just — there’s not much there. You’re not really giving any context. The subject line can often make a difference between someone opening the email and reading it or just ignoring it or having it caught in spam filters. So try to make your subject line as descriptive as possible and make sure it is related to the actual topic of the message.

Next, keep your message short. I see way, way, way too many rambling emails. Stream of consciousness where you’re just dumping thoughts out, and it’s in big paragraphs. We’ve gotten to the point that people just do not read anything, and especially they do not read long emails; so this applies more so to personal direct emails. It can also sometimes apply to marketing emails through MailChimp or something where it’s a newsletter. In general, you can get away with a longer message there because it’s a newsletter, but if you’re sending personal emails, make them as short as possible. Use bullet points. I love, love, love bullet points. Bullet points really help you organize your thoughts, keeps it very actionable. Separate paragraphs — actually, you shouldn’t use too many paragraphs at all, but separate thoughts by a double space as well. So if you have three thoughts you want to get out there, one sentence is one thought, next sentence is the other thought, third sentence — separate them all with a double space; you’ve got that gap in between; it’s very easy to scan. You’ve got to think about the usability of the email when someone is reading it. Do you like to get emails that are big, scary blocks of text? Or do you like to get two or three sentences spaced out really easy to scan and something you can digest in 30 seconds? Think about how you like to receive email, and that’s how you want to send. That’ll help not only the deliverability, but also the digestibility of your email and what people actually do in terms of reading and comprehending it.

So, we have more, but I’m going to go ahead and stop there for our halftime sponsor. And, actually, Allissa, I’m going to turn the tables and let you announce our halftime sponsor. Who is it, Allissa?

AH Our halftime sponsor is jojoba.

MR Aw, thank you. That warms my heart.

AH I knew it would.

Sponsor message The Jojoba Company is the only company in the world that carries 100% first — pardon me. Oh, I want to get this right — 100% pure, first-pressed, quality jojoba. Other companies try to get as much extract as they can from that beautiful little jojoba seed. The Jojoba Company does a light pressing, that’s what’s a first press on the seed. They don’t get as much quantity, but it is, by far, the best quality jojoba available on the market. It’s a great carrier for essential oils, it doesn’t go rancid, and it won’t stain your cotton sheets. You can learn more about jojoba at massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba, J-O-J-O-B-A. Massagebusinessblueprint.com/jojoba.

MR Jojoba! Thank you. Okay. Awesome.

So next, keep your emails actionable. This is — goes along with the previous point a little bit, but it’s more about the intent of the emails. We’re all very busy. Probably everyone you’re sending an email to is very busy, whether it’s a client encouraging them to come in for a session or answering a question about a session or a networking partner or someone in your BNI chapter or something. People are just very busy; they’ve got tons of stuff fighting for their attention; so the easier you make it for your recipient to act on the message, the more likely it is you’re actually going to get some kind of outcome or result. People really want to process things that are easiest, and so if you keep your message clear and actionable, your message is going to be one of the easier things they have to do that day, which is going to be in your favor, obviously. If you need something, say it very directly and succinctly. If you have a question, ask it clearly. If you need some action, get to the point and make it easy. So one example of this would be if you are — let’s say you are in a networking group, and you want to email a potential referral partner, and your goal is to set up a small power-team to more systematically try to dig into each other’s daily process and refer to each other more actively. That’s a pretty normal goal in networking. And a lot of times I see people send an email saying “Hey. I’ve been thinking about this. It looks like you do this and I do this. I’m thinking if we were to get together and maybe open up our calendars more and really try to refer to each other more, it might benefit us. Thoughts?” You know, thoughts question mark. Okay. What do you do with that? The person reading that is going to be like “Thoughts? Oh. Okay. Whatever. But I’ve got other things that are easier to respond to.” That’s a very open ended, ambiguous, non-specific action. Instead, you might say something like “Hey. It looks like we see similar types of clients — or we see clients that overlap — maybe you’re talking to a chiro or a PT or an acupuncturist or someone non-health related; so maybe an attorney or something — and you’re saying “Hey. I think we should get together and learn how to refer to each other more actively. I would suggest we do lunch, maybe, next week sometime. I am free at these times. Would you like to get together?” That’s a very, very clear next step. Okay, yes. I can do this time or that time. Okay, yes. That sounds like a good next step. You’re moving the process forward. Be very actionable, very specific and look for that next action. That’ll increase the chances of you actually getting somewhere.

Next, include an email signature. This is a pet peeve of mine. I see a lot of times massage therapists — or people in general — will send an email, and maybe they’ll sign their name, but there’s no phone number; there’s no business name; there’s no website listed; there’s no email signature. So be sure you’re setting up your email program so that by default it includes a signature below all of your messages. That signature should include your phone number; your website address; possibly your physical address, if you want to make sure that people know where your physical address is; maybe even an online booking link or something that makes it easy for people to click and book online. An email signature not only adds legitimacy and professionalism to your communication, but it also gives people information they can use. [clears throat] Excuse me. Again, I can’t count the times I get an email from someone, and the next logical action is for me to pick up the phone and call them, but their email signature has no phone number; so I don’t know what their phone number is. I’ve got to go look it up or ask what it is, and it’s just a pain. So include an email signature. It is a very normal kind of business thing people include, and it will make you look more professional and be much more useful.

So I will pause there for the moment before we kind of freestyle into some of the more product-specific or tech stuff with email. But I want to see what you have to add, Allissa.

AH Man, I think you’ve covered it. I —

MR Okay.

AH — legit don’t have anything else to add.

MR Anything you disagree with or would add to or change?

AH Uh, no. No. You really covered it. Everything I learned about email marketing I learned from you. Email marketing was one of the very first topics I started covering when I was teaching; so we have a lot of email marketing resources as far as blog posts and also two free-to-everyone email marketing webcasts. We have the first one and the second one, and we cover some of this. I would note that it’s helpful to know the right terminology when we’re talking about emails. The first thing is a transactional email, which is what most of what Michael was talking about here, when you are emailing one person for one thing using your regular email service. Versus bulk emails, which is a whole different animal, when you use a separate service like Constant Contact or MailChimp or something to send one email to multiple people at one time. So that’s a different animal. Mostly Michael was discussing transactional emails here. So it helps to know that verbiage. I agree with all of your tips, and I don’t think that you’ve left anything out.

MR Awesome. All right. Very cool. So what else — obviously people are talking about this a lot in the premium group. And G Suite has been coming up a lot because people are saying “Hey. Should I switch from my Gmail account to a business-branded email, and what’s the advantage of that?” We’ve been having people ask about that, and I wanted to just talk a little about that. If you need a way to create business-branded email, there are multiple ways to do it. I highly recommend using Google’s business email service. We don’t officially endorse it, but I guess we kind of do [laughs]. I mean, we’re not affiliated with them at all; we just think it’s a great service. Allissa and I both use it for multiple email accounts, I know. It’s $5 a month per email box, which most people just need one; there’s no reason to have a bunch unless you have multiple therapists. It’s really easy to set up. It works just like Gmail; so if you’re used to the web interface of Gmail, your business email will look exactly the same. It will simply be — instead of allissa@gmail.com, it’ll be allissa@hainesmassage.com. You just go to — Google G Suite, S-U-I-T-E, and you’ll find a landing page to sign up online; it’s very easy. There are some tech hurdles if you aren’t used to this stuff; so if you get stuck, just send us a note, and we’ll be happy to help you out or ask in the group. That’s the email service that I recommend. Would you agree, Allissa?

AH I would. And G Suite is not just email; it’s a whole school of tools. It gets you Google Docs, which is literally word processing documents that are super easy to share. It’s Forms — so I actually use an integrated Google intake form for new patients; they fill out an intake form online. When you set up your G Suite and you use that $5-a-month paid level, you can make all your whole Google — your whole G Suite can be HIPPA compliant and highly secure. So it is a safe, legal, and secure way to store all of your business-related documents. So you get this full G Suite, and you can have an online intake form, or you can do what I’ve done, which is to take all of my old paper files and scan them and upload them as PDFs into a G Suite storage; so I no longer have two file cabinets full of paperwork, especially old intake forms. So I’ve got all that. I’ve got Forms integrated; I do all my charting within Google Suite — the G Suite now, pardon me. It used to be called Google Drive, and some part of it still is. Drive is like your big file cabinet of all the different kinds of files you have. I use a Google calendar to share a calendar with Dr. Boyfriend and all of our family stuff and kids activities. I have — my online scheduling system also collaborates with my Google calendar so that I’ve got a back-up there. If for some reason my online scheduling system has some kind of glitch, I can always see my active client schedule through my Google calendar. It’s just a really great — the whole G Suite altogether, it’s secure, it’s easy, it’s HIPPA compliant, if that’s important to you, and that’s why I use it.

MR And here’s what else I like about it: it is independent of your web host, which is a very good thing. Because I’ve seen some people that will, rightly so, want to upgrade to a business-branded email account, but they’re on, maybe, Bluehost or some other hosting service for their website, and their web host will offer email, like all web hosts do because they want to make money, and they’ll say “Okay sure,” and they basically subscribe to email through their web host. The problem with that is at some point you’re going to want to change your web host. Maybe not today, but, at some point, it’s going to happen, and then you’re going to have to migrate email somewhere else, and it’s going to be kind of messy. Besides that, most web hosts don’t offer email that’s any good compared to G Suite. So I really, really, really recommend using G Suite for your email, one, because it’s very good. It’s just like Gmail; it’s the interface you’re used to already probably and all those tools that Allissa mentioned. And then, two, it’s independent of your website, which means that even to the public it will look the same, it will look cohesive, but behind the scenes, you can move your website somewhere else if you need to without any interruption of your email, which is very important.

AH And I think there’s something to be said for using one of the more popular services in the world, because — I’m always minorly concerned “Oh what if my website crashes? What if my email crashes? What if something crazy happens?” If it happens to Google, 60% of everyone you deal with will also have it happened to them, and then no one will be mad —

MR [laughs] That’s right.

AH — if you lose a document or your email is down for a day, because it’s happening to everyone else. Sot it’s kind of like having the electricity go out on the whole block —

MR [laughs] True.

AH — everyone’s in the same boat; no one’s going to be mad at you because you didn’t get their email, because they probably didn’t either. So there’s something to be said for being in the same boat as everyone else in that regard.

MR That’s fair. That’s fair. Absolutely.

AH That’s what I think.

MR Anything else that we should cover based on the questions we’re getting?

AH No. It’s a little bit — I have set up all my G Suites by myself when I moved — I had my email set through my web host, and it probably took me about an hour. I had to read through a couple of help articles; so it was annoying. But you set up your G Suite, and then you just have to change some settings within your web host if you’ve been getting your email through them. It’s not hard. Google has help information for just about every major web host you’re going to find. Your web host probably has help information. I like to go right to Google to set mine up; some web hosts you can actually set up your G Suite integration through them. I’d rather do it through G Suite directly and not involve my web host that way, but that’s a personal decision. Whatever. If you’re paying more than 5 bucks a month then you’re doing it wrong. That’s all I have to say.

MR Yeah. Yeah. I want to end by saying all these tips, whether it’s getting the Google-branded email or the actual etiquette tips, all these are really going to help you stand out. Unfortunately, whether it’s deserved or not in individual cases, a lot of times massage therapists have a reputation for not being terribly business savvy, especially when you’re put in an environment like a BNI chapter or a group where there are lots of business-savvy people there. And so, when you make little tweaks in your processes — things like email communication, branding, etc. — when you do these things, you are coming off extremely professional, and you will stand out and be the massage therapist that people think they can rely on and depend on and want to network with and want to refer to. These are going to help your business a great deal; so I think it’s very important to focus on these things and look at little tweaks like email communication, for example. That’s what I got.

AH I can only agree. Yeah. That’s it. That’s going to wrap it up for today. A reminder that you can visit us online at massagebusinessblueprint.com for lots of free content as well as our premium member community. If you have any questions for us, you can email it to us, podcast@massagebusinessblueprint.com, and we will answer it in a future episode or a blog post. Tell your friends. Have a delightful new year. And we’ll see you next time.

MR Bye, everyone. See you soon.