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Private Duty Today
Welcome to Private Duty Today,
the bi-weekly electronic newsletter for Private Duty Home Care Leaders
from Leading Home Care ...a Tweed Jeffries company.
I'm Jason Tweed, Director of Business Development for
Leading Home Care, and Editor of Private
Duty Today.
Private Duty Today is published every
other Wednesday, and currently goes to over 7000 subscribers.
Private Duty Today is
a permission-based newsletter.
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In the past six years Leading Home Care, Private Duty
Today's publisher, has made more money using e-mail than any other
marketing tool. The best part is, it costs us less money annually
than any of our other marketing techniques.
When we started using Web-Centric Marketing, the home care industry was
just beginning to tap into web-based technology. In fact, we
estimated that many home care CEOs did not have Internet access at
their desk.
Today, the world is radically different. Conversations with
clients went from "I don't think I need a website." to
"I'm thinking of eliminating paper marketing altogether."
Today marketing messages literally travel at the speed of light.
The simplest, yet probably the most powerful online marketing tool is
e-mail. You've probably been using e-mail for nearly a decade for
personal use. It has literally changed the way we
communicate. In the 80's if you got a letter from a friend once a
month, it was probably one of your closest friends in the world.
Today it's not uncommon for individuals to communicate via e-mail with
people they've never met from around the globe on a daily basis. E-mail,
social networks, website forums and blogs have turned communication on
its ear.
Two Types of
E-Mail Marketing
In a very general sense e-mail marketing can be broken down into two
groups, individual e-mails and mass e-mails. Both of these are
going to be critical to your business going forward. If you're
like most home care companies you communicate with customers, referral
sources, and employees using e-mail multiple times per day. If
you're like many home care agencies you aren't using mass e-mails at all,
or if you are you aren't using them correctly.
We're going to look at best practices in both techniques over the next
two issues. Our first issue in April will have more about mass
e-mail marketing and e-mail newsletter marketing, but first let's tackle
individual e-mails from a marketing perspective.
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Getting
Marketing Value from Individual E-Mails
There are some simple things you can do to promote your
organization in your daily communications.
Dump AOL
-- America Online was the most prolific provider of e-mail in the world
at one time. Today other companies also provide e-mail, many of
them for free. Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google all have e-mail
addresses. So what can be bad about free e-mail ... it's the
perception. Toda, Bob@Hotmail.com or Jane@yahoo.com is a
perfectly acceptable e-mail address, but BobSmith@XYZhomecare.com looks
far more professional. Most of us have multiple e-mail addresses,
and if your e-mail address doesn't include your company's domain name
you don't create the perception of professionalism. If your
company has a website then you have access to these e-mail addresses,
even if you aren't using them.
Create a
Signature -- Almost every e-mail service and e-mail
software has the capability of creating a signature. This
signature appears at the bottom of every e-mail you send. This is
the simplest, and one of the most useful, tools for e-mail
marketing. Every time I send an e-mail it has my contact
information along with two of our web addresses. It's the equivalent
of giving someone a business card every time you meet them.
Don't Use a
Graphic Signature -- Don't make this mistake.
Many of you are using a graphic in your email signature. I like
using a logo or even a graphic of your handwritten signature, but don't
use a graphic to display your contact information. Many people
don't view their e-mail in HTML, which puts you at limited risk for
viruses. Several e-mail software packages block images from
people they don't know. If your contact information is in this
graphic, but the graphic can't be seen it's useless. Plain text
is always visible. A graphic e-mail signature is the equivalent
of handing out business cards with about 50% of them being blank.
Don't Use
Stationery -- Never use background images or
"stationery". People who use e-mail as their primary
mode of communication hate it. It causes more problems for your
recipients than the value you receive from making your e-mail
"pretty"
Use Links
-- I encourage you to create online versions of everything that you
send on a regular basis to clients, family members, referral sources or
employees. Rather than attaching a file, or worse yet, offering
to mail something to them, send them a link to the page on your website
containing the information. The more traffic your website
receives the more marketing value you receive. By sending someone
to your website they are more likely to browse. Frequent visits
to your website will reinforce your marketing messages, enhance your
credibility, and provide customers and contacts with the information
they need.
capitolizze,
good gramma & check ur speeling -- How many of you
read the title to this paragraph twice because it didn't register in
your brain the first time around? E-mail is efficient and quick,
that doesn't mean it has to be informal. You would never send a
printed mass mailing without proofreading. You would never send a
business letter or an invoice with typographical errors. I have a
good friend and client who has made over $5 million in this industry,
yet still doesn't capitalize any words in any e-mail. It's simply
unprofessional. When you use capital letters, correct spelling
and good grammar, your message is more readable. How you say
something can be as important as what you say in business.
Use It
-- Send lots of e-mails! I communicate by e-mail upwards of 20
times a day. Using e-mail makes your marketing, and other
communication, far more efficient. Most of the phone calls you
make are designed around getting one piece of information. For
these types of communication e-mail is equally fast and more
concise. Furthermore, you get the information without needing to
take notes. There are definitely times when in person or
telephone communication is best, but when e-mail is equal or better
rely on it for efficiency. One of the critical components we
teach in sales training is frequency and quantity of contacts.
The more frequently you can touch base with someone, and the more
people you can touch, the more sales you make and the better you get at
making those sales.
Next issue
we will focus on mass e-mails ... and no, this doesn't mean sending a
YouTube video of a grizzly bear jumping on a trampoline to 78 of your
friends. We will look at effective, and legal, techniques for communicating
using e-mail newsletters and small quantity mass e-mails.
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You Can
Still Register for the CHCSPTM Workshop
in Louisville on April 1, 2 & 3
 While your competitors are being
cautious, now is the time to get your sales team pumped up and moving
forward. Get a jump start on 2009 and provide that much needed training
for your sales team. Invest in the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of
your sales reps.
There
are two tracks to choose from and one is right for you.
Each day the class will come together for the opening general session.
Then the group is divided into two tracks. One track will specialize in
selling home health and hospice services to physicians and hospital
discharge planners.
The other track will specialize in selling private pay, non-medical
home care services to physicians, hospitals, other health care
providers, bank trust officers, elder law attorneys, geriatric care
managers, and other trusted advisors. Then, at the end of each day the
class comes together for the closing general session.
Whether you
represent a home health agency, a hospice, a home medical equipment
company, a home infusion pharmacy, or a private duty home care company,
there is a sales training track that will fit your needs precisely.
Participants who complete this 15-hour training program will be on
their way to earning the Certified Home Care Sales ProfessionalTM
designation. This is the only earned designation for sales
professionals in the home health care industry.
Set yourself apart
from all of the other sales reps in home care. Wear with pride the
CHCSPTM gold pin and put the CHCSPTM logo on your
business cards. Build your credibility with your current referral
sources and prospects. Be a leader in home care sales.
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Marketing
Techniques to Grow Your Private Duty Home Care Business
 Marketing to Die For ... without
Killing your Budget is a practical
marketing manual divided into 10 Rules. Each rule features very
specific action steps and first-hand examples. You'll have all
the tools, forms and ideas you'll need to launch your own expert
marketing campaigns.
Last but not least, the authors have created an appendix with weblinks
to 19 resources that will help you implement each action. They'll
even tell you the best sources to buy supplies for your
campaigns.
If you try just one of the dozens of ideas and if that idea gets
you just one new client, you've paid for this e-Book ten-fold.
This book will make a great addition to your company
library. Buy a copy for all your marketing pros.
Read more about Marketing to Die
for...
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