VMP 289: Veterinary Practice Email Automation Workshop With Michael Shirley

Brandon 00:00:01  Welcome to the Venue Marketing podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your venue. Practice using digital marketing. In today's episode, we have a different kind of episode. We are doing a call with Michael Shirley and his team about how to build an email marketing system that helps to grow your practice. And so, Michael had the idea, hey, let's record a one on one session where we go through and talk about email marketing, build out some different things, and I think this is going to be a really helpful episode, because it's like a workshop style episode where we talk about how to build out, email marketing systems that are going to actually attract clients and hopefully convert them into customers. So if you're not familiar with Michael Shirley, he's been on the podcast many times. He's probably the most frequent guest that I've had on over the years, which thank you so much for being on the podcast, Michael. But, he owns Family Pet Health. His wife, Doctor Shirley, is the doctor there, and he's the manager, owner operator.

Brandon 00:00:59  I'm actually his brother Stephen, I believe is the practice manager. sorry if I don't have the rules. He's the chief empowerment officer. Is what? I think it's, role that he calls himself. But we have Michael, his, brother Stephen and Hayley. And, in today's episode, we go through building out some email automation tools. We talk about a lot of really practical things, and you get a little, peek behind the curtain to see what happens when we do strategy calls like this. So if you have any questions or you need help with anything, please don't hesitate to reach out. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I think it's really, really practical and so be sure to listen all the way through and I hope you enjoyed the episode all so much for being on today's podcast slash workshop, so I appreciate it. This is the first one. Hopefully, we do this format again sometime, but, can you just give us a quick background of who you are and how you got into, veterinary medicine?

Michael 00:01:55  Well, my name is Michael Shirley, my wife, Doctor Amy Shirley and I own Family Pet Health.

Michael 00:02:00  My New Year's resolution for 2025 was to at least tie or exceed the amount of times that Cody Kilman has been on your podcast. So. So I reached out to you, to beg you to have me back on because I think he was a one ahead of me as a guest.

Brandon 00:02:15  Actually, you're you're now one ahead of him. So you were.

Michael 00:02:19  Perfect.

Brandon 00:02:20  Great. Now, your.

Brandon 00:02:21  New Year's resolution complete.

Michael 00:02:22  I'm done on January the 2nd. with me, I have two of my, team members here from Family Pet Health. You want to introduce yourself?

Stephen 00:02:34   Sure. I will introduce myself. My name is Stephen Shirley. I am Michael's older brother. And in 2019, he asked me, hey, can you come fill in just for six weeks and help answer the phones? As I was between jobs, I was working on my master's degree and that was January of 2019. And now it's January of 2025 and I'm still here.

Michael 00:02:53  But no one is more surprised than our mother.

Stephen 00:02:55  Oh my goodness.

Stephen 00:02:58  so I, my title is Director of operations. I oversee our CSR team, customer service, handle, a lot of client relations, but also involved in working with Michael with the marketing side of life.

Michael 00:03:15  All right. And we are rounding out our trio here today.

Haley 00:03:19  We have my name is Haley Cameron.

Stephen 00:03:22  I have moved that microphone up into your face.

Michael 00:03:24  I think it's gonna okay.

Haley 00:03:25  It does say oh, it's not.

Michael 00:03:28  Way to go, Stephen.

Haley 00:03:29  Yeah. Okay. My name is Haley Cameron. I have worked for Family Pet Health for almost three years. As of next month. I kind of got into veterinary medicine on accident. I had worked at some other animal facilities like doggie daycares, boarding thing, like things like that in the past. And when I saw this position opened up, I was like, oh, I can do that. And now, almost three years later, here I am. I am a CSR. so I work primarily answering phones, doing administrative tasks like that.

Haley 00:03:57  But I also manage all of our social media and create all the content for that. so I'm excited to be here today.

Michael 00:04:04  Haley also is in charge of all of our public outreach events. So from our annual Walk My Dog challenge that we have, we may talk about that today. our grand opening. She crushed that event, like, just it was awesome. And so anything any time I have a crazy idea that is client facing or public facing, Haley is the person I go to to help us execute that. She does a great job.

Haley 00:04:30  Thank you.

Brandon 00:04:31  Very cool. Well, great. Great to meet you, Haley. I don't remember if I've spoken to you before, so I get to meet you and sorry if you have met before, but I don't think so. Well, so today, there's a few things that we could we could cover with respect to email marketing. So could you tell me real quick your major goals with respect to email marketing and also what you have in place right now?

Michael 00:04:54  So we we just, for those listening, you can join the Veterinary Leadership Book Club and do a search for the books that we've read in the past.

Michael 00:05:03  There's a book called traction that we implemented in 2022, in the spring of 2022. And it helps you really kind of take your vision and put it in paper. And then your whole team is always, we set company goals for ourselves. we have a, a five year, big, big dreams, three years, one year. And we update that one year every single year. This year we just kind of set our goals for our company for 2025. And there's a couple that we think that using email marketing can help us accomplish. One of those is to increase our dental compliance. So in 2024, we had 3.3% of our patients, received a preventative or regular maintenance dental procedure, and I think that we should be doing way more than that. And so but I don't know how much I don't know what's to I don't know what's to expect or what we should expect for a practice our size. But that is one place, that is one area that we are. We don't even have to get new clients in the door to grow our revenue and provide better care for our patients that we already have.

Michael 00:06:15  If we can get more people to do preventative dental procedures. So that's something that we have identified as a a market, like a marketing effort that we have. Another one is to make sure that our clients and our team, but really just our clients understand that we are different because we are a fear free, certified practice. We're the only fear free certified practice in our county. And what we have found is that a lot of clients come here, but they they know that we do things differently, but they didn't know that we were actually fear free certified. And so we want to make sure that we share with them that we are different and set ourselves apart from the competition. Be by the way that we provide veterinary care, and also that we can just bring awareness to our community about fear, free vet care and maybe other practices will will do the same.

Stephen 00:07:05  And then piggybacking on Michael's first point with the dental compliance, we are struggling. Just wrestling, not struggling, but wrestling with, tracking and improving our heartworm compliance.

Stephen 00:07:24  We are in Tennessee, the, you know, a deep red heartworm state that, just tracking those those prevention that goes out and improving that that rate. And that's where we're Hayley is spent a lot, a lot of time tracking and building and realizing that what we're doing is good. we, you know, industry standards. We're above industry standard, but we are not where we want to be, where we need to be. And so finding out how to integrate that again, our existing clients and reaching them and touching them with our emails to increase that compliance.

Brandon 00:08:13  Got it. that that totally makes sense right now. How do you interact with your your clients with email? as it stands.

Stephen 00:08:23  So we have, we use Pet Desk inside our clinic, and, pet Desk offers the mass messaging feature that we utilize sporadically. We have not been focused on it. And, I kind of made a point starting in September to be better and from September on. So those last 3 to 4 months, we had more emails in those three months than the previous nine months.

Stephen 00:08:57  Three times more. I mean, it was we had maybe sent one month, one email a quarter previously, and then the last quarter there was an October and November. It was once a week. and that has generally been informational. It has been hey, check out our podcast. Hey, it's Thanksgiving and remind you that if your pet does this and hey, we've got this event going on, there has been little to no call to action included in those emails. And that's where we're looking at for January for I'm sorry for 2025 starting in January. That's where we want to start including is call to action. We're still going to be informed. We are one of our core values is educate. we want to make sure that our, our clients, our pet parents understand, but then so they understand the value. Now, it's, Okay, now let's have a call to action to actually do something with the knowledge about rentals, about heartworm compliance.

Michael 00:10:07  Hayley, can you tell Brandon a little bit about how you've used email? We I don't we use MailChimp.

Michael 00:10:13  We have a paid account with that that we've been using for the whole year. And tell him how you've used email and, and that system for the what my dog challenge for sure.

Haley 00:10:23  So the main thing that I would use MailChimp for is sending out our weekly emails. Those emails would include the participants, weekly challenge updates on the total miles that I've walked, as well as a piece of information regarding either training resources or health resources provided by either us or our partner in the event. we would also use it to send out, larger messages to get people enrolled. primarily based on the emails that we have from past participants. and then we could we've also used it sparingly to do other announcements for other small events. Most of the time that would be included in the weekly email they were sent for the event. that's about the gist of it. It's primarily just those weekly emails.

Stephen 00:11:10  We kind of talk about what what my dog is and who the audience is on that.

Haley 00:11:16  To an extent, yeah. primarily our audience, we're trying to reach the past participants, but I feel like our new participants are primarily coming from, our existing clients with us.

Haley 00:11:27  And with black. It better our partner.

Michael 00:11:30  Yeah. So, so the what? My dog challenge is a week for 8 or 9 weeks, depending on the calendar year. participants register for. It's free. They they walk their dog each day, and they log their miles at the end of the week. And if you hit 50 miles, you get a Family Pet Health T-shirt, and at the end, we have awards and prizes that we give to people. So it's a community outreach events. We also participate in community outreach events throughout the year, from Trunk or Treat to the local parks and Rec has the last day of the year before they close up the pool. They have a puppy plunge and everybody comes unless their dogs swim and we have QR code, big signs that say scan to win and people will use their phone, scan that QR code, enter to win the drawing. And now we've captured their email address and we've been doing that for four years. And that's a we don't ever use those emails.

Michael 00:12:23  So that that kind of sums up where we are with our email system. What we want to do is, first off, if I'm not using the system like the paid subscriptions for things that I want to cut that out, it's an expense that I'm wasting money on. but we also we have a lot of email addresses from people that aren't clients, but how do we reach them? And then how do we use Pet Desk to have a concerted like a deliberate marketing effort with that to build compliance from the clients we already have? That pretty much brings you up to where we are right now.

Brandon 00:12:58  Got it. And that that all sounds amazing. So I think you have a lot of really good. I mean, there's just so many unique things about your practice that most people don't have in terms of like marketing collateral and things. So I think refining really how you want to engage with people is going to be the most difficult thing, because there are so many things you could do. with the pet desk emails in particular, I've not ever used Pet Desk.

Brandon 00:13:23  with that is are you able to customize messages or is it pretty templated?

Michael 00:13:27  We we can we can fully customize the messages. We are able to sort by species, gender and age.

Brandon 00:13:38  Okay, cool.

Michael 00:13:41  So if.

Brandon 00:13:42  Dogs.

Michael 00:13:43  Yeah, it's dogs, cats and other. I think maybe it's dogs. I don't remember exactly, but, Anyway, so. So it's not completely customizable where I can get it down to only sending it to Labrador Retrievers, which I could do in the PIM system, but I can't. I can sort everything in a PIM system in like an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Sheet, but then if I copy and paste those into Gmail and send it out, it's going to flag them as spam. That's been my so so that's the problem. When you have thousands of of active clients, how do you message them and get past the spam filters?

Brandon 00:14:25  Yep. Totally makes sense. And I'm so.

Michael 00:14:28  Yeah. And I'm willing to do that. I just don't know that we've gotten to the point where I felt like I only wanted to send it to German Shorthair pointer owners of neutered male dogs that were four years old, which I could I could sort down to that through my PIM system, but I don't I haven't needed to do something like that yet.

Brandon 00:14:46  Okay, totally make sense. So the thing that I would think about with, with your marketing software's is, I think that pet desk, and this was my kind of understanding that it's better for transactional emails. So reminders and, like specific calls to action for segmented lists because it has the PIMs integration. That's that's helpful. but I think that there is value in having MailChimp or a similar CRM type like database that you can engage with on, on marketing emails ongoing. So the types of emails that exist like you have, I think you should really excuse me, set up a welcome sequence. And with this first welcome sequence that's set up, I think it would probably be good to kind of reintroduce yourself. then I think you have win back sequences. So people who haven't been there in a long time that you can export on a maybe quarterly basis or something, that's the re-engagement type win. Back then you have transactional emails that can be one off based on PMS data. You might send that through a pet desk, or you could do an automation built into MailChimp and then nurturing emails.

Brandon 00:16:00  And I'd say that's more around, building relationship, providing value and education. So having a mix of.

Michael 00:16:08  All of those, yeah, I feel like the nurturing emails, that's what we've been sending, you know, like, hey, we did a podcast episode, we did a blog, you know, read these.

Brandon 00:16:18  Yeah. So I that's that's perfect. That's what most practices have are educational emails. And I wouldn't even say it's so much as nurturing because they are afraid to put calls to action in there. If you're telling somebody about something that's like amazing and then you're like, there's all the info, good luck. You're not really helping them because they can't take action on it, right? So like if I think it's good to know things sometimes, but also like, by the way, if you'd like to get this test or if you'd like to do this procedure, here's the link to book that.

Michael 00:16:46  I listened to a recent podcast that you had, and you mentioned that you didn't think and and I don't remember what the guest name was, but neither of you, I think it was the check up guy.

Michael 00:16:59  You all both said that you don't think that most clinics are sending enough emails, and I think I definitely erred in the side of send less not to annoy them. Yeah, sure. And I don't know. So I guess that's what what has research shown as far as like when do you if you're sending one email a week. Is that too much or like what do we I don't want.

Brandon 00:17:25  To overdo.

Brandon 00:17:25  It. There's not there's I don't have any specific research on it. My thing would be that if you're sending too many emails, if people think you're sending too many emails, you're not providing value. So part of that first indoctrination welcome sequence really is built around setting expectations. So if you want to send weekly emails, you send in your intro sequence. We're going to send you weekly emails. And some people think that's not enough, but other people think that's, you know, too much. If it's too much, just let us know and we'll, you know, make sure you only receive the most important updates and offers type of a thing.

Brandon 00:17:59  And so then segment that way. but I think in any relationship, right, it's you're building a relationship. So how do you want to be communicated with. And then how often should we talk basically. And then on top of that is we're going to make a promise that we're not going to just show up for the sake of being in your inbox. So if we send you something, it's going to be important and we really think that you should read it. So if that sounds good and it's fair enough, then we're excited to have you kind of as a part of our our hospital and keep an up to date. We're going to give you important details and info on, you know, things that are taking place in the community. diseases that are popping up and, and things you really need to know about. So I'd say it's more collaborative. And, you're setting that expectation so that they are hopefully looking forward to it. and I think so many people look at email like it's just a broadcasting megaphone, but I mean, email is for back and forth.

Brandon 00:18:59  So I think if you can also get people to respond back, that's going to be more like a relational tool rather than just a broadcast channel. But it's up to you and how you want to handle this. So if if somebody was on, let's say, your email list as a like kind of dream outcome, what would that look like? What would they get from being on that email list in your opinion?

Stephen 00:19:27  Well, historically it's just been the nurturing education right? Feeling feeling connected because that's a that's a core value. It's connection. and so we want our clients to feel a relationship with us, but we've never we've sometimes hate using Labella as an example. hey, there's this new drug that's available. We've done a podcast episode about it. Here's the here's a link to the podcast episode to talk about it. Here's a link to some of the data behind it. And if you're interested, give us a call, talk more about it, or to book an appointment. And that was the minor call to action.

Stephen 00:20:10  No incentive. No. If you if you reach out this month, you can get a special a discount or anything. That's generally been our types of emails.

Michael 00:20:25  Yeah. I mean for for me for emailing, emailing, Emailing an existing client is different than emailing a client that we haven't had, so being able to sort things out. If I'm going to send a general email to people that we've met at a community event, I want them to book an appointment. And so I've been one. I do not like doing discounts. I, I don't like to cheapen what we do, but, but I could see offering an incentive, like if you respond to this email in the next seven days to book a tour or schedule an appointment, it's it's some money off. we have a little bit of openings in our schedule now that I feel like we could do that. Before, I didn't want to do any discounts because we didn't have any capacity. But we've added another doctor. We're we now have five doctors, so we have a little bit more capacity to get people in when they want.

Michael 00:21:21  So but an email that's, talking about the importance of dental cleanings. you know, I want them to book an appointment. The sometimes we send out people because we're just begging them to listen to our podcast. And so.

Michael 00:21:35  I listen. Yeah.

Michael 00:21:36  I think in an ideal world, whatever the purpose of the email was and the audience, it would be different for every single one of those.

Stephen 00:21:44  Yeah. Again, going back to the pet Desk emails, those are our existing clients. There is no need to win them in. We might be trying to encourage them for additional services like dental or heartworm compliance, but in general it's just maintaining the connection. The the walk my dog with numerous people who aren't clients. The entries in our scan to win from the general public. These are people who are not clients. That's a whole different email structure.

Michael 00:22:21  Yeah, the emails that we send to new puppy owners, I just want them to come to their next appointment and complete their series of initial vaccinations.

Brandon 00:22:29  Got it totally makes sense.

Brandon 00:22:31  So one thing that I think would be, I think if you start with an indoctrination sequence, they'll get people on board with what you're going to be talking about, why it's important. And, if you can provide some type of additional benefit immediately, in that email that gets them to open it, sets an open loop so that they are going to basically complete the first series. I think a good length of emails for an indoctrination welcome sequence is between 3 and 5. I'd probably go closer to five. And so when somebody opts in, they are hyperactive. Typically they've just been there. The open rates are much higher on new subscribers than they are on old subscribers. So I think because you haven't been sending out regular emails all the time, basically sending this indoctrination sequence to everybody, both new clients and former clients. I think a lot of times practices get into the habit of thinking like they're an existing client. They already know everything that we offer. They know that we're fear free certified. They know why that's important.

Brandon 00:23:35  They know that we do dentistry. They know that we have ultrasound. They know. But in reality, people don't know or they need to be reminded. And so that recency bias helps to increase compliance. And then it also lets you deliver value and really get into explaining why that's valuable. so I think most pet owners don't know the value specifically of dentistry with respect to quality of life, and that it is probably one of the most important aspects of preventative care that improves quality of life over a pet's lifespan. So, I think the the first email that you'd want to send would be a here's kind of the whole suite of things that we offer our focus on you, on fear free, why that's important to us. Here's what we're going to be delivering through our emails. Here's what you can expect. So it's important that you be sure to open the emails. And by the way, tomorrow we're going to be sending you something that's pretty amazing. So be sure to open it. So it's an open loop.

Brandon 00:24:41  It builds in anticipation for the next email and helps to get people on board with, you know, being, you know, excited to.

Michael 00:24:55  Engage.

Brandon 00:24:55  With your engage. Exactly. Yeah.

Michael 00:24:58  I was thinking like we could offer care coins like open this email and respond or click here to get some free care coins on your account. We have a rewards program through the Pet Desk app. We call it the Critter Club, and we give care coins for every for every dollar they spend, they get some care coins. We could give them some free care coins or something because they have they they can only use those here. So they have to come in to the office to redeem those.

Brandon 00:25:24  But I mean, there's other things that you could do too, so that is awesome. Coins are fantastic and rewards programs like doubling the rewards from their last visit or something like we're, you know, giving you something. But if you have openings and a lot of practices have openings right now, and I'm sure there's probably time slots that are least less popular if you just reserve that time slot for like, your email specialist.

Brandon 00:25:45  So like if you said in the next email, we have a appointment slot that we've reserved just for our email subscribers, and there's only one special link for it. So you have to that's cool. Basically, open your email, but you get a special time that's open every day. So if you need something, we'll fit you in at this time. Do you, and.

Michael 00:26:03  Do you give them the prom ones that are always full, like as a special? We reserved the 5:00 appointment on Friday for our email people. Or do you.

Brandon 00:26:13  Just like your 11.

Michael 00:26:15  The less likely. Yeah.

Brandon 00:26:17  Yeah, I'd say yeah. Whatever you want to test. I mean, if you make it the prime real estate, it's going to be more valuable. But, by the same token, it just giving them something and saying, this is our email slot. It is the 11 to 1130 appointment time. and if you need something, it's here for you. yeah. And I think that would be something that people would probably just be like, wow, that's that's pretty cool.

Brandon 00:26:46  and it doesn't cost anything. It gives additional value because it's, providing exclusivity and it's there for them if they need it. but it also can create urgency, too, because you say, you know, all of our other email subscribers also have access to this. So if you need it, be sure to, to book it. yeah.

Michael 00:27:05  I like that idea.

Brandon 00:27:05  But that's, that's like something that you could do with I'm going to be using ChatGPT to help you guys write some of these things. but things that give, I basically in the prompt I talked about, family, pet health. What makes you different, what you really want to focus on. So like here's a summary. So Family Pet Health is a free, fear free, certified practice dedicated to delivering high quality medicine and exceptional care. We emphasize the importance of preventative care, such as dental and heartworm compliance, to enhance the quality of life and longevity of pets. Our mission is to partner with pet parents in the community, fostering strong relationships to provide compassionate, comprehensive, and remarkable service for every pet.

Brandon 00:27:50  Anything you'd want to add to that kind of major?

Michael 00:27:57  Listen to the Family Pet podcast. No, I don't know. I think that sounds pretty. Yeah, that sounds good.

Brandon 00:28:05  Okay.

Michael 00:28:08  With with it sounds like it could probably be for it, except that it mentions Fear free. It sounds like it probably could be used for other practices too.

Brandon 00:28:18  I, I think so, they would say that, but I don't think that they would actually live it. And so. Oh, gotcha. People say community stuff. Nobody does community events like you guys do. for sure. you're constantly doing collaborations, doing community outreach. So, like the level of living it is actually when people most people write it, they just say it and they don't do it. So I think that's the problem. But since you're doing it, it's going to come through. And so and going back to like not not doing discounting, I think in terms of delivering value. So like things that people actually value, typically exclusivity is something that's valued.

Brandon 00:29:11  reducing the effort that it takes to achieve an outcome is something that increases value. reducing the time that it takes to increase, an to achieve an outcome increases value. And then anything that can decrease cost, whether that's time, money, any kind of resources. if you make it easy for people, it makes the value go up. So one of those elements is cost, right. Because that's the easiest way to measure value. But if we're trying to be truly unique, we need to explain what goes into, you know, making the sausage basically. So give people a peek behind the curtain. So with this email, I think this is a good one to send. So it's welcome to the family. And I think trying to build people into your practice with feeling like they're part of the family because it's family pet health, I think that's really good. And you're very hospitable and open. your practice is beautiful. You have great staff and, just a lot of really good things going for you.

Brandon 00:30:17  So, I think something like this would probably be pretty good. And you can edit it down, but, you know, welcome to Family Pet Health. We're thrilled to have you and your furry, feathered or scaly friend as part of our family at our practice, we believe it's in more than just pet care. We believe in building partnership with you to give your pet the happiest, healthiest life possible. As a fear free, certified clinic, your pet's comfort and well-being will always be our top priority. Whether it's routine wellness, visit dental care so important for their overall health or advice on preventative measures like heartworm. We are here to provide the kind of care that keeps tails wagging and spirits high. Here's what you can expect from us moving forward. Weekly updates and tips. Every week we'll send you a bite sized, actionable tips, insights, and updates to help you be the best pet parent you can be. Think seasonal reminders, fun facts, and the latest in pet health trends. Exclusive offer and I'll say updates from our podcast too.

Michael 00:31:13  Nice. Yeah, and I think we did this exercise a couple of years ago. where we during one of our team meetings, we put, I put some big post-it notes around the wall, labeled them by the month. And I said, what are the most common cases that we see? Urgent care cases that we see in each of these months, or common problems that we see in each of these months? And we built out a whole content calendar for that whole year. Based on what my team said, we see the most here in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And so that we could build out these emails and have them read, we could write the email for October the the third week of October. We could write that now because we know what we're going to be dealing with. Is that what you're. Is that what you're suggesting?

Brandon 00:31:59  I think so, so I think building out those are the ongoing nurturing emails. and I think if you can write them as more advertorial style rather than just informational.

Brandon 00:32:09  So write advertorial is problem agitate solution and then call to action. Yep. Okay, so it's written more as a piece of copy, but I think setting expectations and giving people something that incentivizes them to actually open their email. then third, I think the third.

Michael 00:32:30  Week of June, we start telling people, we send out that email that says, your fireworks are coming, your pets is terrified. Fill up your prescriptions now so you're guaranteed that you'll actually get them.

Stephen 00:32:43  Branded a couple of times. Now you've talked about open, getting the client to open the email.

Brandon 00:32:50  Yep.

Stephen 00:32:51  There are some they're thinking through that, that there's more to what I'm going to ask. But what is a good quote unquote good open rate for what you're describing?

Brandon 00:33:05  I think on most lists you want to have between a 30 and 40% open rate. Okay. On an email. It feels good. Now I.

Stephen 00:33:12  Feel good.

Michael 00:33:13  And then a click through. If you have a call to action, what with your click through hope dream.

Brandon 00:33:18  I would say average clickthrough is 2 to 5%, but I think it should be higher than that. I would want to get like 25% of people. Okay.

Michael 00:33:27  So if we're getting a good open rate but not a good click through rate, then our offers aren't good enough or we haven't or we haven't stroked the problem enough.

Brandon 00:33:37  I think it depends on how you write it.

Michael 00:33:40  So okay.

Brandon 00:33:42  Like going through your kind of toolkit. And the same thing goes for ads if you're getting clicks on ads, but people aren't taking the call to action, typically the ads are too vague. the more like curiosity or interesting that you're going to make your email headlines and headlines are what gets the click. You have to stand out and get it. So that's a factor of deliverability, making sure that actually shows up, and then also that it's timely and interesting. So like if you said, for example, February is Dental Health Month is your headline. That's not compelling. That's not interesting. That doesn't help, at all.

Brandon 00:34:20  But like, if you changed it to say this one trick stopped his dogs teeth from falling out, or, like, all of the dog's teeth fell out. I couldn't believe it. Like, people are gonna open that because they're like, what the heck is this? This is different. and so sometimes having that high open rate is helpful, but sometimes it makes it to like, you know, if you have a 70% open rate, your click through rate is not going to be as high, but you will get more clicks than, than typical. So I would say if you're being clear and not clickbaity, but also not boring. Like you have to manage that, that balance. and there's going to always be better ways to say things to get through the noise of the email inbox. And I think you are all creative and can get, like very fun and creative with everything, that you can get much higher click through rates. I'd say like 50 to 60% would be probably where I'd go for a goal.

Brandon 00:35:17  And that's a high goal for sure with email.

Michael 00:35:19  But yeah. Yeah.

Stephen 00:35:20  well.

Brandon 00:35:21  I was.

Stephen 00:35:21  Just going to share. We in our last ten, we can look at our last ten pet desk mass messages, our last ten emails. Our average open rate is 56.6%. the top rate was 59.2 and the lowest was 53.1. So I mean, it is right at that 56% open rate. And those again, are those nurturing emails. There's no there's there was nothing in any of those email headers, description lines that would grab your attention. It was happy Thanksgiving was literally one of them that we sent out on the day before Thanksgiving or boring. Hey, I'm.

Michael 00:36:03  You know, we need to make it work.

Stephen 00:36:04  I'm getting 56% open rate. We've got. So we've got.

Brandon 00:36:08  If it's working, don't break it. I mean.

Michael 00:36:09  That's.

Stephen 00:36:10  Right. So we've got clients who are interested in what we have to say. We just have to give them something to do. To do.

Michael 00:36:19  Yeah.

Brandon 00:36:20  I agree, I think most people don't want more information just because it's available and they can go to ChatGPT if they wanted to. to you know there's unlimited information out there. What people want is your insights and distilled down so that it's a lot more helpful. and then set in a way to you that's like not.

Michael 00:36:42  Not even Steven just needs to write these emails. That would what would make you open it? Because you're the worst. You've turned off all your notifications for, for for our.

Stephen 00:36:53  Yes. I do not get these emails because I'm disabled my notifications. Oh okay.

Michael 00:36:58  So you got to write. You got to write subject lines and information that would make you do something.

Brandon 00:37:03  Absolutely. If I saw something from. Yeah, if.

Stephen 00:37:07  I saw something from Brandon, I'm going to open it because he gives me good content.

Michael 00:37:12  Right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's what I have learned. There are many emails that I get every day that I just delete or archive, but I don't open them.

Michael 00:37:22  But I don't unsubscribe because I like that person. Like like Donald Miller with Story Brand. I still get emails from him all the time. I don't know the last time I've opened one, but I don't unsubscribe because if the if the subject line was something we were dealing with, like if he sent one about emails, I'd open it today because I really like his content for sure.

Brandon 00:37:48  absolutely. So I totally agree. And I think there's if if you can come from the perspective of we want to deliver value, but we want to also like build relationships. So for example, like back to Thanksgiving, people always say like the ten things your pet shouldn't eat. And that kind of stuff is boring generally because it's it's out there, it's helpful and it's useful. So you might get some openings, but there's like better ways to write that. So like for example, if you love this movie Christmas Vacation, like you could bring up like, are you making these Uncle Eddie mistakes? this Thanksgiving. And like, he's feeding his dog under the table and, like, make a joke and a reference that helps people to build, like, personality and, relationship.

Brandon 00:38:29  If you have niche segments, like, that's one thing that if, if you can give people more information about you and your practice and the culture of things that go on. There was this really interesting study that came out that it was like 34 questions to make anybody fall in love with you. And basically they would put strangers together and then they would sit down for an hour and they would talk about really deep, like, what's one thing from your childhood that, formed your adult life? And it was like very in-depth back stories. And by the time people got out of that conversation, they felt like they actually knew each other and they were like deep, lifelong friends. And they had the same level of, like Relationship as they would with somebody that they've spent a long time with. And so giving people context building like inside jokes and, you know, like if you could do funny jokes like what's, what's Michael's mustache like this month? Like, you know, I don't know, you know, always growing the coolest mustaches, right? Like that's silly.

Brandon 00:39:27  But like, people will know you from your content and, like, they see that, and it's just something to bond on and that kind of silly relational things I think people get into, like corporate, email, speak of, like, you know, best regards and kindly please, you know, it's just not who you are. And I think it needs to be conveyed in, in the emails as well.

Stephen 00:39:50  Brendan, when we think about emails, it when we talk about social media, Hailey leads our social media. We talk about some platforms. I don't even have those platforms. I'm too quote unquote too old. I don't I don't care. Is email something that's across the board, or are we going to if we focus on email, are we losing a prospective audience? And then the the next part of that is if the audience that uses it is one demographic, should we focus on the author of our emails being of that same demographic?

Brandon 00:40:30  So that's a great question. With emails, you're going to have the same I'm sorry, email is actually tends to be less effective with much older clientele.

Brandon 00:40:41  but it's something that's universally used with every age demographic. I mean, you have to have emails to sign up for TikTok. Like, you can't just sign up. and so you need to have an email address for all of these different platforms and social platforms. So, everybody uses it and you have to use it for work and, and school. And so, even younger demographics use it. I'm sure they use it differently than than older people do. But, most practices don't have a huge 18 to 24 demo, generally speaking. and so it's usually the 25 to 60 year olds is kind of the prime demos that almost all practices are going for. And that went with 60.

Stephen 00:41:28  So I'm still in that demo.

Brandon 00:41:31  So yeah, I'd say like, yeah, absolutely. but that's a good question. I think people it'd be actually very interesting. I didn't consider how people are using email differently, like if Gen Z is doing something weird with emails or, you know, I don't know.

Michael 00:41:52  Right.

Brandon 00:41:53  I don't know. That'd be very interesting.

Stephen 00:41:55  Like, I feel like our 26 year old over here could write a a.

Michael 00:41:59  Stephen, it's not supposed to ever talk about a woman's age. He got it wrong, so he got it wrong. Of course he did.

Stephen 00:42:07  Is that anyway.

Michael 00:42:09  My son. What? Oh, here you go. She can tell her. Her own age? Yes. how does this how does this connect with our paid advertising? Or does it or is this separate?

Brandon 00:42:22  I think having an openly advertising a, family health newsletter and then packing in all the content that you have and delivering it in a way that's going to drive calls to action. And so, I think an exit intent pop up is just an easy way. And I know that something you can put up right away, but just an exit intent pop up that asks them to opt in and basically, you know, says, okay, you're going to get weekly updates and tips, exclusive offers and events, and then behind the scenes sneak peeks and something like that.

Brandon 00:42:54  But just.

Michael 00:42:54  So that's.

Brandon 00:42:55  Where probably get a 15 to 20% opt in rate for an exit and then pop up like that.

Michael 00:43:01  So does that mean that we need to. And it doesn't have to be MailChimp. It could be anything. Do we? We need to maintain a separate platform for email management.

Brandon 00:43:10  Besides I think so.

Michael 00:43:12  Because if because people that are responding to our ads aren't in our poems. So I don't have any other way to reach them. Right?

Brandon 00:43:19  Yep. Exactly. So I keep I think there is value in having that automation tool. Definitely.

Michael 00:43:26  So if so, if we're going to keep we got to learn how to do this.

Stephen 00:43:29  We got to yes become experts in it.

Michael 00:43:32  Yeah. So what do you so now okay I've, I feel like I have a lot more information, but, what do we need to do now?

Brandon 00:43:42  So I would figure out and kind of work from the goals backwards. So it, for both current patients and then prospective clients as well.

Brandon 00:43:54  Like, what is the end goal? What does that look like ideally for how often they come in for what procedures they're getting. like, how often do you think people should come in for preventative dental care? Every year, as an example.

Michael 00:44:09  Well, we want everyone to come in. We want every patient to come in to our office at least twice a year. So our goal was that people would come in for their annual. They would get a recommendation for a follow up care like a dentistry, and then we would schedule them for that. That would be minimum. Yeah.

Brandon 00:44:28  Okay. Is that worked in as an operation or an SOP into your appointments that like okay. Got it. Yeah. Look, I would like our.

Stephen 00:44:37  Our wellness plan. Our wellness plan that we offer includes annual and biannual. And it includes the the add on option of the dental. So that's what we believe is should be.

Brandon 00:44:53  Okay. I like I like that a lot. So that that wellness plan. What's your take great on that.

Brandon 00:44:58  Like I can't wait.

Stephen 00:45:01  Like, what's our enrollment rate? Enrollment?

Brandon 00:45:04  Enrollment.

Michael 00:45:04  Take. He said.

Stephen 00:45:05  Take. So we're we're averaging three a week. Three signups a week.

Michael 00:45:11  With no real effort.

Stephen 00:45:13  Yeah. We're not.

Michael 00:45:14  That's a problem as well.

Stephen 00:45:15  Again, we're not pushing it. We're not providing any call to action on it. We just yeah.

Brandon 00:45:24  Cool. So 200.

Stephen 00:45:25  200 total.

Brandon 00:45:27  Okay. And how many total clients do you have in your practice as a ballpark in the past 12 months, for example?

Michael 00:45:35  I just did those numbers for the 33,000, 3600, I think maybe.

Stephen 00:45:40  Right. Because you check.

Michael 00:45:42  And people.

Stephen 00:45:43  Are like, what? That's so low.

Michael 00:45:44  We are very we.

Stephen 00:45:45  Keep.

Michael 00:45:45  Our we keep our,

Stephen 00:45:48  list tight.

Michael 00:45:49  Like, if they haven't been in here and and.

Stephen 00:45:51  Well, no, no, that's who we saw.

Michael 00:45:53  That's who we saw.

Stephen 00:45:53  That's saw 3650 patients. There's there's more.

Michael 00:45:58  That are active. And then. Yeah. And then because they had to have come in in this calendar year.

Michael 00:46:04  So then and like I said, we update that we, we because we are really we really want to know what our churn rate is. So we, we are quick to deactivate clients, which people may be shocked to hear, but that's what we do.

Brandon 00:46:19  Cool. Well, I think, then a win back campaign would be something immediately that you could do to to reactivate your people. but I think building in that wellness plan is actually probably the key to getting better compliance across all of your current clients. and then it'll keep them in practice and all kinds of things. But,

Michael 00:46:40  If you can, I bet. I bet most people don't even know we have them.

Brandon 00:46:43  I mean, I didn't know you had one either. Yeah. So, that would be really good to highlight and talk about inside of this. is it, What are we going to say?

Stephen 00:46:57  I was going to ask Michael a side question. Isn't that on our expect poster?

Michael 00:47:02  Yes.

Stephen 00:47:03  You know, it's not my fault that people don't know about it.

Michael 00:47:05  Then it's not.

Brandon 00:47:07  What's an expect poster?

Michael 00:47:09  And expect poster is a poster that is in every one of our exam rooms. It says at the top. What you can expect during your visit today and expect is an acronym that stands for our Core values, which is experience, positivity, education, connection and trust. And it is a checklist. that that is what's supposed to happen in every appointment and wellness plans is on there. And maybe, maybe everybody does know. Maybe I'm maybe we're doing a great job.

Brandon 00:47:40  I'm interested to see what like if you surveyed them, if they knew what what it was and what it included and why it's important. But I think developing and with your wellness plans, I would say having exclusive time slots for wellness plan members would also be something that would be cool to do, especially if you have them opened already. and instead of giving it to your email list, give it to your, your wellness plan members and just really make it more exclusive. And then it sounds like that kind of contains everything that you want your, your clients to be doing on a regular basis.

Brandon 00:48:13  Anyways.

Michael 00:48:13  Yeah. And we updated those this year, which has made it easier for us to enroll in and manage, which I think that was one of our problems, is it was hard. It was it was really difficult. We had too many options and now we have less options. and it's easier for people to register for theirs.

Brandon 00:48:33  Sure. So, I think that you have all of these cool pieces. I would say that probably your, your wellness plans would be the main call to action that I'd be promoting within email. Just because you're the difference between email and like a social post is that you're able to really tailor the value that you're talking about. So, in trying to get high open rates and be interesting. I would tell stories as much as possible. So that way you're not being like condemning of the person. They're not going to feel attacked or something. But like you could say, like the headline could be like, imagine you've never brushed your teeth in your life. And then you started chewing on sticks or something like that.

Brandon 00:49:13  Right? And so people don't think like, that's probably really uncomfortable. Like I've never brushed my dog's teeth and they've never been to the dentist, like they're seven years old. And no wonder their breath stinks. Like, but talking about a story where a pet owner came in and here's what they were facing. The dog wasn't eating because it was so painful. And so what we found was we did these things and it did this. But the problem with that is it can be really expensive if you're not planning for it, which is why. So it's like problem, agitate solution, hook problem, agitate solution bringing people through like the you're not just trying to sell them, you're educating them. Like this is actually important. If you never brushed your teeth in your whole life And you're eating crunchy dog food like it's going to hurt by the time you're eight years old, you know? So, this single thing could make the the big difference in your, your pet's quality of life and be the difference between a miserable last year of life or a joyful, happy one.

Brandon 00:50:11  So and not being like that, you know, overly, over the top or anything, but like, that's the reality of it. Right? And so, people want to do. Right typically, but they just don't think about it or don't know it.

Michael 00:50:30  I really, in thinking about this, think that our goal, our focus in our existing clients should be the wellness plans, because that will lead to building compliance, because our wellness plans include heartworm prevention. And they include and they have the extra add on for dental. So if we can get more people on wellness plans, it's going to be better. It's going to help us hit all of our goals. So if we focused on that with the existing clients and then for the for the ads, you're you're saying, Brandon, that we can promote the newsletter so people can opt in, like when they see our ad, they can opt in for a newsletter from the ads that we're sending out.

Brandon 00:51:10  So I would say that every time somebody comes to the the site as they go to leave and, this can be built super easily, but there's a pop up that just says, you know, sign up for our newsletter.

Brandon 00:51:21  Here's what you're going to get. And so then everybody who's coming from both organic and ads, it's like a what would we call a down sell. So if they're leaving and they're not booking an appointment, it's like, hey, wait, you know, be sure to sign up for this and at least you're engaging. That makes sense somehow, right?

Michael 00:51:38  I like that you called it a down sell. I like.

Stephen 00:51:40  That.

Michael 00:51:41  Yeah.

Stephen 00:51:41  Wait wait wait wait wait before you go.

Brandon 00:51:43  Well, wait. There's more. Don't don't leave.

Stephen 00:51:45  Me.

Brandon 00:51:45  Out. My wife a thing.

Michael 00:51:46  I'm like, please don't leave it like, one more thing. One more thing. It works.

Brandon 00:51:50  Really well.

Michael 00:51:51  It worked.

Brandon 00:51:52  Me too. Took a few times.

Michael 00:51:55  That's right.

Brandon 00:51:56  One other thing that I think might be really cool to test out is this tool here. It's called Bonjour. this is a really, really cool tool because it lets you do personalized video. And so if you're trying to maybe reengage people, you can have pre-recorded messages that go out and it's different from it just looks completely different than everything else.

Brandon 00:52:18  And it integrates into MailChimp. And so you could have, like a funny email sequence of like, is it something we said? And then like, we've noticed you haven't been in in 18 months and we just really miss you. We want to be sure to, you know, make sure your pet comes out, gets the best care possible. So, like, you can have just a ton of different emails that are re-engaging. But this thing sends out personalized videos. So it's really cool. You have an app and you would get notifications, and you could either make a custom video and it says like write a dental appointment request for Mac's the Dog, and it'd be like, you open it up and you'd say, hey, I just wanted to say thanks for coming in, wanted to make sure you knew about this. We really enjoyed seeing Max. The difference is it's personalized and it looks and feels completely different from everything else. And anytime you can stand out and be different, it looks different.

Brandon 00:53:11  So an example of this was I used this for a webinar, that I did and I had, I think like 250 people sign up. So it took a lot of time. And so every time somebody would sign up immediately, I would record a video and it would be like, hey, doctor so-and-so, I'm so excited you signed up for my webinar. I just wanted to say thank you, and I'm excited to see you on it. If you have any questions, let me know. And then my shop rate for the webinar was 90%. Right. And usually show up rates are like 15 to 20. And so it just was actually personalized. It was really easy to do. You don't have to upload things. You don't have to wait for it to upload. So this is a really cool engagement tool. And like sprinkling this in every once in a while. And it's I know that there's a free trial that's completely free, but you could just test it and see. but if you just said like a thank you email, I'm that included this and it just had a video that said, you know, we really had a fun time meeting you and your pet and just wanted to make sure you knew about this.

Brandon 00:54:15  A lot of clients don't know, but it's really helpful because our wellness plans help save money. It helps your pet live healthier life. And so we really suggest our our clients do this. If you have any questions about it, let us know. But here's here's a link to get that I'm signing. I bet you're.

Michael 00:54:28  Up. We want to use the tools. You will never do that. Yeah. I'll just I'll record it with her and beside me going.

Brandon 00:54:39  You could just stand there and say Doctor Shirley's in the background. She was just telling me that she really enjoyed.

Stephen 00:54:43  You told me to tell you this, right? Right. not sure. So just.

Michael 00:54:46  Give a thumbs up in the background.

Stephen 00:54:48  Around it every time.

Stephen 00:54:49  And just.

Michael 00:54:50  Yeah, that's cool. I'll check that.

Stephen 00:54:52  Out.

Brandon 00:54:53  But that's that's a cool tool. But I think giving people more personal touch and more connection, like, I don't think you should treat your email any different that you than you would like. If you're doing follow up calls with the CSR like you want it to be personal, you want it to include as much personality as possible and really help people get bonded to your brand in a way that helps to stand out.

Brandon 00:55:15  So especially for.

Stephen 00:55:16  Hailey with.

Michael 00:55:17  The with the CSR team, rather send emails or make a video to thank a follow up phone call or a follow up message Video.

Haley 00:55:26  You could convince me to make a video, but nobody else.

Michael 00:55:29  I just kind of what I thought.

Brandon 00:55:31  So you could have prerecorded ones, and I bet you they're going to do an I one so that like you'll just upload videos and then it'll be you I Michael talking to everybody.

Michael 00:55:39  Correct. And it'll, it'll dub in their pet's name. And so if I just say, hey, thanks for coming in blank.

Brandon 00:55:48  But it looked like.

Michael 00:55:49  Yeah, it'll look like I said. Yeah, a deep fake.

Brandon 00:55:52  A deep fake. There was I think there was a senator on, on TikTok who was really popular. But until the TikTok ban came around, and he just.

Michael 00:56:01  Jeff, Josh.

Brandon 00:56:02  I'm pretty sure those are all deepfakes. I'm almost certain of it because the backgrounds aren't real. So I think those are videos that they just uploaded a script.

Brandon 00:56:11  but you probably didn't know it. I'm like 99% certain I can't verify it. but like, I was this is.

Michael 00:56:18  Just don't break my heart. I thought he really was talking to me.

Brandon 00:56:21  I know I, I liked his content a lot, too, but I'm pretty sure it was not him. and at least some of them, like, you, see his background kitchen. It's definitely a green screen at the minimum, but, he's not sitting there with, like, a nice boca with a blurred background and, like, it's. So anyways, I think it's really effective and different, for sure. But you know, like that's just another tool that you could use and integrate into this. And if you want people to consume more of your videos and your social content and things like that, giving them the same medium that you want to train them on, I think that's really important. So calls to action inside of email need to be trained to the same. Like so the benefits that you have, for example, need to match up with how you want to train them.

Brandon 00:57:09  Like just if your.

Michael 00:57:10  Question is there still a question on our new patient forms that ask if their pet has a it's own Instagram? Yes. Okay. So for those people, we should definitely make one of these Bongiorno videos and tell them about all of our social media channels so we can we know that you follow, you know, follow us or something. I don't know, that might be that would be super personalized.

Brandon 00:57:32  Yes. It's super I, I'd say just test it out and you get 50 free videos, no credit card required, which is cool. And I've used it with a lot of success, and I think it's just a cool tool, to do. I've used it with Doctor Beckman and other things too. In the marketing campaigns, when somebody like finishes a course, they would get like a I'm so proud of you. Congrats. Yeah. Like video that was custom.

Michael 00:57:56  We could do that for the puppies. When they finish their puppy vaccination series, we'll send them to like, do you know, or especially dental videos or dental procedures.

Michael 00:58:04  We can be like, did you know that you're better than 95% of all pet owners because you did a dental procedure? I don't know, I like this idea.

Brandon 00:58:14  I'm intrigued by, I think maybe creating like a family pet health award or something, like you're you're an elite pet owner, like it's something that's aspirational and gives people status. And so those types of things, and, and really figuring out that ascension path of where you want them to be. And I think the wellness plan is going to be it. And then having all paths kind of lead to that. an example of that was there's a company called Digital marketer. They were a lot more popular a few years ago. They got sold, but like in everything that they would do, they would be like, oh, and you know, we talk about this stuff at our high end mastermind that's called War Room and that's invite only, but like, it's an amazing event. And they would just drop that in every piece of content that they did.

Brandon 00:58:57  And I was like, what is this war room? I really want to find out about it. And it turns out it was a $40,000 a year mastermind that you'd pay for. And, like, it did a good job of making it exclusive. And so talking about the pet owners that are part of your wellness plan and naming it something rather than like just it's our wellness plan. Like everybody has a wellness plan. Banfield has one. So like, who cares? I know what that is. making it actually unique and a product that's not commoditized will help you to be able to compete on something other than price as well. So, The like. I think there's just a ton of ways that you could go about. So like the next email could be, this this is our family pet health secret. We want you to know, but most people don't know about it. And it's like, this is the thing only 5% of our our clients right now are part of this new family pet health wellness plan.

Brandon 01:00:00  And here's why we think it shouldn't be secret anymore. And then we can all of the benefits.

Michael 01:00:05  We can talk about budgeting people. You know, the number one complaint is how expensive pet care is getting. And we've this can help you budget more and provide better care for your pet.

Brandon 01:00:16  Exactly. Yeah. And then sprinkling that into your content as well. So when you're doing a dental health podcast, talk about this is exactly why we developed our wellness plan. Because and so in all of the other content that you're producing, it needs to be a focus that is consistent. So like the same thing that you have your pictures and the way that your social feels across all channels. I think having that end marketing goal that we're going to try to get 50% of our clients on a wellness plan or something like that, so that all of the content is pointing to that aspirational ascension, basically where they're the better pet owners, like, so that's, that's I think I wouldn't want to call them better pet owners.

Brandon 01:01:06  Right? Because then you're alienating part of.

Michael 01:01:08  Your audience.

Brandon 01:01:09  Right? You're saying it in a way that's going to be, you know, helpful and, and things. so with that, do you have like any I think generally speaking, it's better to start at the bottom of the funnel and, and work upwards in any type of marketing that you're doing just because you're going to see ROI, right? So I would figure out your core win back sequence because that's going to be low hanging fruit. People already know, like and trust you. Life's gotten busy. They just haven't been in. So re-engagement sequence, welcome sequence that indoctrinate everybody that's new and helps to point them to a specific offer. And then as far as like balance of emails go, I would probably focus 25% on, transactional emails, probably 50% on nurturing emails, and then maybe another 25% on just relational, update type things like timely, useful tools.

Michael 01:02:20  All right, give me those, give me those. Give me that breakdown again.

Brandon 01:02:23  Yeah. So 25% is transactional transactional. But I would always make I wouldn't just be like this month special is and then like here's a link to get it. Like that's that's boring and lame. So your transactional emails still need to tell a story. Provide value because you're trying not to discount. I would actively not be like, here's our special of the month. I would be like, here's exactly why your pet needs dental care and come up with creative and fun ways to do that. That's not boring. and then 50% are nurturing because you guys are creating so much content, it'd be like, here's this week's podcast and here's, you know, things that are happening around us, here's the events that we're doing, those types of things. And then 25% would be timely tips. So like this. we're coming into heartworm season. And this is a huge problem. Here's why you need to know. So that's still pretty pretty nurturing but it's more direct response focused okay.

Michael 01:03:26  All right. Well you've given us a great deal to talk about and think about, we're like I said, we need you and everyone out there listening to hold us Accountable, and we'll report back what we're seeing.

Brandon 01:03:42  Okay, cool. I'll write you a sample wind back sequence, and it's going to be not not tailored or anything to like how I think you'd want to say it, but it'll probably be a good template. And I think probably one thing, like with list maintenance is you don't want to send emails to people who don't open your emails because that just like with, SEO and things like if somebody searches for like bet near me and you consistently don't get clicks on it, Google is going to deprioritized because your click through rate is important in your SEO rankings. so like you have to get clicks. It has to be compelling. Same thing goes for your deliverability rates. If you start sending emails and people are not opening them and they're just, you know, archiving them, your deliverability is going to go down too. So, okay, if somebody hasn't engaged in a year and they're not opening, you know, having an email that says, is this goodbye? Like, we don't want to bother you.

Brandon 01:04:38  And we hate the used car salesman type people who constantly are, you know, being pushy and trying to get you to open. So if you're not interested, that's totally okay with us. We're here for when you need us, but if you are, be sure to click in this email, respond to us, let us know you know how we can help you type of a thing.

Michael 01:04:57  All right. Any other questions from the peanut gallery here, Steven? No, I was.

Stephen 01:05:04  I'm I'm kind of thinking through Brandon. What what you kind of broke down if you have four different types of emails or three, but one is twice a month that on the first week of every month, it's one thing. But then the transactional, because I don't want it to be, hey, the first week is when I get the special that I moved the transactional between the second, third and fourth week of each month. And that's where my special runs. But that first month is our hey, here's what's coming up.

Stephen 01:05:37  And that's just a pretty much a straightforward informational. And then I wrote the other three.

Brandon 01:05:44  I would try to do more storytelling in your transactional. So like interesting cases and how it could have been prevented. And here's why you should do this preventative thing. And I think that's a better and more compelling and more interesting way to sell in transactional is through stories. So, you know.

Stephen 01:06:01  If I've got a heartworm. Yeah, I've got a heartworm patient, heartworm positive dog. Get the owner's permission. And let me tell you a story here.

Michael 01:06:10  Right.

Stephen 01:06:11  Hey, here's how you prevent this. And to help you with that, we want to offer you this. If you book this week.

Michael 01:06:20  Right. You get.

Stephen 01:06:21  This book this.

Michael 01:06:22  Week. Hey, do you.

Brandon 01:06:23  Have any questions?

Haley 01:06:25  I don't think so. I think you've already answered all of them as we've gone through.

Brandon 01:06:29  Cool.

Michael 01:06:29  All right.

Brandon 01:06:31  All right. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. And, tell us.

Brandon 01:06:38  Tell us your podcast so everybody can go subscribe and listen to it.

Michael 01:06:41  That's right. The Family Pet podcast is very easy. It's at the Family Pet podcast.com. It's the podcast for curious pet parents because we believe the more you know about pet health care, the better pet parent you can be. And if anybody out there listening wants to be a guest. Hit me up. Yep. Michael at Family Pet Health. Com we would love to. We're always looking for guests. We have it's a this is a client facing podcast and it's been a lot of fun. Stephen and I have had a great deal of fun doing it. And if anybody out there wants to be a guest, let me know.

Brandon 01:07:14  Do you have any special requests that you'd really like? Like oncology? any specialties or any behavior? What do you think?

Michael 01:07:22  Anything that that you're passionate about that you want a pet owner to know. That's what we want you to talk about. Like we have. No, We've talked about everything from mushrooms for to to.

Stephen 01:07:36  With your pet. Yep. We've done oncology.

Michael 01:07:39  er medicine. We've, we've talked about it all, but now, you know, we're repeating. But every guest is different and has different information to share. So we're excited to talk to anybody that's passionate about client education.

Stephen 01:07:52  And we can never talk enough about heartworm prevention. That's right. So if that's your passion come on. We got a spot for you.

Brandon 01:07:59  Very cool. Well thank you so much and I appreciate your your time today. So you guys.

Michael 01:08:05  Thanks, Brandon.

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