Episode 110 on the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast: Mastering Patient Retention and Reactivation for Acupuncturists with Ildi Arlette

A deep dive into the art of patient retention for acupuncturists with my business mentor, Ildi Arlette.

Did you know that your repeat patients make up the majority of the revenue in your acupuncture practice?

If you’re spending most of your energy chasing new patients, you might be missing the easiest way to grow your practice. 

In this episode, I sit down with Ildi Arlette, founder of Results Continuum, who has spent over 24 years helping clinics across North America master the art of patient retention.

Today we explore why 80% of your business focus should be on keeping current patients, the referral strategies that actually work today, and how to re-engage patients who’ve been absent for months or even years.

What you’ll learn:

  • Why your top 1–3 services drive 80–95% of your revenue—and how to double down on them.
  • Referral programs that work in today’s economy
  • Exactly how to run a warm, non-awkward “We Want You Back” email to re-activate lapsed patients.
  • And much more

Find it quickly:

  • 00:34 – Deep Dive into Strategies for Patient Retention for Acupuncturists
  • 02:52 – Meet Ildi
  • 04:47 – The Importance of Retaining Existing Acupuncture Patients
  • 11:12 – Effective Referral Programs
  • 17:47 – Creating a Welcoming Clinic Environment
  • 23:22 – Reactivating Previous Acupuncture Patients
  • 24:53 – Redefining Patient Retention for Acupuncturists
  • 25:49 – Understanding Patient Feedback
  • 27:27 – Learning from Patient Experiences
  • 29:54 – Addressing Social Reasons for Patient Absence
  • 32:05 – Effective Communication Strategies
  • 34:55 – Personalized Marketing Approaches

Mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Ildi:

🎙️ Listen to Episode #110: Mastering Patient Retention and Loyalty in Your Acupuncture Practice with Ildi Arlette

💙 This episode is sponsored by Jane, a clinic management software that’s here to make practice life a little easier.

Ready to get started? Use the code ACUSCHOOL1MO for 1 free month at jane.app.

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

 💖 Love the podcast? Help other acupuncturists find the podcast by leaving a review here.

Transcript:

Michelle: Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community. Take marketing action with confidence, and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives.

So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

Welcome back. Today we are diving deep into patient retention strategies with Ildi Arlette, the founder of Results Continuum, Ildi brings 24 years of experience working with clinics across North America, and today she is sharing her expert insights on keeping your existing patients happy. In order to grow your practice.

So in this conversation we discuss why 80% of your business focus should be on retaining current patients as opposed to finding new patients effective referral program strategies that actually work in today’s economy, how to reengage patients who haven’t visited in months or even years, and some simple cost-effective ways to make patients feel really valued and welcomed back into your practice.

So get ready for a very practical discussion that will change how you think about patient retention and growing your business. Today’s episode is brought to you by Jane, a clinic management software built to help you focus on what matters most your patients. The. Building rapport with your patients is important during appointments of course, and that can be kind of challenging when you are also trying to take detailed documentation.

That’s why Jane built AI scribe to help you document important information without the manual note taking. This feature transforms your treatment recordings into chart entries. All you have to do is review your notes, sign the chart, and you’re done. And since security is eight. Top priority at Jane ai Scribe was built securely in-house, meaning other people cannot use the AI model to train their own models, right?

So this matters quite a lot for security, and it is fully HIPAA compliant and PDA compliant for my Canadian friends. So with a tool like this that you can trust, Jane really helps you spend more time on patient care. To learn more about how Jane can help change how you feel about taking notes and charting head to Meet Jane app slash documentation to book a demo or sign up.

And if you’re ready to go, don’t forget to use my code ACUSCHOOL1MO for a one month grace period on your new account. And of course, I will put the link and the code in the show notes for you to make it easy. All right. Let’s get into this episode with Ildi. Hi again, Ildi. How are you? Awesome. I’m so

Ildi: excited to be back with you.

Michelle: Yes, thank you. This is your third interview on the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast, and I’m excited to pick your brain yet again, and you are my business coach, so I’ve, I feel like I have the opportunity to pick your brain a lot to begin with, so I’m happy to share that with everyone here today.

Well, let me. Uh, give you some space to introduce yourself and then we’ll dive in with my questions.

Ildi: Sure. I’m Ildi Arlette and for the past 24 years I’ve been working with clinics and I have a company called Results Continuum, and we serve our clients and helping them become profitable in demand clinics with a positive.

Everyone sells culture that’s driven by systems to keep your team of one or many growing and your business growing.

Michelle: Awesome. All right. My big questions for you today are tips for retaining patients, and I’m really curious. If there are any patterns for what is working in marketing or, or just like bringing in new patients right now across all of the clinics that you work with, because you get to see behind the scenes in so many different clinics across North America, uhhuh, and that’s one of the reasons I love working with you is, you know, I can bring you a question and you can answer me based on your experience hearing from.

The patterns. Yes. Not just over the past 24 years, like you said, but all of these different clinics that you’re working with right now in this economic climate. Um, and so I love that. I love that bird’s eye view and I think it’s really helpful and motivating.

Ildi: Awesome. Darn, you brought in the new patients right at the end ’cause it’s two very distinct separate questions.

If I were sizing things like, you know, increasing size, decreasing size, like making a physical size to those two questions I would have, how do I retain my patients at 80% size and how do I attract new patients at 20%?

Michelle: Okay.

Ildi: If we’re looking at, if, for the side by side, uh, comparison, if people are visual, and that is because that 80 20.

Which footnote for some is 70 30, but not much more. Um, for some it’s 90 10. The reason I’ll stick with 80 20, the reason that retaining patients is at 80% size is because I believe that to get the results that people want from their business. I’m talking everything like a solid business with a solid patient base, um, with new people even coming in that has good revenue, good profitability, good reputation.

I actually have like going to work every day that 80% of their time, energy, and resources needs to be spent on only asking the question, how can I retain the people I already have?

Michelle: Hmm. And is that, can I ask, is that because most of a business’s revenue in like a calendar year is going to come from their current patients?

Ildi: A thousand percent, yes. Gotcha. And that’s why, and and that is the, the other point, and I am talking, I’ve actually looked at your all books. So two pieces of evidence to look at. One is you said, what if there were a clinic like yours, small, medium, or large, that had been in business for 5, 10, 15, 20 years?

Let’s. Ask our, um, AI or whatever to take all of their financials, look at them together and say, where did, and, and that business sold sold after five years, 10 years, whatever, whatever. But they were successful and they sold their practice. We see, and we ask ourselves, how did this business actually make most of its money?

80% or more would be from the patients you already have. Period. No exceptions. Yes, we see on Instagram, oh, I bought this thing and it brought me 10 new patients, or 30 new patients in 30 days. PS I have known that I, I’ve known three businesses in the last 10 years that did that. But ask me three out of what we, out of 300 is not good.

Not good results. If you think you’re the one and you’re, you love taking a risk, absolutely go for it. But the secret sauce there is not the software. It’s how your humans use and respond to the software that brought you those patients. But those businesses not only made most of their money from the people they already had.

Their business, that 80% came from one, two, or three top selling services and no more.

Michelle: Mm.

Ildi: Yeah. And you and I had a previous discussion about, you know, we are working with clinics. To take and show you how to grow with what you already have. Either grow with what you already have, but no mythical missing piece.

You’re not missing anything you didn’t like. Go to the one course or hire like not the right coach or whatever. And so you are going to have three services in your business that you do right now that will produce 80 to 95% of your revenue from now till the end of time in your business. So focus on taking those, what we call foundational services and growing them.

So focus on the foundational services and growing them to the people you already have. Sometimes you need to make a few changes or provide add-ons like we discussed and keep it sort of interesting. That’s basically it. How these businesses grow is they eventually get some footing to hire more people who can do the same three services.

Then we hire a second person to do that, maybe a third person part-time, and that’s how we grow the absolute tragedy and. Real truth in all clinics is that there is just huge amounts of energy spent convincing people that they need to buy a new device, take a new course on a new technique that is gonna shift the trajectory of their business.

I’d say that’s true in like less than 20% of cases. Not because we’re being lied to, but maybe we are. But because ultimately you went there saying maybe if I take a course on this other technique or. You know, line dis disease, whatever, it’ll save me. But then it ends up not aligning with who you are and how you wanna run your business and serve your patients so you don’t end up taking action on it.

It’s kind of like the hashtag, always learning My question is what you do with that learning, because in business only action is rewarded. Like taking the course is not rewarded. Studying for it, passing it, even putting it, you know. On your menu, on your offerings, it’s, it’s something a lot more active than that.

So it is heartbreaking to see the, the worry, the cognitive load, the, you know, clinic owners beating themselves up because they’re like, where are we gonna get our patients? So the one thing I love about what you said is differentiating existing versus new patients. So I’m okay for you to worry about where are we gonna get new patients and put energy to it, but only 20% of the time.

But I or less, ironically, the effort, why we don’t wanna do it, Michelle, is because statistically it takes the most energy, resources, mental capacity, and it’s the biggest spend in our business. We have to spend money to do this. The systems that we build to attract those new people tend to cost a lot to maintain.

Whether it’s referral programs or even if it’s like a digital funnel, digital funnels not so bad, but they take a lot of energy. Even hiring someone to manage it or taking our time to manage it, it takes the most resources and time. It burns the most gas. What if, if I’m saying, let’s put our attention to my existing patients, what if we use those existing patients to help us bring new ones?

Which you’re like, well that’s not a new thought. I’m like, right, well then go do it. Why are you up here looking for like a new thing to do? And the beautiful part that I hope is encouraging to people is you’ve got lots of choices of using what you already have to experiment with. How do I invite my existing patients to bring me new ones?

And that’s where your awesome genius creative brains can be put to work. And I don’t wanna hear, but Ildi, I haven’t been to business school. I don’t have a business degree. You know who you are. You know the business you’re running. You know what you have. And I’m literally inviting people as a first step to do a brainstorming exercise.

Use your ai, call a friend, text us group, phone a friend, ask the audience, go in a Facebook group and literally type the question. Um, and I have something really specific is if you had $0 to spend on marketing, what would you do to invite your existing patients to help invite new patients? And I, we can do some lists, but I’m just telling you, you don’t need me.

You don’t, nobody needs anything you already know. Then the next question is, and I’ll give you an example, a. The easiest one that one of the most people that people come up with is we could have a referral program. You know? Yes. We might need to print something up, and that might cost $29 to print a hundred.

Great. So the, the second question is then, now that you’ve got your idea of referral program, what are the sticking points or your resistance to it? Is it actually coming up with how much to offer? Because that’s a excellent question. I still often get, and my answer is, it’s it’s not, it’s not nice right now, is that you do need to offer people more financial incentive than in the past to refer someone so that the referring party and them get a benefit.

So specifically $25 used to do it and it just doesn’t do it anymore. Like it’s now 50 or a hundred.

Michelle: Gotcha.

Ildi: Or 75 or a random number, like 45, but it’s gotta be up there. Like 50 plus in my experience is working best. If you’re like, shut it down, that’s way too much. I feel like I’m being taken advantage of giving it away for free, then that’s not the right resource for you.

Right. Although I do. Suggests that they all enroll in your course and find out how much it costs to market to acquire, to get a new patient to actually book how much energy. It’s actually an enormous amount of energy that produces really, really low results. And I’ll show say those results. But the interesting part about a referral program is it relies on like ambassador Energy.

Like evangelist energy. Yeah, and I don’t mean like religious evangelist. If you Google like what does the word evangelist mean? Evangelize. It’s people believing in something, A product, A person, A process, a technique, a value that believe in it so much they can’t help but tell others how great it is, what it did to help them, et cetera.

But I’ll use Ambassador Energy to say the awesome part about me. Being given this invitation to share is number one, I identify as female. Sharing is a is a commodity when. People who are loving and sharing and nurturing and wanna share. It means where naturally something good is happening in my life. I wanna share it with others.

I’m more likely to do a product review. When I don’t do any product reviews, I’m more likely to say, here’s a voucher for something and one for my friends. I’m gonna thank of you and give it to you, just more likely. Um. But it is, it’s, it needs to have financial incentive. Right now in our current economy, it is not working as well.

And I’m talking even my most successful clients are noticing a slight drop right now in how their referral programs are working. But if you have a resistance and you’re like, that’s too much money to offer. I feel like something’s being taken from me. I want you to sit in that and explore it and say, okay, well you mean I have to give $50 to Ildi when she comes back and to Katie.

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. But that a hundred dollars is far less than what you would spend, whether you know it or not, in time, energy, and resources to get that new person and to leverage the ambassador energy. I’m gonna do something that works way better than any ad, any social proof. Although those are fine and they’re good when done right, I am gonna use all my genuine, sincere energy to say to Katie, you, you go, you have to go see Michelle.

I don’t know what she did, but I, it only looked like Cindy Crawford when I left. Right. I. I’m gonna say, oh, and you can have this thing where you can just get this appointment, add-on. I don’t know, it’s like $20, $25 and you can stay in the room and sleep. So now you know how we go through all this trouble to go to Michelle and get to the appointment and you know, lay on the comfortable thing and then they wake you up and you have to go, well, there’s this thing they do.

Or to say, um, their website’s really great. Oh, I went to this other website and it was so complicated to book. I didn’t book it said Katie. Oh, no, no, no. You don’t have to worry. Michelle’s process is easy. I’m doing the work for you to sell. To answer the question, why Michelle and why now? Like, go do this for yourself.

I know you’ve been having lots of conflict in your life. Like you will love it. So we are literally getting human beings to do that for us. And there’s a lot of people in our patient faces who are naturally inclined to do that out of helping energy ambassador, energy serving energy, and it is worthwhile doing that.

But the other part I cannot leave our time to run out before I mention is I just would invite all your listeners. Even if you don’t believe my numbers to go, no, no, no. That clinic grew because they went and took a course, or they did, you know, they’re smarter or they had had better schooling than me.

Honestly, none of that is true. We do right now in this economy need to return back to our hospitality principles, observing others. I’m gonna reference hotels and hotel energy. And I don’t mean fancy hotels, I just mean, well, hospitality and service are two different things. However, um. We do need to pay more close and direct undivided attention to the people who are already committed to coming and seeing us so that we can keep them.

If it were me, I would really dial down looking for new patients and I would dial up getting focus, undivided attention to my existing ones. Asking the question, how might I utilize them to invite other people or share the good news? And I would 100% say, what could I do behaviorally? What behaviors could I demonstrate in my clinic and my small clinic team that.

Makes the person say, oh, I’m so glad I know you. I’m so glad that I come here to do this. I’m so glad I have a place like you. Doesn’t even matter. The reason why, because fill in the blank, what behaviors drive that kind of result? Where people go wrong is they think they need to get fancy. And they’re, oh, I’m not fancy.

You know, I’m a practitioner. I don’t have an eye for this. I don’t have a, and I’m just saying, listen, Google it. Ask people what they want. Use what’s in your heart. But you do need to elevate that experience to say, if you haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to your small waiting area, and I don’t care if it’s two chairs, it’s time to pay attention.

If you go into your washroom to clean it once, go in and clean it twice, make sure that. Garbage is emptied so they don’t look at it and see it three quarters full and wonder when was the last time this was changed? We, what behaviors and elements can you impact in your clinic to make people go, ah, it’s such a good decision for me to, to be here.

Michelle: Mm.

Ildi: You know the answers in your heart. Every listener knows, and you know,

Michelle: taking a quick break to remind you of today’s sponsor, Jane. Jane is an all-in-one clinic management software. And the new AI scribe feature helps you create chart notes from your session recordings so you can stay present with your patients and finish documentation faster.

It’s built securely in-house and fully HIPAA and compliant. Learn more at Meet. Jane app slash documentation and use my Code Accu School, one mo for a one month Grace period. The link and the code are in the show notes. All right, let’s get back to IL’s episode. I have so many thoughts for this. One is, you know, when you’re talking about.

Making the experience feel special. It sounds to me like being very attentive to each person who comes in. Right. And I have this really cute water dispenser in my office and it does hot water for tea, and we have lots of different kinds of tea. Nobody ever takes tea. It’s very rare. And every once in a while, you know, if someone has like.

They need to clear their throat or they come in and they’re in a rush and they need to like settle. I will offer if I can get them a cup of tea and the gratitude for such a basic. Question basic thoughtfulness. Mm-hmm. Really kind of blows me away. And it occurs to me like, why don’t I ask every person who comes in, like, before we get started, can I get you a cup of tea?

It takes like a second. Yes. And you know, like how much is a tea bag per person? Exactly. Uh, we have ceramic cups, right? And we put them through the dishwasher, so it’s not like I’m buying cups, et cetera. But it’s not only the fact that they can have tea, but that you are offering to make it for them.

Absolute. If you have time. Absolute. And that’s, that’s something that came up for me. That’s our clinic vibe. Something else, I mean, this whole conversation, all I can think about is the concept that it is seven to eight times easier to retain or reactivate the people that you already have. Compared to getting a new patient.

Yeah. And you know, I’m all about like marketing for new people, new people, but I, I absolutely agree with you. When I think of my clinic numbers, like on a month to month basis, the percentage of new people and the revenue that they bring, yes. Compared to all of the wellness people and all of the people who are coming back for like their eighth, ninth, 10th, et cetera treatment.

The vast majority of clinic revenue is from already established patients. Absolutely. And I do, I have noticed we are seeing patients that I haven’t seen in a couple years are coming back out of the woodwork. It feels like apropos of nothing to me, but they’re like, Hey, do you remember you saw me for this shoulder injury?

Like, well, that’s, that got resolved. I had to have rotator cuff surgery, but now my neck is bothering me three years later. So. I do think there’s so much benefit to having systems set up where you are in contact with those previous patients.

Ildi: Let’s get fancy and pretend we all know marketing okay everyone, so like we call it a we want You Back campaign.

We want black. I if you like that wording, go ahead. We miss you. It’s been a while, but. You and I are saying it is worth every listener’s effort. Mm-hmm. To reach out to people you thought, oh, we’ve lost them. They haven’t come back in six years, two years, et cetera. The one favor I would ask you and everyone else is when it feels right with the patient, would you please ask them?

In some way, shape, or form. And I’m gonna model a couple of ways and you’re gonna, hopefully I’ll take that and do it, is you don’t have to do this big awkward acknowledgement like, oh, I’ve missed you over the last two years or six years, this and that. But I’d like you to ask a question of what motivated them to come back now.

Michelle: Mm.

Ildi: Number one, it could be plain. It could be I, you fix the shoulder, but now it’s the neck. You’re allowed to say, oh, Ildi, really, I can help. Tell me what’s happened since then. Find out about what we call their continuum or their journey you call patient journey. We’re all about the continuum over here is find out to say, well, catch me up.

Tell me what’s happened in the meantime since then. They don’t have to share that they went to another clinic, but maybe they did. And all I know is their answer is going to inform you as a practitioner and inform you as a business owner. And the place I hope that everybody arrives is we have to change the definition of patient retention.

I think it is arrogant of us to think someone’s gonna stay with us the entire time. I’m trying to advocate it’s normal for him to go away for two years and come back. I wanna know the reasons why maybe something went wrong in the clinic. We kept him waiting. Um, the room was too cold, something got uncomfortable.

We have absolutely no idea, and I’m not even saying you need to dig to find out why, but maybe they went to two other places since they saw us. We were actually the best out of all of them, and they gave us some grace to say, actually, it was just kind of a bad day, and they did resolve my problem. So I’m going back.

We need to ask check-in questions to say something along the lines of, tell me what’s happened since then. Catch me up. Around the shoulder, the neck, whatever it is, your shoulder, your neck. The other question you could say is just express gratitude and say, I’m so happy to see you. It’s been a while. I think it’s been two years now, and I’m so curious what motivated you to book in this time, and then zip it and listen and you might hear about their cousin’s wedding coming up all the way through to things that.

Who knows what that are actually specific. Maybe it is gonna be an unexpressed complaint. Maybe it is gonna be what I call a social reason. I got busy, um, my partner lost their job and I couldn’t afford it. All that, all I know is you will get valuable data and information as a practitioner and as a business owner and you know, marketing.

So it is the purest gold of market research ever. Usually in this day and age, people aren’t not coming back to your clinic mostly because there’s bad service or a bad treatment. It is a whole other realm, and I’m wondering, as practitioners, if other people who are listening are willing to commit to staying curious a bit longer.

Not just jumping right into treatment and all the rest of it, but when you hear those answers from 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 patients, because you were brave enough to ask and be curious, you’ll know what to do in your marketing.

Michelle: Hmm. You know, the, so this patient, he, I think he came four times and then I didn’t see him again.

And I remember he kind of fell off the face of the earth and I reached out a couple times and there was nothing. And I was like, okay, well, I mean, that’s his answer, right? And when he came back, he told me that he, um, he finally got an MRI and his rotator cuff. I think he said it was separated. By like this huge amount, like he needed immediate major surgery.

And so his comment was, you know, I realized that there like acupuncture wasn’t gonna fix that. I needed, I needed surgery, which is true, but my thought was. Did we ever have a conversation about how, you know, even if this person has a tear, there are things we can do to continue to do pain management and there are things we can do before and after surgery to help him heal.

And I don’t think we had any of those conversations and that is on me. Right? So it kind of, it got me thinking about, okay. I do need to be more curious, ask more questions before people disappear. Yeah. And make sure we’re having conversations about like, what are their expectations if, you know, if they do need surgery, et cetera.

But it was, it was a good learning moment for me because I could easily have said, well, okay, that wasn’t my fault, and he left and, and now he’s back. But it actually taught me or reminded me of some things that I can always do better in my practice, which is communicating. The value of acupuncture in people’s lives in different situations, not only for the very specific thing they’re coming in for, but like.

Talking more broadly, like this is why acupuncture’s working and here’s, it would also be helpful if these other scenarios that you’re anticipating came to light, right? So like, don’t bounce. If you decide to get shoulder surgery, don’t

Ildi: bounce. Yeah, but look at end to end, it still was your patient. Yes. We all want full continuity, but it just doesn’t happen.

True. Yeah. And so we have to shift our expectation. I love your insight to say, well, here’s what I can control in the situation. Mm-hmm. From a marketing perspective, of course. The other thing we can, and marketing could be just verbally, as you said, speaking with the patient in the room, asking questions, staying curious, or it can be your social posts or your newsletter is.

We were all to collectively brainstorm what would be the socially related reasons why someone didn’t come back to my clinic. Let’s just like brainstorm for your audience. They’re probably yelling right now going, I know, I know. Well, I’ll do one. You do one. So I just, I couldn’t fit it into my schedule. I didn’t have time.

Michelle: Mm-hmm. It, I got a new job. I couldn’t afford it.

Ildi: Yes. I don’t know why. I just kept meaning to book and I kept putting it off. I was just having a hard time in general.

Michelle: I had to cancel my last appointment so that I could help my sister with her wedding, and then I just never booked back in.

Ildi: Yeah. Another one we here is, I honestly like it helped, but I wasn’t sure if it was totally worth it.

Mm, yeah. Mm-hmm. And on and on we could go. So those are the social reasons, and I think we’ve touched on most of them. And if people have ones wanna add, like, reach out to me. I’m always interested, but there’s, there’s really no more than you know. Or what about like, honestly, Michelle, it hurt. I know you said it’s not hurt.

But it hurt. ’cause maybe I have a fear of needles or maybe I’m a big chicken or you know, whatever. But we need to say those reasons are valid. We don’t need to assess the reasons. What we could do in our messaging is how do we have a tone where it makes it socially acceptable to come back? Yeah, I like that.

And that to me was offering some kind of grace. Listen, your grace is offering a discount. Go ahead do it. But just. It’s tough, but sometime I think it’s totally okay to offer someone an incentive. If we really do want you back. Here’s my proof. Here’s a 2500, 2500 a 25 credit, or what we call a spending dollar toward a treatment of your choice.

And again, if right now what’s pinging up for you is, oh, resistance energy, why would I give it away? I can’t afford that. You won’t know, but go and research, like you said, of how much it costs to acquire a brand new person, but worse. Go and explore how long it takes. ’cause I’m gonna say right now it’s about three years, eight months is your best case scenario to three years normal human behavior of, convince me, help me understand, et cetera.

So what tone could we use? What things could we say? What messaging could we have that makes it. Socially acceptable for things. So messages, which all of us get in our messaging that we receive as consumers. You probably got busy, you got distracted, circumstances changed, and maybe, um, budget was an issue.

Time was an issue. We get it. We’re here. We still miss you. And we’d love to have you back something. Yeah, something in that. And to say, guess what? We don’t care how long you’ve been gone. We only care that, that you give us. Um, like to welcome you back and give us a chance to treat you. ’cause once people break that continuity of serv ser of service and treatment, they feel like they’ve cheated on us just like our stylists.

Hairstylists are way better than clinic owners. ’cause they’ve had lots of salon owners.

Michelle: Yeah. They feel like they’ve been disloyal and it is hard for them to shift gears. Well, let’s

Ildi: not hide it. If somebody went and got a hair treatment, they can’t hide it. But if I went to seven acupuncture clinics since in the last five years since I came to see you, you’ll never know about it.

Right. But hair that is cut or grown like or colored it, it doesn’t lie. So people will sit in that chair and go, oh my gosh, Michelle had cheated on you. You know, we need to tell me the story. What are we doing today? They’ll say that, so how do we normalize it? Make it okay to have left. Even I’ve had clients and we’ve written it for them to say, you know, are you cheating on us?

A bit of a controversial subject line versus we want you back. Yeah. But to say, I had one and we wrote the subject line as, it’s okay. Well, the open rate was like 80% plus. What do you, I’m getting It’s okay. And say, yeah, it’s okay that you. Didn’t call us. You’ve been away for a while. None of that thought you couldn’t afford, none of that matters to us.

All that matters is for you to know we are still here and you are still welcome. Mm. Put a call to action with a putting booking link, like not to your big menu, to something specific. Um, maybe consider giving them a financial incentive. Maybe say, guess what? We still have your chart. We still have your file.

If you went and tried to tell people your story, you’re exhausted. We, we have your background here. You’re always welcome. Or if your tone is, I would love to personally treat you. We can pick up where we left off. Looking forward to catching up. I hope people take these words on this podcast. Me too. And literally give it to their AI, who already knows your tone and says, write me something that sounds like us.

Michelle: Yeah, I really like the idea of this email, especially if we are. Like cherry picking the patients that, you know, if we go back through our EHR and pick the patients that we would just love to see again, and we don’t know what happened to them, or, or maybe we do and we just haven’t seen them, um, but put them into a group inside our email platform, like MailChimp and just send this email to those people.

I think there’s a way. To word it as you’re saying, where it sounds like us, and it sounds so warm and inviting. And also, you know, if it’s an appropriate tone for your clinic, like a little playful where absolutely it’s like, it, it’s okay that you were gone. I love, I love the very direct idea that like, for whatever reason you went away.

It really doesn’t matter. Like we’re all good. It’s cool. What matters most to us is we’d love to see you again. It would be great to treat you again

Ildi: anytime for any reason. Yeah. You are welcome back here. Yeah, we did. Um. One, I think we still have it and we, we do. Not quite like you do, you’re like next level.

Amazing. But Okay. But for our private clients, we do write emails and so on. And we had one that was when you said cheeky. Uh, it’s with Ross and Rachel, how they broke up and got back together again.

Michelle: Move open. I love it. Right. That’s also great for your specific target market, right? Like people in a specific age range are going to know what that is about.

Ildi: They very well might, and I mean, that would be interesting, like just make it feel like you, I don’t know about you Michelle, but I’m seeing a real. Extreme trend, like follow along or be left behind that is, you know, even for me, when I started seeing it put me a bit ill at ease, which is the style and tone in our emails, the more personal it is, and I don’t mean personalized, I mean the more personal it is, the better.

Michelle: Mm.

Ildi: Um, and so if we combine that with how do we normalize coming back after we’ve left, it would be you saying that, you know, here’s the reasons that patients tell me. Sometimes they don’t come back for a year or two. List them, can’t afford it. Mm-hmm. It didn’t have time. Got busy, went to do it 7,204 times, but got distracted.

Um. Funny, cheeky, true, relatable, and say, guess what? My response to all of this is, doesn’t matter. You’re welcome here anytime, no matter how long it’s been, send that sucker out. Don’t even put a hi Barb or Hi George. Just send it out and see what happens. Um, I know some of your listeners will have the question, should I do financial incentive?

And the answer is those do work better than ones who don’t. So

Michelle: like, uh, offering them a discount Yes. For their first rebooked appointment.

Ildi: Yeah. And you wanna check with your specialty because you know, in most specialties, if they’re an existing patient, then you can offer them anything. So if it’s ethical for you to do it, great.

But if you wanna know like, what icing could I put on that with sprinkles, it would be. An amount that you’re willing to get them back. ’cause guess what? Come back. See if we can have a short course of treatment. Probably since they left, you might have even organized what you already have your offerings in different ways.

Maybe there’s one or two new things. Please don’t think they need something new. But for those people who are really into this, and if they want a slight nurture sequence, all of the people who opened the We want you back email. We can just send a very short next email that says, here’s what’s new. Or click on the bottom.

I don’t put, suggest the click on the bottom ’cause I don’t wanna take them away for book now. But you know, if you’re, you talked about segmenting your audience, pick a timeline. Who qualifies at your clinic as a past patient, I generally recommend two years or more. And you’re like, what? What if? What if we haven’t seen them in a year?

Okay. If that matters to you, but I’m saying that it is normal for people in the patient journey centering the patient, not us. It is normal to go and seek services of the same kind elsewhere. Or the thing we grossly underestimate is. We are acupuncture or physio or whatever. Maybe they realized on their own, not through us, that in addition to acupuncture, they went to go see a chiro and they’re balancing their budget, their time, their cognitive load around these two things.

And when you ask the story will be there. And some people get so good at asking and being curious. They’ll actually start to develop a short set of questions when someone who we haven’t seen in a while does come back. It’s not like the full intake. It is. Other questions of around the theme of Catch Me Up.

Since you’ve been here specific, have you gone to see any other practitioners for anything? Which they may not remember. So the brain these days loves to be prompted like a chiropractor, a physio, or reflexology or Botox or whatever it is, and just find out what’s new since we last met. But from a patient centered approach, not like how’s been, how’s life been?

They’ll tell you and you’ll be informed. So well informed.

Michelle: Well, I think we, we’ve run out of time for the other half of my question, which you knew, you knew that would happen. Um, so That’s okay. I, I’m sure we’ll have you back on again and then we can talk about what marketing is working to bring new patients in.

But yeah, for now, I hope people will really dial in to all of the ways that they can make the experience delightful and then also actively retain and reactivate their current and previous patients. It’s

Ildi: worth the effort for sure.

Michelle: I,

Ildi: I think we should, so we don’t keep people hanging too much around the new patient.

One is the easiest to answer, Michelle, which is really decide how much resource, time, energy, money you wanna put to new people acquiring new patients. You are going to, it is gonna be more costly. I’m talking money. Not just your precious time, but more costly around the types of skills that you teach in marketing, acupuncture school.

That is everything from copywriting to sequences to some ads. There’s no question you wanna try. There’ll be a tiny percentage of people who can do it organically by simply becoming more visible, already have good systems for people to land and book an appointment. Um, but if you don’t do that, then yes.

Join your services and, and learn how. Um, but my money would be on. Why not experiment with how to use your existing patients to bring you new ones that will probably pay off for the money and time that you have to put into it, which is a lot less. Than the more formal ways.

Michelle: Well, I have one more question for you, which I did ask you recently, but I’ll ask you again just in case it’s changed, and that is, what is your definition of success?

Ildi: My definition of success has always been and still remains. It is living life on your own terms.

Michelle: Very nice.

Ildi: I

Michelle: still like it. That has not changed either.

Ildi: Uh, and hard to speak. Easier said than done. A lot of pushes and pulls. Yeah. In this light, I mean business and clinic ownership, but remains the same. Mm.

Michelle: And where can people contact you? How can they find you online?

Ildi: Yes. They can go to our website, which is Results continuum. Continuum has to use n and m.com at the end. Or I love meeting people, uh, by email, ild@resultscontinuum.com. And of course I’m on Instagram and my team is there. I am there. And it’s Ildy Arlet and I love getting questions and follow up to this, as you know, and I love hearing what you’re all trying and what’s working and not working.

Michelle: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being here and, and sharing all of your advice and your tips with us. I really appreciate it. If you’re ready to simplify your marketing and get actionable tips every week, check out the Snack Size Marketing Club. It is a membership where you’ll get a quick five minute marketing tip every Monday plus a live q and a session each month to answer all of your marketing questions.

This is perfect for acupuncturists and other wellness professionals who want to make marketing easy and get it off their plate without feeling overwhelmed. Head to the link in the show notes to join and get started for just $9 a month. I’d love to see you inside. As always, thanks for being here. I can’t wait to talk to you next time.