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Dr. Eric, you muted yourself accidentally. I think you need telling me that was the best content I’ve ever said. I just can’t repeat it. You missed it all. I made it welcome to 2021. I’m Erica Kowalke. I run a practice in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Uh, that’s so funny. Hopefully 2021 does doesn’t stay muted. Maybe it shouldn’t stay muted. I don’t know. Maybe I’d do better if I was muted for 21. Um, I’m excited to look to the children’s show, thanks to Dr. Stu Hoffman and ChiroSecure for all the invest back into the profession and for shows like this and with Dr. Monika, uh, the third Thursday of every month, um, this has looked at the children’s shows. So if you’re tuning in for the first time I run an office in grand Rapids, Michigan, uh, seeds, tons of kids. We have 4,600 square feet, eight adjusting rooms, five doctors, kids running all over the place all the time.
Uh, and we have a lot of fun. And so every month I just bring something to you guys that you can use tangibly in your office and implement today. Uh, I like to keep this show 15 to 20 minutes that you can listen to on your lunch break or when you’re cruising somewhere and actually get some stuff you can implement in your office. Um, I’ve been a leader in amped for a long time and helped a lot of practices grow through the amp program. Um, and just serving lots of people. I also started a company called SKED, which communicates through text messaging and a mobile app to patients and families, which is just awesome. So I know a lot of you use that already. Um, but specifically today, I want to talk about reactivating kids and families for 2021 and keeping them engaged. Uh, the competition for Facebook ads is just enormous right now.
And with all this stuff, censored, chances are a lot of people in your community. Aren’t seeing your stuff. The second one is emails. If you’re on, if you have a CRM or you send emails, most of those emails aren’t opened and the ones that are usually aren’t engaged with. So if you do any email, you know, your open rates, it’s pretty atrocious. So that leaves you to, what, how do you communicate with your patients in 2021? Right now they’re coming into the office. So you’re printing stuff off and handing them a flyer. How many people actually read that flyer in your office? I would say maybe 20% of them read your flyer. And then out of the people that are really excited about reading it, how many are like frustrated that you keep handing flyers every time you come in. So then you just kind of get away from handing flyers out.
So then you have posters on your wall. How many are actually read the poster, engaging with the poster, learning from the poster and, and it’s helping them, you know, learn chiropractic care and connect to your office. Very few. So then you have TVs on the wall. Well, how many of them were looking at TVs? You know what? They’re all doing. You go into a doctor’s office and you gotta wait for 10, 15 minutes. What are you going to do? You’re not going to sit there and watch the TV probably or read the magazine. You’re gonna pull out your phone and you’re going to start texting your family or your husband or your kids, or you’re going to find out what what’s going on today and your busy life. You’re gonna check to see, uh, maybe what political craziness is going on now. And if you get all frustrated and stressed out and upset, so people are on their phones, texting and communicating through the mobile phone is what you have to be doing for 2021.
And you gotta be doing it to another level. So I’m going to go through a whole bunch of scenarios here. That’ll help you guys figure out ways that you could increase your ability to communicate and connect to people in 2021. But if you’re not using text messaging, you have to start tomorrow. If you’re not using mobile apps to connect to people for scheduling and making it easy for them to connect your office and convenient, you got to start tomorrow. Like this is just so imperative in today’s society that you’re, you’re communicating this way. And so start with first visit a text. So somebody wants to come into your office and they need to fill out paperwork. You want to warm them up. So if it’s a warm referral, their engagement with you on that first visit is a lot better than if it’s somebody cold that doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t know anybody that comes into your office.
So how do you warm them up and get them engaged with your content and build trust before they ever even walk in the door on the first visit, what you can text them, links to your testimonials on your website. You could text them links to your Google review page. You can text them, uh, links to paperwork. So that’s easy. They can fill it out ahead of time. Before they even come in the office with all this COVID stuff, you know, depending on what state you’re in, you may not want people sitting in your office filling out paperwork. Maybe they don’t even want to, you know, they don’t want us to do that. So if you can text them, those forms, get them to fill all that stuff out. 98%, I had an awesome PowerPoint and I didn’t get it to, to, uh, Alan in time.
And so I didn’t get to show you this, but just picture it in your head. This is amazing. PowerPoint. 23 billion text messages are sent every single day around the world. 23 billion. If you ever look up how many people are in the world, there’s only like seven, 7 billion. I can’t imagine every person has a, a phone on them. So it equates to about 94 text messages. Every single day. The person with a cell phone sends and receives 94 every single day. The average text messages read within nine 98% of them. I shouldn’t say average, 98% are read within 60 seconds of receiving the text message. So if you want to think about all the ways you can communicate with your patients and people in your community, there literally is no better way. You can’t call somebody. You can’t email them. You can’t like drive over to their house and wave to them.
There’s no other way that you can get ahold of people where 98% of the time, your message is going to be seen within 60 seconds. I mean, it’s just an incredible stat and you need to use it to your advantage and get your information in front of people to make their experience better, to make them feel more comfortable in your office. So if you’re in a state with crazy COVID stuff, this is a perfect opportunity for you to let them know, Hey, this is what we’re doing. These are what our procedures are. This is, um, this is what we’re doing in our office, you know, to, to keep you safe, if that’s what you want to use. And, um, that will make people more comfortable and it’ll improve their experience coming into your office. It’ll generate referrals for you because now these people have a good experience and people with good experience, refer more people.
We get 50 plus referrals every single month. I think we saw 64, some new patients in December, and there was literally no marketing. I mean, we didn’t, we’re in Michigan, you can’t do anything. So it’s all internal referrals and it’s all around experience. And we use texting for everything and skit automates all this for you. It’s all templates. It makes it super easy. You just click. Yes. And it just goes automatically for all these different scenarios we set up. Um, and you guys can have exactly what we use. Um, if you’re interested in that, but, uh, 16 hours a day, people have their phones on them, four hours a day. They’re looking at their screen, uh, what’s another stat, 150 times a day. They, they engage with their cellphone. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. So first visit texting and communicating is super important. That’s the first one.
Uh, you can customize this even to pediatrics. So if you know, it’s a kid coming in, maybe you could send the text message a different way or use emojis and make it fun for the mom or the parent, uh, and engage with them just differently. You know, instead of a stale text messages, that’s just, uh, we look forward to seeing you Friday at two, o’clock like that is becomes white noise to people. They see that all the time. So if you can include emojis in there and fun stuff and play on words, and we do different things in our office. So January it’s winter right now, so you might want to do something with ours is a frozen theme. So we’re using like the chiropractic analogy of an iceberg, and we can send a, uh, ease the iceberg emoji, or send a picture of an iceberg and send it a graphic through a text message.
Uh, all that stuff is just so important in today’s world to bring people in and get them excited without spending a ton of money. I mean, you look how much money you spend on Facebook to drive new patients and new leads and marketing and advertising and events and everything you wear before you can put a little bit of more money into an automated platform to text message people and engage them. You’re gonna get so many more referrals. It’s going to pay for itself times 10, um, second visit follow-up. So this is something really important. We do, you know, uh, depending on whether you do a two day process or a one day adjust them right away, whatever your scenario is, it doesn’t really matter. But the first engagement with your office, the first day of the command, and then they get their services and they leave and they go home.
You want to be calling them and finding out how they did. How was their experience? Is there any questions that you can answer? Um, you’re excited about them getting better. All of that stuff is important. Engage with them because nobody else does that. So as a doctor, you’re gonna, you’re going to be seen as, wow, that person that actually cares about me, that girl actually cares about me. Um, I’m excited to go back and see them. So you faced this dilemma 10 years ago. That was awesome. 90% of people, you got ahold of today’s day and age, 2021, you might get ahold of one out of 10 that actually answered the phone, maybe two out of 10, and then you’re leaving voicemails. And you can only call it a certain time, um, that works with your schedule. So everybody that you don’t get ahold of, not a big deal anymore, as a template and scared, you can create your own infuse of skin.
If you use a text messaging platform, text them, Hey, it was great to see you today. I look forward to you getting better. I’m super excited to help you with your such-and-such. And now they’ll engage with you nine times out of 10, they will send something back and respond to you. Cause you know, they read it within 60 seconds. Even if they don’t respond, you know, they got it. Your, your, your objective was delivered to provide them a great experience. And you did it through SMS, text messaging, even if they don’t have to the phone crucial, uh, missed appointments. So miss appointments kill our business because if people are on the schedule, other people can’t go on the schedule. So if they schedule, they don’t show up, missed appointments, hurt us. Uh, then we have to hire somebody that calls them to try to remind them the command and find another time they come in to distraction.
It’s a decrease in efficiency. It screws up the whole thing. So sending missed appointment reminders through text message is all automated in our system, but that’s kind of the reactive approach to a missed appointment. Like by the time that they actually don’t show up for the appointment, that means they got their text message reminders and didn’t call or didn’t reschedule through the app. Um, they knew they had an appointment because they got reminded and we sync it with all their appointments at their Google calendar, or there are all the calendars. So they reminded through their work calendar. Like there’s no excuse for not showing up. Um, and then we automate the missed appointment message. So it just takes all of the, well, I didn’t know I had an appointment or I was too busy. It takes all those excuses out of the game when you’re using text messaging, because you know, they’re seeing it, you know, you made it easy enough for them to reschedule.
And then that’s where somebody, you can implement no call, no show policies or something like that. Um, but we increased our show up rate and no call, no shows by like 13 or 14, we went from like 83% show up rate to about a 94 95% show up rate by using a 24 hour before reminder, two hour before reminder. And then, uh, eight minutes after if they haven’t arrived in the system or eight minutes later, it automatically sends them another message. So all of those things are super crucial to just driving people, to show up increasing revenue, ultimately getting them better. They’re following recommendations are showing up to your office to get adjusted, which is what they need to do to get better solves a lot of those problems, uh, special hours. So this one’s awesome. I’m looking down because this stuff was all on my PowerPoint that I didn’t give to Ellen to you guys, but you’re still picturing it.
It’s amazing a special office hours. So we’re open every other Saturday from nine to 10 45. So sometimes people forget, you know, so the week that we’re open on a Saturday, we’ll send them a schedule, blast out. We call it cause we send it to everybody. That’s basically active under care in our office in the last three months and has an appointment in the upcoming three months. And we forgot, uh, about six weeks ago to send it. And we saw 35 less people on that Saturday. Then we see every Saturday that we send this message. So 35 more people showed up because we sent that one text message out. And now we can send a picture. So we just create a little graphic on Canva and we send a picture out with our special, special opening on Saturday from nine to 10 45, 35 people.
So you look at whatever your patient visit. Average is times 35. Um, if you want to look at ROI on sending text messages, just huge, huge, huge people. Forget they have busy lives. Look how crazy this stuff is going on. They don’t even remember what they did yesterday. I mean, with the news and all their friends talking about it, and you really gotta be on people every single day to remember to do the stuff that they committed to, which is chiropractic here. Uh, the last one is education. Uh, we’re flying through this stuff. So education is what drives a chiropractic office to be successful effectively communicating the power of the body to heal itself, effectively communicating that kids bodies can heal themselves. They’re amazingly created. Parents bodies can heal themselves. You need to trust in the power of the body, subluxation nervous system, all the different ways that you communicate, right?
If, if all the people that came in your office knew what you knew and understood it to the level that you understood it, they would all just come in. You would have to say anything like you don’t have to convince chiropractors to get adjusted. And hopefully, you know, they all get adjusted once a week or twice a month or whatever it is. Um, so the only reason that all of the people in your community don’t come in it’s because they don’t understand it because they’ve never been taught. They never been educated to the level that you have. So that’s always what we’re trying to do. And their first visit second visit every visit tabletop and try to educate them. Well, now we can automate a lot of that because when they sign in, we know exactly the second they signed in, we can send them a text message with content while they’re in my waiting room.
So by the time they get to the adjusting room, I know they already saw that piece of content. So for example, we’re doing the iceberg theme in January. You know, the iceberg is only the tip of the problem. You guys all seen the poster where the it’s actually a huge problem, even though it’s only sticking out of the water a little bit. So we’ll send them that picture within a minute of arriving in my office. So when they get into the adjusting room, we know they saw the picture and you can just start the conversation. Hey, do you see the iceberg? Do you know what the iceberg means? Good thing. You’re here under chiropractic care, because we’re able to keep be proactive with your health and improve the function of your nervous system and your spine. Um, so you don’t end up, you know, 30 years later, all of a sudden it’s a major problem.
And you find that it’s been there for 30 years and you just didn’t know it. Um, I just congratulate you. You’re doing a great job showing up to your appointments. Um, I’m proud of you for committing and I’m just excited to continue to help you get better and stay healthy. Long-term however you want to say that, but it just starts the conversation really naturally. And you know, they got it. Cause it’s literally said to them when they sign into your office, uh, just makes it so fun. So you can come up with a million different ways to use it for education purposes. But education is just something we can never stop. I mean, you’ve all had the person, um, that has come for years. And then all of a sudden you do a reevaluation or something. And they’re like, Oh yeah, you know, my, I actually had a headaches a lot lately.
You know like, well, how long have you had headaches? And they’re like, Oh, a year or so. And you’re like a year. So you haven’t said you been coming super infrequently. Like I would’ve seen you way more if you just said you had a headache. So I didn’t know, it could help. You didn’t know, it could help with headaches. Are you serious of all the things that we see you for? Um, and it really just, you know, I missed the boat somewhere in education. Maybe I was focused too much on everything else. Um, and I just missed it. One symptom. Good gracious. So you never, you never stopped educating. You’re always pouring back into people, loving on them, keep it fun. That’s why they’re doing the graphic stuff in canvas super cheap. You go upload it, send it via text. Um, funny pictures of the team and the docs.
And it just keeps people engaged, stay positive. I mean, you guys have such a unique position to just bring joy into people’s lives out of everything going on in our society. They need to come into your chiropractic office and just be, feel like they’re in a joy filled place. You know, that’s fun. That’s inviting, they’re accepted there, no matter what is going on outside. And you can, you can develop that engagement and that trust and that joy, uh, feelings through specific text messaging. And so the whole point of this one is you guys gotta be using it. You gotta start somewhere. You have to be engaging with your clients because they’re getting bombarded everywhere else. This is literally the game changer for chiropractors in 2021 is to be creative and use texting in a whole new way. Um, instead of just stale appointment reminders here and there just really use it to market, to engage, um, and to just bring joy into their lives, into your practice life.
So hopefully you got some out of this, uh, if you want, um, this PowerPoint or a lot of that information, don’t hesitate. You can reach out to me, Dr. Eric Kowalke, email us at info. What’s good that life. Um, don’t miss Dr. Monica show. You just saw that pop up on the screen. There it is again. Um, next week is the look to the children’s show with Dr. Monika on Thursday. She is so phenomenal with pediatrics. So take the time. If you miss it, try to watch the replay. It’s really good. You won’t be disappointed. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hopefully you got something you can use in your practice moving into through January. And we look forward to seeing you guys in February for Valentine’s celebration hearts and love to you all. Thanks again, Dr. Stu and ChiroSecure for hosting. Look to the children, having great January guys.
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