Ep 69: An Email Newsletter Template for Your Nature-Based Practice
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Laura Park Figueroa: [00:00:00] Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always a hundred percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.
com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump in. Hello friends. Welcome to [00:01:00] therapy in the great outdoors. I have just returned from the great outdoors. I just took my dog on a walk. So if you're watching on YouTube, That's why I'm a little dewey and sweaty right now. But I show up real for y'all every week. So. Today, I want to talk with you about. A parent newsletter template that we use in my nature-based practice.
So one of the things that I am really big on for anyone who is running a nature-based therapy practice, is that you really need to have an email list because it allows you to. Communicate with families when you actually have openings for your services and it allows you to give them helpful information so that they know, like, and trust you.
And. That you develop expertise in their eyes before they would ever become a customer of yours. So it is a way to build relationships with families. If this is all new to you and you're like, what is she talking about? I have done [00:02:00] two other episodes about email marketing that I will link in the show notes here, because this episode is not specifically about how to set up email marketing. This episode is about the template for a specific newsletter that we send out to families on a monthly basis.
And I'm going to share with you why we chose the different sections of the newsletter and why we decided to start doing a newsletter. So one of the things that I learned in a marketing program a long time ago, it's, it's really funny. There's some things that people say that just stick with you. And I had a coach say to me once, no one wants your newsletter, your weekly newsletter, right? So the purpose in her saying that she wasn't saying it to me directly, she said it in her program, but. The purpose of her saying that to those of us in the program was that she was trying to get through to our brains that. People don't care about you.
They care about themselves. This is the key thing to remember in your marketing. A lot of times, especially as nature-based [00:03:00] therapist, we're talking about us and our services and how great we are. What we really need to be talking to families about is what's in it for them. What is in it for their family, what's in it for their child.
And that is what we try to do in this newsletter template that I developed. So. In sum, the newsletter basically has three sections. And the first one is a tip. The second one is a resource and the third one is a, story and service updates from my practice. We kind of lump the service updates in with that story, because the story is going to share something that happened in our services.
So I am going to go through this outline that we use for our newsletters, and then give you a few, I'll read you a few examples from actual newsletters that I have sent out to families for the last few months now. I do have to say, this is something new we are doing in my practice. We have not done this all the time. Initially, what I had set up was a welcome sequence.
So we do communicate with families via email. I already was doing a lot of value giving [00:04:00] for free and our emails, sharing, helpful information with them. When they join our email list, I have a whole automated sequence of welcome emails that goes out over the course of six months. These monthly newsletters are in addition to those welcome sequence emails that go out that are on more general topics.
So now let's talk about the newsletter. The first thing I would say is don't try to make it pretty, okay. Emails get sent to spam if they look too market-y or sales-y. So the more that you can make your newsletter to families, just look like a simple email from a friend, the better that is so much better to do that than to have a bunch of pictures and formatted backgrounds.
And, you know, the fancy emails that you get from people trying to sell you things like, you know, that those are marketing much better for small businesses like ours. That are relational based service-based businesses to send an email that is just a, looks like it's coming from a friend text and maybe a few photos, but how you [00:05:00] would send them to a friend just like, kind of slap them in the email there. So, what we do is we do have a small logo up at the top.
Now, maybe I should play around with that and see if it would increase open rates. If we didn't have the logo on there. I don't know if the email service people know that and they tag it as spam because there's a logo. We could play around with that actually. But what we do is we have a small logo at the top and then it just says, hi. and we put in the first name of the parent.
If you have an email service provider, you should know how to do that. Or you can just say, hi parents, if you are starting out doing this and don't know how to get the first name of all your subscribers in there. then we just have a brief introduction, like you know, happy spring or whatever, we're loving the warm weather.
Here's our monthly newsletter for you with some tips to, um, did I say here? Enjoy these resources we've curated for you to help you support your child's growth and to make daily life easier for them in you. And then it just has a title OT tip of the month. And so this is the tip section. [00:06:00] So one of the things that I shared in this section was when I think about what I want to include for the tip, I think about. The things that people always ask me.
So all of us as pediatric therapist have questions that parents ask us all the time when we are doing our daily work. Right. And so I think about those things and then give them some sort of tip that will hopefully give them a win in that area. Whatever I'm wanting the type of thing you say all the time to families. One of the things that was on my mind was how. Over-scheduled kids are nowadays. And. Often in this section also, I'm just realizing, as I'm saying this. The kind of things that you, as a parent. Often want to say to families, but it feels a little bit hard to say it directly to a person because it might feel like a criticism of them and their parenting or their lifestyle or whatever.
So you'll see what I mean here in this one that I'm going to [00:07:00] share. So one of the things that was really on my mind was. How busy families are nowadays and how there's this culture in parenting of over-scheduling children of constantly you know, every day, the week they have some lesson or some. Thing that they're going to, to make sure that they're going to get into a good college and 15 years when they're 20, you know, whatever. And so I, I wanted to kind of call that out and encourage families that they could slow down the pace a little bit and allow their kids just to be children.
So here's what I wrote in one of the first emails that I sent for this newsletter. The OT tip. So it just, the title is OT tip and it's just underlined. Notice how busy life seems nowadays technology has increased the speed of life, a hundred fold, and our kids feel it. Think about how you feel when you're in a constant state of overwhelm with too much to do over-scheduling our children's lives can have the same effect on their nervous system. And then in bold, I put one of the best things you can do for your child is to say no [00:08:00] to commitments that won't fit easily into your family's lifestyle or schedule. When my three kids were young and I was working full time as was their dad.
I had a rule, one thing per kid that meant if you're playing soccer, we're not also doing baseball at the same time, or if you're taking piano, we're not also doing swim lessons at the same time. Doing one thing at a time is counter-cultural nowadays be a rebel fight, the culture of busy-ness and be free to say no to things that will overwhelm your child's or your schedule. So that's what I put there.
That was kind of long. I try to keep these pretty brief, but that was, I don't know. I kind of break it up too. That's another tip for writing emails to families is try to break up. Don't have big sections of texts. Try to break it up into like a couple of sentences. It makes it much easier on the eye to read. So, okay. That is the tip section.
You could do this again. You don't have to be an OT to take this, this kind of model and use it. You could do this for mental health tip of the month or a PT tip or a. [00:09:00] Uh, SLP tip of the month speech tip of the month, whatever it is. So make it, make it your own. All right. The next section is resource of the month.
I just have great resource here. And then I have a brief description of the resource. So on this newsletter, I wrote protocols for excellent parenting with Dr. Becky Kennedy. That's a link. Okay. And it goes out to a podcast episode, and then I wrote this episode of the Huberman. Berman lab podcast with Dr.
Becky Kennedy was gold. You will learn so much about how kids behavior and emotional regulation works. Dr. Becky shares practical examples of exactly how you can respond to challenging behaviors by setting boundaries while also staying emotionally connected to your child. You can also find the episode on any podcast player.
It was the 2 26 24 episode. From February. Um, so. I find stuff for the resource section. I am again, thinking about if I could recommend to families, something that would really [00:10:00] help them with their child. Then that is what I want to put in this section. You don't have to be the one that made the resource.
It can be a resource that you found very valuable or you wanted to share with families. Yet the families that get your email will still have that Goodwill towards you because you are the one who helped them find that resource that then helped them in some area of their daily life with their child. So don't feel like when you share a resource, it has to be your blog post or your , article or your podcast episode or whatever, it can be a resource from someone else.
And I almost never share our resources here. I share. Resources from outside. Other resources I've shared are books or articles or blog posts or podcast. I try to share things that are a little more meaty or, or more robust, I think, than like an Instagram post, you know, like something that's kind of short. I try to share things that [00:11:00] are, , a little more in depth for families there. So that is the resource section.
And then finally the last section is OKOT story and service updates. So I just, again, I have a little title there. I have a underline title that says, OKOT story and service updates. There's a little emoji of a tree. It's very simple again not formatted like a sales letter or something, or a fancy newsletter. So on this. One, I always try to think, and my therapist helped me do this because I personally do not running groups in my practice anymore because I manage the practice.
So I occasionally attend groups to help out or to train new employees, things like that. But I'm not directly leading groups anymore. So sometimes I need to ask my family or my, not my families, my therapists. For stories that have come up. And we often, we have time in our staff meeting when, when therapists share some of these stories.
So sometimes I'll just have one in mind as I'm writing the newsletter. But this one was one, this story I'm [00:12:00] going to share with you that I put in the newsletter for this, a month or whatever. I was a story that happened when I was at a group and I knew I had to share it with families because it actually really illustrated. Our approach at outdoor kids, OT to. Navigating when conflict comes up in a group situation and why?
I think what I, what I want families to see in these Oko. So T stories is an inside look into the groups, because even if your kid doesn't come to our services, enjoy these meaningful stories, right. About children learning and growing and, and being in the session together. Okay.
So this one. At the top I have like in a Tallix and quotes, I wrote, I don't want to follow you as the leader because you're yelling exclamation point. And then I go to regular font and it says this was a direct quote from a kid. And one of our particularly loud smiley face groups of young [00:13:00] boys last week. The quote, unquote, leaders of the hike were yelling.
And after this child's self advocated and shared his opinion, there was a group consensus.
that everyone in the group would stop yelling. Now if adults had made this a rule, my guess is compliance would have been very low. But because the children themselves worked it out with the therapist, supporting the conversation, there was no yelling for the rest of the group. This is part of the magic of nature-based therapy groups, where children have to navigate complex social dynamics of multiple people. But can do so with the support of a skilled therapist facilitating. Okay, so that's the story.
And then I just have a very brief, like two line. service updates. So it just says service updates with a colon. We are still accepting applications for summer camp and for our fall services in California and Wisconsin, this was a March newsletter. If you've already applied, current applications are being [00:14:00] reviewed and spots offered based on availability and needs of the child and the group.
We are no longer accepting applications for this school year as services will end in late may. So. Basically. What I'm sharing here is what families need to know if they are on the fence about enrolling in our services. So they know now that they can't sign up for this year, they know that we have an application process where we review, and this is something I should say as well, please. You know, obviously you wouldn't write this, if this wasn't how you did. Services in your business.
But my practice, we, we do group placements by application. So we actually look at the applications and the needs of each child and then place them in groups accordingly. With, with kids that we think will be a good mix together. So. This gives families a very brief, it's only four lines of the entire it's two sentences and four lines, three sentences, and four lines of the entire email. But it gives families a very brief little reminder that if they want to enroll, or [00:15:00] if they're thinking about enrolling. Helps them, if they're on the fence, give them a little, it gives them a little information to think about our services.
So, and then I just say, have fun outside with your child this month. Cheers, Laura. And all of us at outdoor kids OT and there's a little link to visit our website. And that is it. So there are links throughout the. to our, you know, to the relevant resources, but in general, it just looks like an email to a friend.
It's a, it's a. Text email without a lot of photos. Now, sometimes with the story, I will include a few photos because there was a story where the kids made a tornado trophy for one of their friends. And of course you want a picture of them. Making the tornado trophy and the kid holding the tornado trophy at the end.
So. So that's it. That's the template that we use. We do a therapy tip, a therapy resource, and a story of the month and service updates. I hope this was helpful to you and your practice. If you have any questions on anything I ever talk about on the podcast, you can always reach out to me inside of the [00:16:00] therapy, in the great outdoors community.
You can make a post there. I do read all of the posts and or you can DME inside of the community. All right, I'll talk to you next week. Bye.
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