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If you’ve never done email marketing before, it’s time to get on the bandwagon! This technology is not just for online retailers and non-profits… it is an effective way for birth professionals to build a relationship with your target market, educate them and inspire them to interact with you further.

Perhaps you have been attempting to send html email newsletters through your regular email account. Most people who try that run into several problems:

• The emails are either plain & boring looking OR your attempts at sprucing them up “break” in many of the recipients in-boxes and end up looking nothing like what you intended.
• You have to put all the email addresses in the CC or BCC boxes when you send them through your personal email program which either shows everyone’s email or, more likely, gets caught in their spam filters.
• You have no way of tracking who opened, read, deleted or clicked a link in the email, no data = uncertain effectiveness.

So now that I’ve convinced you not to use your hotmail account for email marketing campaigns (!), what’s a savvy birth professional to do? Fortunately, there are many email marketing services out there and almost all of them offer a free trial (such as iContact & Constant Contact). One, however, offers what they call “The Forever Free Plan” and for this reason I happily recommend it. That company is Mail Chimp. Now, I know what you are thinking… “How could a company with such a eccentric name offer serious email marketing?” Believe me, I’ve tried out many of the companies out there and Mail Chimp knows their stuff. Not only that, but their program is actually really easy to use! Check out this brief intro video:

Mail Chimp’s Forever Free Plan lets you add up to 500 subscribers and send up to 3000 emails per month. No contract or credit card required! If you end up needing more than that you can pay as you go (like buying stamps) or pay a flat monthly rate.

Once you have your account set up, Mail Chimp does a great job of walking you through the process of importing contact, making lists, creating emails & monitoring statistics.

So then, your next questions might be: What should I email about, how often & to whom?

• What Should I Email About? A great way to start is with a monthly eNewsletter. Over the course of a month, put together news snippets, testimonials & pictures, birth stories… whatever strikes your fancy. The icing on the cake is to include some type of coupon, special or other call to action regarding your business at the end of the email. Be sure to include links to your website, Facebook page, Twitter feed or blog!
• How Often? Start small and manageable! Once every month is a good goal in the beginning. After you master that you can start sending targeted campaigns. For example a doula might create subscriber lists in Mail Chimp such as “Currently Pregnant” and “New Moms”. Then she could send a bi-monthly pregnancy tips email with a healthy recipe, positive affirmations and a prenatal yoga pose. For the new moms, simple and direct is best, try a “top ten tips” format where you address different topics like: balancing baby & siblings, finding “me” time, inexpensive 2 hour dates with your mate, etc.
• To Whom? Hopefully you have a list of client emails that you have slowly built over time through regular conversations. That is a good place to start. In Mail Chimp they give you awesome tools and tutorials on how to add an email subscription form to your website so you can start getting emails from potential clients. You can also build a list of fellow birth professionals to network with. Please don’t ever, ever “scrape” emails off websites though! An example of scraping is going to DONA’s website and searching for all your local doulas and then copy their emails off the list. Those people haven’t initiated contact with you and acquiring their emails in this way for marketing purposes is dishonest.

So, what are you waiting for! Get started in email marketing today. Here are your next steps:

1. Sign up for a Mail Chimp account (or a similar service such as Constant Contact or iContact).
2. Download this Free .pdf Email Marketing Guide and read up on how to be an email marketing maven!
3. Also read Common Email Marketing Rookie Mistakes to prevent newbie headaches.
4. Stop reading and get writing… your clients are waiting to hear from you!

Domain names for birth professionals fall into four categories:

• The biz name domain: Let’s say your business name is Happy Doula. You choose to buy the domain www.happydoula.com VIOLA! Easy choice.
• The personal name domain: Maybe you have a very short and sweet name like Jane Smith. A simple option is www.janesmith.com or www.janedoula.com
• The keyword domain: Savvy birth professionals realize that search engines *love* keyword domains. So Jane Smith’s business is Happy Doula but she happens to live in Fargo, ND, so she chooses www.fargodoula.com because she wants top placement in search engines for the term: fargo doula.
• The creative domain: Jane Smith of Happy Doula who lives in Fargo, ND wants something special. She chooses a domain that is more like a slogan or a call to action, like: www.youcanbirtheasy.com, www.haveajoyfulbirth.com which has nothing to do with her name, her business name or localized keywords. It’s just catchy and memorable.

More helpful tips for selecting a domain:

• Choose a .com ONLY. For a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is preventing user error, buying a .com is the only way to go. If for some reason the .com you want is taken try mixing up the words a bit. For example, you want www.atlantadoula.com but it is in use. How about www.myatlantadoula.com or www.youratlantadoula.com or www.doulaatlanta.com or www.atlantabirthdoula.com or www.bestatlantadoula.com … use your creativity!
• It absolutely must be easy to spell. There are some very beautifully spoken business names, like Chrysalis Midwifery, out there. Unfortunately the chances of the average person spelling chrysalis correctly is low. If they don’t spell it correctly, they don’t find you. In that case a personal name, keyword or creative domain is probably a better choice.
• It needs to be easily translated from speech to text. Imagine you hear a voice mail: “This is Amy with Doula for You, visit my website at doula for you dot com.” Is the domain www.doulaforyou.com or www.doula4you.com or www.doulaforu.com or www.doula4u.com?
• No funny business. Don’t bother with hyphens (-), numbers, purposely misspelled words (kidzkutz.com) or excessively long domains (blissfulbirthandpostpartumdoulaservices.com). Choose the simplest, shortest domain you can manage.

So now we have some ground rules, here’s a game plan:

• Brainstorm at least fifteen keywords related to your business. They can be your business name, your name, keywords, cities. Just make sure they are all easy to spell. Write them down on big piece of scratch paper for easy reference.
• Hop on to a domain availability browser and start sorting through different keyword combinations to see what is available. My favorite is: http://www.domize.com If a name is available the .com next to it will show up in blue. You can “star” the ones that catch your eye and clear the rest out.
• Once you have a handful of potential .com’s that are available, say them out loud. Make sure they are simple, easy to pronounce, easy to spell and short. Get the advice of a trusted friend or family member.
• From there you can choose a winner and proceed to purchase by clicking on the blue .com (if you are using Domize) which will take you to the domain registrar GoDaddy. If you can’t decide, there is nothing wrong with purchasing more than one domain name. You can have them all route to your site and see which one fits over time.
• Helpful tip: Pick up a coupon at www.retailmenot.com to get a discount on your domain purchase at GoDaddy! Don’t get sucked in to all the extra add on features & products at GoDaddy. Trust me, I’ve been in this business many years, you don’t need them. A domain name with coupon should cost you about $7-9 for one year.

Whether you have an iPhone, Blackberry, Android or another iteration… SmartPhone owners know that this technology can make day to day business operations much more mobile. With a plethora of new apps released daily, living the mobile birth professional lifestyle has never been easier. The ability to sync contacts, emails, calendars more instantly helps keep all your important information right at hand.

How to leverage your SmartPhone as a birth professional:

1. First, and most importantly, if you are going to keep client information and/or communications on a mobile device it is imperative to use a screen locking feature. HIPPA laws still apply to mobile information services and you must provide your best effort at protecting confidential client information. Screen locking means that if someone were to pick up your phone, in order to access the main menu a password must be entered first.

• Password protecting a Blackberry.
• Setup iPhone passcode lock.
• Setting a screen lock on a Droid.

2. Apps for Birth Professionals

The phrase “There’s an app for that.” has become quite ubiquitous in the last year and rightly so. There are mini applications available for everything from calculating due dates to contraction timers to full blown week by week pregnancy calendars. Then of course we have social media apps to manage Facebook, Twitter and everything in between. Not to mention generic business applications that handle credit card or pay pal processing, expense reporting, to-do list tracking and much more. Here is a collection of some pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding apps that you might find handy:

• iPhone: Contraction Master
• iPhone: Bishop’s Score
• iPhone: Breastfeeding Management
• Blackberry: Contraction Calc
  
• Blackberry: Breastfeeding

3. Communications Management
All smart phones integrate phone calls, voicemail, text messaging and email. This offers a lot of possibilities for birth professionals. Let me describe how this has affected my doula business. Whenever someone emails me from my website, the email comes directly to my cell phone. I can reply to them immediately and add them quickly to the contacts database on my phone. I also do online appointment booking, so whenever someone makes an appointment with me the notification gets sent via text message and I can add the information directly to my calendar. Also because I have a mobile syncing program, all of this data is updated automatically on my computer without even having to plug my phone into it.

The iPad or Netbook

I used to tote my laptop with me everywhere. It was nice to be able to get a bit of work done here and there or browse the internet. But, man, it was a pain to lug it around plus the power cord and mouse. Enter the super mobile computer. Now I can take my large-ish purse to my local coffee store, whip out my iPad and browse the internet, read a book, check email and tons more. Super portable, super convenient. I find myself dragging my laptop around less and less.