Does Your Therapy Practice Need an Opt-In?

One question we get from our clients a lot is: “I’m a therapist, do I need to be building my email list?”

Your opt-in or lead magnet or whatever you want to call is a tool used to build your email list. (We’ll get more into detail about what that means below.) But before you decide to invest your energy–or money, if you’re hiring someone else to develop one for you–take time to decide if it’s something you really need!

There are many different style of therapy practices, and depending on your goals for the communities you serve, you may want to be building an email list as a touch point for practice news, events, when there are new services, or other things of that nature.

When could building an email list be helpful?

• You’re a growing group practice

• You offer things other than 1:1 therapy such as:

  • group therapy

  • workshops

  • community education

• You provide educational services to other therapists

• You provide multi-state virtual services

When don’t you need to be building an email list?

• you’re a solo practitioner with a full practice

• you’re a solo practitioner with no interest in offering services other than 1:1 therapy

• you don’t offer any virtual services

• you have no need to connect with anyone outside of your geographic location

These aren’t the only scenarios where an opt-in would or would not be appropriate for you, but hopefully it’s enough to get you thinking about if investing in one would align with your practice goals. Basically, if you have need to connect with other members of your community, an opt-in is a means of getting those people on your list by providing them something useful. If you’re connected with everyone you need to be connected with, building an email list is probably not necessary for you!

What is an opt-in?

Like we said above, an opt-in is a tool to grow your email list by providing something useful to your community. It’s not the only way to build your list, you can also ask clients directly for their emails when you work with them, have sign up sheets at conferences, etc. But an opt-in gives you a way to connect with a larger community because it’s digital.

Some businesses use things like coupons for services, discount codes, exclusive offers + deals for subscribers to get people to opt-in, which can be great if you’re a business that sells products, but you can’t really offer a therapy coupon can you?

But what you offer doesn’t have to be a discount or coupon to be valuable. You have expertise to offer and passion to share! To start thinking of what sort of opt-in you want to create ask yourself:

• What’s the mission of your business?

  • Who are you trying to reach and why?

  • How are you trying to support your clients?

  • How do you provide that support?

• What are your core areas of expertise?

• Are there any fundamentals clients could benefit from knowing before starting working with you?

Designing your opt-in

We basically do all of our content designing in Canva. We know there are so many options out there, and we’ve tried a couple others but honestly? The ones we’ve tried have basically the same user interface and features and unless something is going to be notably better, why spend time transferring everything over?

Canva has tons of templates you can choose from and their interface is easy to use. You can upload your own photos or stock photos, and depending on your subscription, you can add your own fonts and brand colors so they’re automatically the default. Once you have a template you like, it’s easy to customize to fit your content and your brand.

We’ve been working with therapists since we launched our business, and they’ve become a bit of an accidental niche for us. Here are some ideas based on the practices we’ve worked with!

our favorite opt-in ideas for therapists to use:

guides/ebooks/workbooks

• Mindfulness workbook

• Stress management guide

• Guide to starting your journey with therapy

• Questions for opening up your therapy session

• Free mental health resources roundup

• Anxiety grounding techniques workbook

• Reflection guide: are your habits serving you?

• Guide to what to expect in couples therapy

• Life transition grounding techniques workbook

• Decision-making tips

• Self-care ideas workbook

  • Affordable/free self-care ideas

  • practical self care

  • caring for your mental health vs. commercialized self care

• Improve your sleeping habits guide

• Affirmations (for depression, anxiety, relationships, etc) ebook

Worksheets

• Creating positive self-talk

• Emotional regulation practice

• Self-love exercises

• Goal planing worksheet

• Goal tracking worksheet

• Daily routine planner

• Daily planner (tracking moods, highs & lows of the day, amount of sleep/water/etc.)

Journaling

• Mood tracking journal

  • somatic mood tracking journal: keep track of your feelings & how they show up in the body

• Benefits of journaling ebook

• Journaling as a tool to aid therapy

• Journaling prompts (for anxiety, depression, reflection, gratitude, grief, life transitions, for couples, to explore your gender/sexuality, etc.)

• Bullet journal setup guide

We also realized that the Affirming Resources Database we built for ourselves (and other chronically ill folks) would function perfectly for therapists. How many times have you wanted to share a resource with a client, and have had to search through your email, or scroll through your notes app, or just hope you've saved it somewhere easy to access and share?

Using our template, we can help you develop a personalized database with resources you recommend for your clients and colleagues. You'll send us what you want included and what you'd like to sort by (topic, medium, etc.), and we'll build you your own database, record a tutorial on how to use it, and give you step by step instructions on how to set it up so folks can access it by signing up for your email list.