I sat down with Dr. Ed Osburn on The Chiropractic Philanthropist, one of the longest-running and most respected podcasts in the profession, for a conversation I’d been wanting to have for years.
We got into the asset most chiropractors overlook completely: the patient email list they already paid to build. Most practices are sitting on a gold mine and have no idea it’s there. We also got into the hard year behind why I built Chiro Connect, and what it really takes to keep patients connected to a clinic.
If your marketing has ever felt like it’s at the mercy of platforms you don’t control, this one is worth your time. You can listen to the full episode right here.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Full episode page
As featured on The Chiropractic Philanthropist with Dr. Ed Osburn, Episode 421.
What is The Chiropractic Philanthropist, and who is Dr. Ed Osburn?
The Chiropractic Philanthropist is one of the profession’s longest-running podcasts, hosted by Dr. Ed Osburn, with more than 400 episodes of honest conversations about the real highs and lows of building a practice.
Dr. Ed practiced for well over a decade and built a thriving family wellness office with his wife before a serious health setback pushed him out of clinical practice. Instead of leaving the profession, he turned to the show to give back to it, and he’s spent years since interviewing chiropractors and entrepreneurs on what actually works. His core belief, that we’re all more alike than we are different and that trust gets built through steady, personal communication, is exactly why this conversation landed the way it did. It’s the same belief that runs through everything we do at Chiro Connect.
Here’s what we got into on the episode.
Why is email the most overlooked marketing asset in chiropractic?
Email is overlooked because chiropractors spend thousands acquiring patients, then never email the list they already own. You’ll put real money into ads every month to find new people, and leave the list of patients who already chose you untouched for years.
Here’s the part that should sting a little. You already paid to build that list. Every name on it cost you marketing dollars, front desk time, and a first visit you had to earn. The patients are still out there. The relationship is real. The only thing missing is a reason to come back, and a doctor who stays in touch. The list you paid to build still has plenty left in it. Most practices just never go back for it.
If you want the full how-to on this, I wrote a complete guide to email marketing for chiropractors. This post is the why behind it.
Try this: open your EHR and pull every patient who has been in since the start of 2021. That’s your list. That’s the gold mine.
Is email marketing worth it for a chiropractic practice?
Yes, because email isn’t really marketing, it’s foundational communication, and it’s the one channel you actually own. You could lose your Meta ads tomorrow. You could lose your Google ads tomorrow. You could move your clinic down the street or to a new town, and you’d still have your list. Every other channel runs on rules somebody else can change without warning. Your patient list doesn’t.
That’s why the numbers hold up when you stay consistent with it. 50 to 70% of the patients on our client lists open an email from their chiropractor every month. Those are people who already know your name, already trust your hands, and are happy to hear from you. Try getting that kind of attention from a cold ad.
The point isn’t to chase opens or clicks. It’s that email keeps you connected to the people most likely to book again, on a channel no algorithm can take from you.
How often should a chiropractor email their patients?
Weekly is the goal, but the rule that matters more is to start with whatever cadence you can keep consistent, even if that’s once a month. Something going out, on a schedule you actually hold, beats a perfect weekly plan you abandon by week three.
A weekly newsletter trains patients to open and look forward to it. That consistency is what builds trust over time, and trust is the thing that brings them back. On top of the weekly note, a practice usually wants a monthly plain-text check-in from the doctor, new patient welcome emails for the people just starting care, and a few reactivation campaigns through the year for the ones who have drifted off.
If you’re doing all of that yourself, be honest about the load. One good email a month is doable. Eight a month, written well, pulled from your social posts, cleaned and sent and tracked, is a job. That’s the point where it makes sense to hand it off so it actually happens every week instead of whenever you remember.
Try this: pick one cadence you can sustain and commit to it for 90 days. Don’t change it. Just keep it.
Why aren’t your patients opening or responding to your emails?
Usually it’s not that patients are mad at you, it’s that the list has gone stale and your emails may be sitting in spam. A list nobody has touched in three years has dead addresses on it, and blasting all of them at once is the fastest way to wreck your sending reputation with Gmail, Yahoo, and the rest.
The fix is unglamorous. Validate and clean the list first, drop the addresses that bounce, and rebuild a steady sending rhythm before you do anything big. Once the list is healthy, the response will surprise you. I’ve watched patients who hadn’t been seen since 2017 or 2018 book again off a single first email, just because somebody finally reached out. Patients aren’t ignoring you. They’re waiting to hear from you.
There’s a reactivation window worth knowing too. The 60 to 90 day mark is the sweet spot for bringing someone back, before a lapsed patient quietly decides they’re “fine” and stops thinking about care at all.
Try this: before you ever email your whole list, clean it. One bad blast can cost you months of deliverability.
What’s the story behind Chiro Connect?
I built Chiro Connect after the hardest year of my life, because I knew chiropractors already had the patient relationships and just needed a consistent way to keep communicating. In 2023 I lost my husband, a veteran, to suicide. Inside the same stretch I lost a long business partnership and the company I’d spent years helping build. I sold almost everything I owned, moved into a double-wide trailer with my kid, and started over.
I was sitting in my car one day, not knowing what I was going to do with myself, and the person beside me said the obvious thing out loud. You are chiropractic marketing. You live and breathe this. Go do it. I bought getchiroconnect.com from that car seat and got to work the next morning. Almost two decades in this profession, more than 1,000 chiropractic practices, and it took losing everything for me to finally build the thing on my own terms.
So when I tell you email is foundational, or that you can’t automate trust, it isn’t a slogan. It’s what I’ve seen hold up through every version of this work, including the version where it was the only thing I had left.
What This Means for You
- ✓The patient list you already paid to build is your most valuable marketing asset, and it's the one nobody else can take from you.
- ✓Email is foundational communication, not just marketing. It keeps working whether or not your ad accounts do.
- ✓Consistency beats volume. One email a month you actually send beats a weekly plan you quit.
- ✓Patients aren't ignoring you, they're waiting to hear from you. Clean the list, stay consistent, and it pays you back.
Pro Tip
You can’t automate trust. Use AI to move faster if you want, but the email that actually brings a patient back is the one that sounds like a real person who knows them. Write the way you talk to them on the table, then be human enough to keep showing up.
FAQ
What did Nerissa Brumley talk about on The Chiropractic Philanthropist?
On the episode, Nerissa Brumley explained why email is the most overlooked marketing asset in chiropractic: the patient list a practice already paid to build. She covered patient retention and reactivation, why consistency beats volume, why patients go quiet, and the personal story behind founding Chiro Connect.
Who is Dr. Ed Osburn?
Dr. Ed Osburn is the host and creator of The Chiropractic Philanthropist, one of the profession’s longest-running podcasts. He practiced for well over a decade before a health setback moved him out of clinical work, and he now serves the profession through the show, coaching, and speaking.
Where can I listen to Nerissa Brumley’s episode?
You can listen on the player above, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the episode page at The Chiropractic Philanthropist. It’s Episode 421.
How often should a chiropractor email their patient list?
Weekly is ideal for retention, but consistency matters more than frequency. If you can only commit to one email a month, send one email a month and keep it up, because a cadence you hold beats a bigger plan you drop.
Who is Nerissa Brumley?
Nerissa Brumley is the founder and CEO of Chiro Connect. She has worked with more than 1,000 chiropractic practices across almost two decades in chiropractic communication, patient retention, and email.
If you’ve got a patient list you’re not using, this is the easiest money in your practice to go get. See exactly what we’d send to your patients, in your voice, every week.
If you want the founder side of all this, the marketing and the honest behind-the-scenes, that’s what I pour into the Chiro Courier.