Blog
What actually works, written plainly.
No listicles and no hot takes. What we run for clients, what it costs, and the things we have stopped doing because they did not work.
Newsletters
Making sure a funeral home newsletter never arrives addressed to the deceased
It is the least interesting part of the program and the only part where a mistake ends a relationship. Here is the process that prevents it, cycle after cycle.
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Chiropractic newsletter or email blast: the honest comparison
Two channels that look interchangeable on a budget line and aren’t. Including the cases where a practice should skip print entirely.
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How to switch newsletter vendors without losing the list
Changing newsletter companies is mostly an inventory problem — the list, the masthead source files, the back catalogue, and the links that stop working when the account closes.
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Whose name goes on the newsletter: the agent’s or the brokerage’s?
The question nobody settles until an agent gives notice, and then it becomes the only question. Branding, list ownership, and how to set it up so a move is survivable.
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What an independent practice can say that a template cannot
Groups have buying power, budget and systems. What they do not have is the ability to name your town or your hygienist. That is the ground an independent can hold.
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Newsletter Pro vs Blue Ocean Strategies
Two different shapes of company, not a good one and a bad one — including the situations where somebody else is the right hire.
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Newsletter Pro review: what you’re actually buying
A large production vendor is a specific product with specific trade-offs. Here’s what scale buys, what the minimum rules out, and what to pin down before signing.
Read itRunning the business
What to do when the referrals dry up
When referrals slow down, the work almost never got worse. The people who used to send them moved on, got busy, or simply forgot you.
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Why funeral homes should mail, when we tell almost everyone else to start digital
An email about a dead spouse arrives between a shipping notice and a sale. The format is part of the message here, and it is the part most vendors get wrong.
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Chiropractic referral sources, and what to actually send each one
Referral relationships are a communication job, not a sales job. Here’s who the sources are, and what belongs in front of each of them.
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Is Newsletter Pro legit?
It’s a real company with a long track record. The useful question is fit — list size, what “done for you” covers, and what print and postage add on top.
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What to send a past client in the year after closing
The keys get handed over and the contact stops. Here is a twelve-month sequence for the period when your name is most valuable and least used.
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Dental newsletter or postcard: which one you actually need
One carries a single message cheaply. The other builds familiarity over a year. The honest comparison, including the cases where the postcard is clearly the right buy.
Read itLocal marketing
Should you hire a local marketing agency? Usually it doesn’t matter
We’re a Fort Lauderdale shop, and for most of what we do, being nearby makes no difference at all.
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The referral network most funeral homes never write to
Most of a funeral home’s volume comes from a few dozen people who make a recommendation under time pressure. Almost none of those people ever hear from the home in writing.
Read itRunning the business
Should you do your own marketing or hire it out?
Doing it yourself is often the right answer. The test isn’t whether you can — it’s whether it will still be happening in month four when you’re busy.
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Why your chiropractic newsletter never actually gets mailed
A file in your inbox isn’t a newsletter. It’s a job assigned to your front desk, and it’s the reason most practice newsletters get mailed twice a year.
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What a real estate newsletter costs, and what the money buys at each level
A commoditized market with a very wide price range. Here is what changes between the cheap end and the expensive end, and when the cheap end is the correct purchase.
Read itLocal marketing
What to have written before hurricane season, and what never to send
Write it in May. Nobody makes good communication decisions at 2am with a cone of uncertainty on the screen.
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The year-end benefits reminder, and how to word it
The most useful thing a dental practice publishes all year is an explanation of how the plan year works. Here is when to send it and exactly how to phrase it.
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Preneed is a different reader, a different message, and a different list
The preneed reader is project-managing, not grieving. That changes what you write, and it makes list separation a system property rather than a good intention.
Read itRunning the business
Ten questions that tell you if an agency actually does the work
Most sales calls test whether you like the salesperson. These ten questions test whether anyone behind them is going to do the work.
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Chiropractic marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing
Most of what gets sold to chiropractors is the same template with a different logo. Here’s how to tell, and what the plain version looks like.
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Your past clients are worth more than your farm, and you are ignoring them
One list has to be persuaded you exist. The other already paid you for the largest transaction of their lives. Guess which one gets the marketing budget.
Read itLocal marketing
What’s actually different about marketing a business in South Florida
Four things about this market change the plan: churn, Spanish, storm season, and a calendar that inverts in summer.
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Dental practice marketing that is not advertising
Ads work. They are also rarely the cheapest first move for a practice that already has a patient list. Here is the order we would spend in, and when we would buy ads first.
Read itAdvertising
Ads or a newsletter? An honest comparison, from people who sell one of them
We sell newsletters, so read this skeptically. Businesses with no list should run ads instead, and we say so on the first call.
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A year of aftercare content, month by month
Aftercare programs do not fail on principle, they fail in month five when nobody knows what to write. Here is a year of material built around the family’s calendar, not the firm’s.
Read itRunning the business
How to fire your marketing agency without losing everything
Leaving an agency is easy. Leaving with your domain, your ad account, your Business Profile and your data is the part people get wrong.
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Chiropractic patient reactivation: they didn’t leave, they just stopped booking
The inactive file is usually the largest asset in a chiropractic practice. Here’s how to size it, split it, and contact it without pretending a mailing is treatment.
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Farming a neighborhood: what it costs, how long it takes, and when to quit
Farming is a multi-year commitment or it is nothing. Here is the arithmetic for picking a farm, a real cost per year, and the point at which quitting is the right call.
Read itLocal marketing
What actually moves local rankings for a service business
Three things drive the map pack, you control one and a half of them, and a business with no storefront starts behind.
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Why hygiene recall leaks, and what actually brings people back
Recall rarely breaks. It drifts. A look at where six-month recall leaks, what each reminder channel is genuinely good at, and where a newsletter sits against text and postcards.
Read itAdvertising
What a lead actually costs
Three numbers get called "what a lead costs" and only one of them can tell you whether to keep spending. Here’s the difference and why it matters.
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What a funeral home aftercare newsletter is, and what belongs in it
The distinction that governs everything else: an aftercare mailing is a communication with the families you served, not marketing to them. Here is what that looks like on the page.
Read itRunning the business
How to set a marketing budget from your own numbers
Percentage-of-revenue rules are somebody else’s arithmetic. Here’s how to build a marketing budget out of what a customer is actually worth to you.
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Chiropractic newsletter ideas: a full year of issues, page by page
The four-page frame, one September issue written out page by page, and a twelve-month plan that stays entirely off clinical ground.
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Real estate newsletter ideas: a year of issues that are not just a market update
Twelve lead stories, one worked example issue, and a straight answer to why four agents farming the same streets keep mailing the same indistinguishable chart.
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Why your ads aren’t working (it’s usually not the ads)
When a campaign underperforms, the ad is the last thing to look at. Here’s the diagnosis in the order that finds the problem fastest.
Read itLocal marketing
The Google Business Profile checklist almost nobody finishes
It’s free, it takes an afternoon, and most businesses fill in about a third of it and never open it again.
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What actually goes in a dental newsletter, month by month
Twelve months of topics for a dental practice newsletter, the four buckets they come from, and the short list of things that should never go in one.
Read itCRM and follow-up
Google reviews without being obnoxious about it
Ask well, answer the bad ones, and stay on the right side of two rules a lot of businesses break without realizing.
Read itAI automation
Do you need a CRM before you buy AI? Usually, yes
An automation needs somewhere to put what it learns, which is why the CRM gets built before the receptionist.
Read itAdvertising
Google Ads vs Meta ads: intent versus interruption
The difference isn’t features. Google catches demand that already exists; Meta creates it. Which one fits depends on how your customers decide.
Read itCRM and follow-up
Why you lose customers, and why it is almost never price
Ask an owner why a customer left and they will say price. Ask the customer and they will usually say they just stopped thinking about it.
Read itAI automation
Speed to lead: why minutes decide who gets the job
The gap between an inquiry arriving and a human responding is usually the cheapest thing in the business to fix, and it does not need AI to start.
Read itAdvertising
How much should a small business spend on Google Ads?
Below a certain monthly budget, Google Ads doesn’t buy you customers — it buys you a sample too small to learn from. Here’s how to find your floor.
Read itCRM and follow-up
What a small business CRM actually needs
Four things, and a spreadsheet that gets updated beats an expensive CRM that doesn’t.
Read itAI automation
Five ways an AI automation project goes wrong, from someone who builds them
What actually goes wrong on these projects, and the cases where the right answer is to buy nothing at all.
Read itEmail marketing
How to write a subject line that is honest and still gets opened
The tricks that lift open rates are the same tricks that create legal exposure. The good news is that specific and honest beats clever anyway.
Read itCRM and follow-up
Database reactivation: the campaign that mines your old customers
Most businesses are sitting on a list of people who liked them fine and simply stopped coming back. Here is how to go get them.
Read itAI automation
Missed-call text-back is the smallest automation worth building first
The cheapest automation to build, the hardest one to argue with, and the one place a single text message changes the outcome.
Read itEmail marketing
The welcome sequence: the one automation almost nobody has
Somebody just raised their hand. The next four days decide whether they remember you in six months, and most businesses use them to send nothing at all.
Read itCRM and follow-up
How to ask for a referral without making it weird
Referrals are the cheapest revenue any business has, and almost nobody asks for them out loud.
Read itEmail marketing
A campaign and a newsletter are not the same thing
One asks for something. The other just shows up. Treating them as the same channel is the most common reason a list stops responding.
Read itAI automation
What an AI receptionist actually is, and what happens on the call
What actually happens when the AI picks up, where the handoff to a human goes, and the parts nobody selling one wants to explain.
Read itNewsletters
What a digital flipbook newsletter is, and who should skip print
The same four pages as a link you can text, email and post — with clickable content and numbers behind it. And a straight answer on who should not print at all.
Read itEmail marketing
Is cold email legal in the US? Mostly yes, with sharp edges
US law lets you email someone who never asked — but the rules about how you do it are stricter than most people think, and Florida adds a statute with real teeth.
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How big does a mailing list need to be before it is worth mailing?
The answer depends entirely on what one new job is worth to you. Here is the arithmetic, and the honest case for not mailing yet.
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How to clean a mailing list before you spend a dollar on postage
Every bad address is a fully-loaded piece cost with no chance of arriving. Here is the order we work through a file in before anything goes to the printer.
Read itEmail marketing
SPF, DKIM and DMARC, explained without the jargon
Three DNS records decide whether your email reaches the inbox. Here is what each one does, in plain English, and why they stopped being optional.
Read itNewsletters
Open rates are the wrong metric. Here’s what to watch instead
Open rates stopped meaning what they used to mean in 2021, and they never measured the thing you care about anyway.
Read itNewsletters
First Class or Marketing Mail: the cheaper one is often wrong
Marketing Mail saves real money per piece, and it also throws away the one thing that keeps your mailing list alive. That trade is worth understanding before you pick.
Read itNewsletters
Is print dead? No — but the argument isn’t nostalgia
A printed piece survives on a desk for weeks. An email survives for about four seconds. That difference is the whole argument.
Read itNewsletters
What it actually costs to print and mail a newsletter
Printing, postage, addressing and insertion, line by line, with the 2026 rates and the quantity minimums that decide which end of the range you land on.
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Why newsletters stop after month three
It’s never the idea that fails. It’s that the work lands on the one person who has no room for it.
Read itNewsletters
What to actually put in a client newsletter
The mistake nearly everybody makes is writing about the business. Here’s what goes in instead.
Read itNewsletters
How often should you send a newsletter?
Monthly, for almost everyone — and the reason has nothing to do with engagement metrics.
Read itRather we just did it?
Everything on this blog is something we run for clients every month. You spend about twenty minutes on it.
No pitch deck, no discovery-call gauntlet. One conversation, one straight answer.