Ontraport & VMD Services: A Powerful 1-2 Punch

Podiatrists who trust VMD Services with their marketing know this:

We work hard and use our talent and experience so you see results—more calls to your office, more patients in the waiting room, etc.

One of the advantages you receive by having VMD Services handle your own online marketing is our relationship with Ontraport—and this usually leads to the following question:

What is Ontraport?

Meet Ontraport

To save you some time and effort that you’d otherwise use to go back to Google and do a quick search, Ontraport is a Santa Barbara-based business that makes leading marketing automation software.

Essentially, their software automates customer relations management (CRM), provides better tracking for key metrics, and enables our team to better manage your account.

But Ontraport does even more than just produce remarkably advanced software!

(No, we don’t own stock in the company.)

As you’ll see shortly, the company provides training and certification, and channels for ongoing education (through their Modern Ontrapreneur magazine and podcast, and their blog).

The company was founded back in 2006 when Landon Ray—who was actually running a different business at the time—started encountering a range of problems virtually all entrepreneurs face. He couldn’t believe a slick, easy solution already existed, so Ray decided to create his own.

Ray used personal experience and a significant amount of research to develop his small business automation platform and make it as user-friendly as possible.

In addition to the software Ontraport develops and maintains, the company also reflects Ray’s passion for educating and supporting entrepreneurs and marketing professionals. This is evidenced by the fact they offer training and certifications, and host conferences attended by customers and small business owners from across the nation.

They host a big, annual event called ONTRApalooza (OPLZA), where dozens of globally recognized marketing strategists, business experts, CEOs, and other thought leaders share their insights and perspectives with those who attend.

And speaking of attendees, a team from VMD Services came back from OPLZA 2018 just a couple of weeks ago and are already hard at work implementing lessons learned at the event!

Beyond ONTRApalooza, the company hosts a full calendar of meet-ups and events throughout the year.

The reason that bears noting is because it’s one of the ways that Ontraport keeps up-to-speed with the modern landscape for small businesses. By networking at such events, they are able to learn about new struggles and see how much progress is being made for existing ones. In turn, this allows them to create solutions.

By doing so, Ontraport has won an array of awards for their software, but also for being a great place to work (which is important because happy employees are proven to consistently produce better products and services for their customers).

Ontraport lives by their stated mission:

“TO SUPPORT ENTREPRENEURS IN DELIVERING THEIR VALUE TO THE WORLD BY REMOVING THE BURDEN OF TECHNOLOGY”

Now, when it comes to “delivering value to the world,” we’re inclined to think those in the medical profession—such as podiatrists like you—are doing exactly that.

(So do your patients when you take away their foot pain!)

If this software automaton company sounds too good to be true, don’t just take our word for it:

• Marketing Automation Insider considers Ontraport to be “one of the best kept secrets of business and marketing automation.”
• Smart Business Trends gives Ontraport a rating of 4.4/5 stars and reports that it is “a really powerful email marketing platform that’s packed with features.”
• Small Biz CRM gives the software company a slightly higher rating of 4.5/5 stars and says they impress both as a CRM and as a company, too.

Partnering with Ontraport to Better Serve You

Our VMD Services team takes advantage of the training opportunities and resources offered by Ontraport—so we can turn around and provide you with the best possible service.

When it comes to education, we have team members who’ve spent over 17 hours digesting unique content and information during the Ontraport Academy program. In doing so, they’ve learned the keys to subjects like:

• How to find more potential patients through automation software
• What are the essential steps for driving traffic, conversion, and office visits
• How to effectively follow up with leads and new patients

Basically, this training program allows our marketing experts to capitalize on more than just a sliver of Ontraport’s overall functionality. Further, their step-by-step tutorials clearly lay out what it takes to generate successful sequence and campaigns for our clients.

This education has refined our collective skills and abilities to help put your practice ahead of the pack—even in the most competitive markets.

Beyond educational resources, something that we find to be especially awesome about working with Ontraport is the support offered by their vast network of Certified Consultants. When issues arise—one consistency in life is the fact problems happen sometimes—we are able to get quicker resolution than we’d otherwise be able to.

And that means your problems become non-issues in the shortest possible amount of time!

Ontraport and Your Email Marketing

Let’s get a little more specific about how we use Ontraport to contribute to your practice’s success through email marketing.

It’s a mistake to ignore email as a marketing tool in this day and age. After all, it’s harder than ever to stay “top of mind” for your patients—there’s just too many distractions!

Well, you can break through all the noise and stand out with effective email campaigns.

Here’s the thing though:

Email isn’t just about marketing your podiatric services.

Sure, it’s partly about that, but it’s also a way to develop and strengthen relationships with your patients. This is important because patients who feel connected and engaged are more likely to not only return for your services (the next time they need them), but also to recommend your practice to friends and family members.

So how does Ontraport contribute to this?

As a starting point, the software is able to contain and manage a detailed contacts database—which is an important feature when you need to segment lists and send messages to specific demographics.

Being able to reach highly-targeted audiences allows you to provide optimal value.

At the same time, you can trust that your emails are making it to patient inboxes, courtesy of industry-topping deliverability rates.

This all probably sounds pretty amazing, and we’d understand if you’re thinking:

If Ontraport does so much, what do I need VMD Services for?

You’re certainly welcome to use just Ontraport if you want, but you’ll miss out on the comprehensive marketing services we offer—on top of providing you with the benefits you’d receive from having your own Ontraport account.

Plus, you know, those emails aren’t going to create themselves.

At VMD, we have writers and graphic designers on staff who write headlines that lead to opened emails full of compelling, impactful content and aesthetically appealing designs.

Oh, and we’ll strategically connect your emails to blog posts, webpages, campaigns, and other essential elements of your complete marketing plan.

If you’d like to learn more about Ontraport—and, in some ways, we’ve only scratched the surface here—please feel free to contact your VMD Services team by calling (833) 823-3335.