As a business owner, you’re focused on many different things. Optimizing routes, testing ideal mix rates, and dealing with customer concerns can keep you busy on its own. However, finding and convincing potential customers to use your service should always be at the top of the list. Today we’ll provide you with tips to use email marketing as part of your overall customer acquisition strategy.
1. Focus on the List This may seem obvious, but if you don’t have an ever-growing list of interested prospects, email marketing is a complete and utter waste of time. One of the key words here is “interested”, meaning it’s probably a bad idea to buy email lists or send cold emails to those who are completely uninterested in ever using your services. In fact, it’s a quick way to get emails marked as “spam” or get your accounts shut down for violating terms of service. Build a list of those who may use your service, and you’ll see it pay dividends for years to come. Set up your website in a way that captures leads and puts emails into your CRM automatically. Most popular email services and CRM’s have simple integrations, not to mention software like Zapier that can connect two services and create automations for you. Grabbing emails doesn’t have to be a hassle, either. You can use pop-up boxes, contact forms, or social media campaigns designed to increase the number of subscribers you have.
2. Add Value, Then Sell We’ve all had the experience of signing up for something and regretting it when receiving a barrage of emails, sometimes even on a daily basis. Email fatigue is real, so make sure that your emails are personal in nature and don’t simply attempt to sell, sell, SELL. Offering discounts is fine, but frequency should be limited. It doesn’t help to have a giant list if you scare them all away by incessant, salesy messages. In contracting, sending interesting facts or actionable tips is a natural way to keep people engaged and thinking about your brand. For example, if you wrote an interesting article on your website about how locals are worried about rats chewing on electrical wires and causing structural problems in their homes, that would be a worthwhile use of someone’s time to read. Cross-promote your content; videos, written content, and social messages can be used in many different ways.
3. Know Your Metrics
Okay, so you’ve built up an email list. Now what? You may think that “more is always better”, but that’s only true when looking at this quarter’s revenue numbers! With email marketing, targeting a smaller group of motivated people is infinitely better than a large group of uninterested strangers (especially when it comes to keeping a solid reputation).
Use an email software that can provide you with key metrics, like open rate, click-through percentage, reply rate, and other key data. This way, if one type of email is really resonating with the group, you can increase the frequency of that type of messaging. Sometimes what is actually working can surprise you, but you’ll never know unless you look at and understand the data.
4. Create Different “Buckets” Once you have started this process, it’s important to segment people based on intent. If this all sounds like nerd-talk, hear me out. If one person signs up on your site to get a special deal, that’s very different than someone who signs up to get tips on how to keep spiders out of their garage. The intent is way different in each case. Email marketing software usually makes it easy to create multiple “lists”, so that if someone, for example, signs up while reading a blog, they get put in a different “bucket” than a person looking at a deals page and puts in their information. Once you have this down, you can tailor your marketing accordingly and your success rates will inevitably increase.
5. Make Specific Goals For Your Campaigns Before starting any marketing campaign, it is important to map out exactly what you intend to do and what you expect the results to look like. It’s easy to say, “I want more customers from this”, and spend lots of time doing the wrong things. For example, collecting emails of real life customers should be a no-brainer, though there are still companies that neglect it. With customer emails, you can re-market to those who discontinue service, create upsells and seasonal specials, and even promote your reputation online. This is the most basic email list to ensure your company has, though the sky's the limit with how much you can do with it. We’ve seen companies make thousands of sales that they never would have made, if it weren't for well-crafted messages to people on their email lists.
Conclusion Email marketing has the potential to change the way you interact with and nurture leads at your contracting company. Build up your list, segment it, know your metrics, add value, and execute in order to hit your goals. Companies have been using these techniques for years, though most throw up their hands in frustration and never hit their full potential.