by Dan Paradee | May 9, 2016
Email marketing is a great way to connect with customers on a regular basis and remind them of your services and marketing initiatives. Reaching your customers on a monthly or quarterly basis will (ideally) have them considering their HVAC and home performance during every season. Email campaigns are not only an excellent opportunity to educate customers, but are also a great way to remind customers to tune-up their AC unit or schedule that energy audit.
If you are sending to the same list of 100 people every month, you might not be seeing the desired return on investment. Consistently growing your email list increases your reach to people, boosting your company’s brand and message with each email campaign you send. There are a million ways to buy email lists online, but these are often unreliable, and could get you in trouble with the CAN-SPAM act (a law passed in 2003 controlling unsolicited commercial emails) if recipients have not “opted in” to your email list.
The Value of Your List Beyond Email
This post is focused on email, but in today’s marketing environment, the value of your house list extends well beyond that one medium. A strong list opens the door to connecting with customers on other platforms, like Facebook and other social media. You can upload a list of customers to Facebook, create a “custom audience” and target them with paid ads, and create “lookalike” audiences that target users similar to your current list. LinkedIn allows you to download a list of your connections to grow your list. Or, use the emails you have collected to send review request emails. Using your email list in creative ways increases the value of every email you collect.
Want to spice up your customer email list and see it grow? Here are five initiatives that you can add to your business that will make it easy for relevant customers to join:
1. Make collecting emails part of your service call
Each time your customers schedule a tune-up and inspection, they should fill out form that requests an email. This can be collected while the appointment is being made, or during the job itself. There is a good chance you already have some process in place that collects customer phone numbers, addresses and emails. The final step is to be sure that every email collected ends up on your mailing list.
2. Put a form on your website
3. Sponsor a community event
A community fair or home show are perfect places to garner interest and emails. While the main goal of these events is to gain more customers, it is unlikely that someone will sign up for a $20,000 energy retrofit on a Saturday in the park. It’s much more likely that they will give you their email and maybe be sold on the job later on. A simple clipboard or Ipad available for everyone who comes to visit your booth can greatly increase engagement and the value of each interaction that day.
4. Integrate signups with social media
Social media is another great way to keep in touch with your customer base. People who visit your Facebook or LinkedIn pages are likely to be looking for more information about the company or offers that you are featuring. They’re perfect candidates to join your newsletter list. Mailchimp and Constant Contact both have great Facebook apps that allow people to sign up for newsletters directly from Facebook. Similarly, LinkedIn also allows you to download a list of your contacts.
5. Make a great newsletter
A growing newsletter list can mean more customers and brand recognition. Take a step back and look at your current email collection process and what you are doing with those emails after they have been collected. Could it be more effective?
Ready to get qualified leads through email marketing? Schedule a free marketing evaluation with the Energy Circle team today (and sign up for our newsletter)!