From my experience in working with contractors, I’ve found many who swear by direct mail campaigns. They swear that pouring out hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars to print small leaflets get them more business. This may be true, but then I ask them to guess how many clients they got because of the leaflets, and if the amount they earned justified the cost of the direct mail campaign.

The sad response I get almost every time is, “no”.

If you’re a contractor and looking for a more cost effective, and just a plain more effective way at getting more leads and customers, then strongly consider starting an email marketing campaign. The start up costs are fairly low (even if you do purchase a CMS program, which I highly recommend), and the earnings you’ll get because of it will far outweigh those start-up costs.

For more on generating more traffic and leads to your website, be sure to check out our FREE Ebook, “How Successful Contractors Grow Their Business Using Inbound Marketing.”

Be CAN-SPAM Compliant

After all of the effort that you put into your email marketing campaign, you don’t want your emails to end up in the “email trash”, do you? To keep yourself out of one’s spam, junk, or deleted mail folders, then make sure you’re CAN-SPAM compliant. Not complying with these rules not only will leave you blocked by an otherwise potential lead, but you may be blocked entirely by someone’s ISP.

As mentioned in our free Ebook “The Fast Track to Powerful Emails”, here are some general guidelines to follow when formulating your email marketing campaign:

  • Any recipient must have given their affirmative consent before receiving commercial email
  • Any recipient must have an option to opt-out or unsubscribe from receiving further emails
  • Any sender of an email cannot mislead the recipient about the content or the origin of the email (i.e. be clear about what your email is about)
  • Any sender must use approved methods to get a recipient’s email address

Give yourself a quick refresher on the CAN-SPAM act every year to make sure that you are still in compliance with the act.

Entice Potential Leads

So how do you even get people to sign up for your emails in the first place? There are a number of ways, such as:

  • Post special offers or promotions on your social media accounts which require the visitor to input their email address
  • Create landing pages that promote a free newsletter
  • Provide a form on your website and/or blog that allows them to sign up for regular blog updates

TIP: Set up your CMS program to include a “signup confirmation” email that is sent after you receive an email address through any channel. This is referred to as a “double opt-in”. This “double opt-in” email will contain an additional link that a user must click in order to confirm them signing up to your email marketing list. This will go a long way in helping you not be accused of spamming.

Give them Information They Want

I always tell my clients to make their email marketing campaign is more about quality content than sales. Though you ultimately do want to make a sale, if you come off too pushy or “salesy”, you’ll have people blocking and unsubscribing from your emails in no time.

Put a large focus on offering up content that people will want to read in those emails, and provide links to further resources that contain information that supports what you have in the email, or information that’s interesting. People love reading lists, so creating “Top” or “Best Of” lists are almost always a hit in emails. Think about what you as a contractor in your particular niche would want to read, and provide that content to your email marketing list.

TIP: Creating an email “series” will help keep people intrigued and subscribed to your email list.

Be Consistent with your Emails

Want to keep people interested? Then send your emails out at regular times. For example, if you always send out your emails on a Wednesday at 3pm Eastern time, make sure you keep up with that schedule. Your leads and customers will come to “expect” your email at that same time every day of the week (or bi-weekly or monthly, depending on how frequently you want to send a message). When there’s that expectation for your email present, people are more prone to read the content of your email, and are more often than not receptive to any promotions, discounts or special offers you may want to include.

Key Takeaways:

The great thing about email marketing is that there’s a lot that you can do with it to help nurture your leads and turn them into customers. As long as you stay compliant with CAN-SPAM, obtain consent to send the messages and keep the content more helpful than about making a ‘buck, you’re sure to see a boost in your conversion rates.

Need Help?

If email marketing is something you are interested in but are having trouble getting started, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.