One of the best things that anyone working in the professional service industry can do for themselves is to set up a well-organized email marketing campaign.  Unless you live in a small community where you are the only person who offers a particular service in the whole town, you undoubtedly have a lot of competition in the area.  So your job is this:

  1. To remind potential customers that you’re here for them
  2. To then turn those potential customers into leads
  3. To turn those leads into customers

But before we get ahead of ourselves and talk about the emails themselves, let’s start from the beginning.

How to Get Email Addresses

Perhaps the most challenging thing that you’ll encounter when trying to set up an email marketing campaign is to get people to sign up for it in the first place.  There are two ways that tend to work best, especially for those in the professional service industry:

  1. Forms; and
  2. Landing pages

When you start creating or redesigning your website, consider including a form on your web page (or in several different parts of your web page).  The form should allow people to contact you directly with any queries that they may have, such as the type of services you offer, your hourly rate, and so on.  If you include on that form a box that they can “check” to be included in your regular email subscription list, you’re bound to get a lot more subscribers.

Landing pages are another great way to get people to sign up for a newsletter.  For example, your landing page can be featuring a contest or a giveaway in which a person must enter in their email address to take part, or it can be a landing page advertising a free Ebook filled with useful content that those who are interested in your particular niche would want.  If you make people an offer, you increase your chances of getting them to sign up and subscribe to your email list.

Be Less About Sales, More About Content

One of the greatest mistakes that businesses make when they create an email marketing campaign is that they focus solely on the “sales” aspect of the business.  People aren’t signing up to your email marketing campaign to be “sold” to; they’re signing up for something else, like that contest giveaway or for a free Ebook or newsletter.  If you want to retain those leads and help nurture them to the point that they’ll become customers, lay off the sales approach and focus more on offering your leads quality and informative content that they can use in their daily lives.  Not only will this prevent people from unsubscribing to your emails, but it will allow them to trust you more.  They’ll see you as a business that actually cares about the customer rather than a business that just wants to make a ‘buck.

Personalize your Emails

Think about your own experience when you receive emails: if an email begins with “Hello John” or “Dear Sarah” as opposed to “Dear Sir/Madame”, don’t you feel more compelled to read the email that has your name on it?  As mentioned in our free Ebook “The Fast Track to Powerful Emails”, no one likes receiving generic emails.  Make a point to include each individual’s name in each email and you’ll retain your leads.

TIP:  It can be pretty hard keeping up with everyone’s first name on your email list, but if you invest in a quality CMS program to help you with your email marketing campaign, it’ll be a cinch.  Many of these programs are also able to track your leads’ progression through the lead nurturing process, and will send out personalized emails based on where they are in the sales funnel, as well as what their interest in your company is (i.e. what sort of notary service they’re looking for).

Keep It Simple

The worst thing that you can do for your emails is making them too cluttered and disorganized.  Studies have shown time and time again that having neat, well laid out emails that don’t include a ton of pictures and graphics are the most effective out of them all.  Make the information easy to read and easy to see.  Make your key points standout by providing bulleted lists.  Make links easily recognizable by having them bold, blue and underlined.  All of these things will vastly improve your click-thru rates and increase your sales.

Key Takeaways:

There are a number of things that you can do to make your email marketing campaign a success.  Draw people in with offers that make sense to your niche and give people what they want.  Converting a lead through email marketing will take time, possibly even 3-6 months for a lead to turn into a customer, but it’s well worth the effort.

Need Help?

If you’re a professional service provider interested in generating more leads and sales from your email marketing, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.