How To Setup A Profitable Email Marketing Program For Your Home Renovation Company

This article is part of a special educational series published by tbk Creative that helps home renovation companies grow their revenue.

Are you looking for additional ways past your standard SEO and SEM to generate more revenue using the web?

Have you considered email marketing but not sure about all the components to do it profitably?

If so, this article is for you.

Email marketing can work wonders for a home renovation company (window/door, roofing, kitchen/bath, flooring, etc.). I’ve watched email marketing programs generate as much as $20,000 to $34,000 in product sales for some home renovation companies.

In this article, I’m going to explain how to setup and run an effective email marketing program.

Here are the components we’ll cover:

1. Pick your software
2. Lead acquisition
3. List maintenance
4. Campaign development
5. CASL compliance

1. Pick your software

If you have a few dozen leads for your email list, using your Gmail or Outlook will be fine (through BCC), but as you’re piling on hundreds or thousands of additional leads over time, you’ll want to use a professional third party email software.

The one that tbk Creative uses predominantly for its home renovation clients is MailChimp. MailChimp is user friendly, reliable, and cost-effective (currently free for lists under 2000).

By using a third party email software, you’ll often:

• Increase your delivery rate (emails getting through),
• Greater theme / template options,
• Provides an unsubscribe mechanism for you,
• Better analytics (ie. tracking who opens and clicks your links)
• Tracks who unsubscribes (important for the Canadian Anti-Spam Law)

2. Lead Acquisition

Once you pick out your software, you’ll want to develop a plan to acquire contacts on your email list. Here are some ideas:

• Have your sales take down the email of new customers,
• Migrate prospects who filled out ‘get a quote’ forms on your website,
• Offer e-guides on your website (this is where someone provides their information to you to access content you provided)
• Have an email subscribe feature on your website,
• Run an online sweepstakes (great for generating hundreds or thousands of new leads)

In any case, make sure you’re complying with the Canadian-Anti Spam Law. More information on this in section the CASL compliance section below.

An example of an e-guide offer on the North Star Windows & Doors website. This is used to generate more consumer email leads for the company.

3. List Maintenance

You’ll want to establish a checklist with your marketing agency or internally that is followed before an email campaign goes out.

This can include:

• Uploading all new leads,
• Removing anyone from your list that you no longer have permission to email (under the Canadian-Anti-Spam Law you must unsubscribe people past 6 months after they inquired about your services or past 2 years from last purchase unless you have express consent),
• Test your email with staff. Check to see how it shows up on your desktop and mobile device and click all the links to make sure they work.

4. Campaign Development

Here are the steps towards good campaign development:

• If you have access to a designer or hire a digital marketing agency, create a professional design fro your email campaign. If you don’t have a designer, email software provides templates you can use (they will just usually be more text heavy versus design heavy),
• Offer an promotion to incentivize immediate action (ie. 30% off),
• Have a call to action. This is using suggestive language to encourage someone to click (ie. ‘Call today’ or ‘Visit our showroom’).
• Put your phone number and address in the email campaign
• Have your digital agency setup your email campaign so its tracking the leads it generates on your form or via phone (phone can be tracked through a phone analytics software like Dialogtech).

5. CASL Compliance

The Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) now governs when you can email Canadian for commercial purposes.

This is an important topic as on March 5, 2015, the CRTC fined its first Canadian business $1.1 million for violating the legislation.

The two most important areas you’ll want to make sure is:

• You’re collecting emails properly,
• You’re sending out emails properly,

Check out this article I wrote on April 1, 2015 that details how you can do both properly.

Conclusion

Effective marketing and building a larger and more successful home renovation brand isn’t about any one thing but a culmination of many right things.

Email marketing can be that next marketing program to add to your company’s toolkit to increase your sales.

If you have any questions about email marketing, post them in the comments below or contact tbk Creative for assistance.