Email Marketing: 10 Tips For Client Engagement

Email Marketing

Today, online communication is paramount for the success of any business. As a culture, email seems to be ingrained in the fiber of our everyday lives, with most Americans scanning through their inbox daily. People use email as a tool for work, but they also use it to share ideas with others and as a portal to receive information. Companies need to capitalize on this opportunity to communicate with their audience. 

A holistic marketing campaign is not complete without an email marketing strategy. Not only does one have to establish a website and advertising campaign, but companies need to find a way to create a positive connection with customers. Email marketing gives you an audience to share email offers, offer valuable information, and develop an ongoing relationship with your clientele. 

In previous editions of our Eguides, we have discussed how to increase your marketing return on investment (ROI) through search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and effective website development, but no online marketing strategy is complete without an effective email marketing campaign. Today, we are going to share ten tips to elevate your brand and enhance your reputation through email marketing.

Foster Relationships By Creating Brand Recognition And Building Your Credibility

Forming meaningful relationships is key to customer retention. Customers need to trust you and your brand if they’re going to continue to utilize your services, invest in your company, and choose you over your competitors. 

An email campaign will not be effective if audiences don’t open your company’s emails. Garnering your audience’s interest so that they make that split-second decision to click on your message in their inbox requires some finesse. In order to understand how to encourage your audience to engage with your content rather than delete it, it’s important to know what not to do. Your customers don’t want another inauthentic automated spam email clogging up their inboxes. They also don’t want to read another sales pitch. Instead, they want information that’s valuable to them. To establish trust through an email, you want to foster an authentic relationship:

• Write An Engaging Subject Line - The subject of any email is the hook that encourages readers to open the content.

• Personalize Content - Communicate directly with your reader rather than with a generic audience.

• Encourage Readers To Reply - Rather than sending a do-not-reply message, give readers a way to communicate directly with you by asking questions or offering comments. This positive rapport will help your customers feel important and valued, which, in turn, will establish trust.

You can generate an authentic connection by communicating with your audience rather than at them. This starts with the subject line and follows with strong content that keeps the reader interested in your company and the valuable services it provides.

Provide Information

Ineffective email marketing campaigns feel robotic and pushy. Poor strategies only sell and talk at customers rather than providing them with valuable content that’s useful to them. A successful email marketing campaign includes informational emails that provide readers with educational material that informs readers about how a service is conducted and why a product is important. 

These informative emails need to include strong, interactive content. Visuals, pictures, videos, and links to other resources will keep your readers interested as they engage with your content in a variety of ways. In the field service industry, there are always opportunities to share information with your customers. Seasonal issues offer chances to describe the problem and provide treatment options. New technologies create opportunities to share effective processes and make your readers understand that you’re on the cutting edge of innovation. Eco-friendly options cater to audiences who are looking for answers to their problems that don’t interfere with the well-being of the environment. 

Strong content includes evidence that helps your customers trust you and your services. Maintaining a flow of accurate and valuable information will keep your customers loyal to your company, your services, and your brand.

Promote A Service Or A Product

Part of providing value is generating strong, informational content that’s beneficial to your reader, but this doesn’t mean you can’t promote a product or service in the process. In fact, successful promotional emails are an effective way to increase your ROI. Furthermore, when executed effectively, they make your customers feel like your company has something special to offer them. 

Promotional emails come in many different forms, but they all give your company the chance to create brand recognition and make their customers feel like they’re receiving exclusive benefits by:

• Communicating special offers such as seasonal sales or discounts

• Advertising a product or service exclusively to existing customers

• Creating a fear of missing out by sharing a limited-time offer

• Introducing a new service or product

When encouraging readers to engage with your promotional content, it’s important to experiment with different forms of communication that extend beyond offering discounts. You want to begin each email with a strong subject line and end with a call to action (CTA) that encourages your customers to visit your site or landing page to learn more about any offer.

Confirm A Transaction

Email is a convenient way to communicate with your customers, and in the process of doing so, you want to be authentic and professional. Part of any successful email marketing campaign should include transactional emails that confirm scheduling, services, and payment. This will give readers a reference point for their appointment so that they can add it to their calendar or look it up later.

• Scheduling

• Services

• Payment

Share Updates In Operational Changes 

Change is inevitable, and though you do your best to stick to your hours of operation and scheduled appointments, sometimes the unexpected pops up. We know this now more than ever as we adapt to the effects of COVID-19. When the unexpected does occur, it’s important to let your customers know about operational changes. These could include:

• Closures: Your office may need to close for a period of time due to unforeseen exceptional circumstances, holidays, special occasions, or routine maintenance.

• Systematic Changes: You may be updating your website, systems, scheduling methods, or products. Operational emails will inform your customers about these changes so that they won’t be caught off guard.

• Schedule Changes: Though you do your best to abide by a schedule, the unexpected may ensue and force you to reschedule appointments or personnel.

In the event of an office closure, schedule, or systematic changes, it’s important to maintain an open line of communication and update your customers with pertinent information as situations unfold.

Share Geographic Location

All too often, as companies develop a greater online presence, the actual location of your offices and area you serve gets lost. A strong email marketing campaign will remind your customers about your physical location and how far you are willing to travel so that they know how to find you and whether you can serve them. 

In addition, your emails should provide links to maps and directions so that customers can conveniently find you.

Optimize Content To Be Accessible Across Devices

People access their email in a variety of ways. They use laptops, cell phones, or tablets. You want to make sure they can easily access all your content regardless of the device they’re using. If you only optimize your content for a computer, you’re missing out on a much larger audience. You want your content to be professional and engaging with graphics, videos, and other interactive content that is accessible across devices.

Email Timing

You don’t want your message to get buried in an inbox. The time of day you choose to send your emails matters when facilitating the highest possible open rates. The best time to send emails depends on your geographic location, targeted audience, and industry. There are favored days of the week and times of the day when people are most likely to see and open an email. Typically, it’s best to send out messages in the middle of the week and the middle of the day to encourage customers to read information, but this varies based on the message you’re sending and the kind of device typically used by your audience. 

FieldRoutes, a ServiceTitan company, will research your audience to ensure that emails are sent out at optimal times. We will test results for open rates and hone in on the time that works best for your audience.

Email Segmentation

Email segmentation involves catering to your targeted audience. A successful email marketing campaign creates a variety of emails tailored to different groups so that your customer is receiving the information they need. It’s important to create groups based on factors such as demographics, geographic area, click-through rates, past purchases, and interest. You can do this by analyzing your customer base and data provided by customer surveys. This way, you can target people who have subscribed to a specific service plan or even canceled services to provide them with the information they need to further engage with your company.

• An email composed for a one-time customer may send information about repurchasing a service, provide information about other services your company offers, or outline annual plans. 

• An email composed for repeated customers may offer promotions, upsell a service, or promote a new product. 

• An informational email composed for subscribing customers will provide links to educational resources, blogs, and other resources that will help the customer stay engaged and keep reading. 

• An email composed for customers who canceled a service may encourage them to return or offer feedback about why they discontinued their services. 

Email segmentation will address the needs and wants of each group. That way, your audience is receiving information that’s relevant to them. This will aid your overall campaign as it encourages customers to click on a link and engage with your product or service by staying on a landing page, browsing a webpage, or reading a blog entry.

Track Data

With every online marketing strategy, it’s important to know what’s working and what needs improvement. Email marketing is no different. FieldRoutes will not only build and implement a customized email marketing campaign, but they will also track and analyze data so that you can see how your strategy is paying off. They will provide you with email reports detailing email open rates, click-through rates, form submissions, and phone contacts. Furthermore, they will use these reports to design and adapt your future email marketing strategy. 

Customized email reporting is one of the harder parts of email marketing. It is a recursive process that involves developing materials, tracking data, analyzing the effectiveness of the campaign, and implementing changes as needed. To do this effectively, you need a team of professionals working together to constantly prepare and adjust content that fits the unique needs of your company and targeted demographic.

A Customized Email Strategy With FieldRoutes

FieldRoutes will take all ten of these strategies to design, implement, and revise an email marketing campaign customized for your company. We know the field service industry, and we know your business is unique, so we take the time to create a plan that targets your market and your company. 

We will work with you and your brand to send your customers unique, useful content that makes them feel individually valued. 

We diversify emails sent to provide informational, promotional, transactional, and operational materials to your customers.

• We offer exclusive integration with the FieldRoutes™ Operations Suite.

• We ensure that interactive content is available across devices. 

• We research your audience and send messages to the right people at the right time. 

• We track and analyze your data so that you are confident that your marketing dollars are well spent

In the end, effective communication boosts brand recognition and credibility, which will keep your loyal customers working with you rather than your competitors. Reach out to the experts at FieldRoutes today to learn more about how our team can help you establish a successful email marketing campaign.

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FieldRoutes Compass marketing portal provides real-time data on your marketing efforts. Exclusively integrated with the FieldRoutes Operations Suite.

Programs: 

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Works Cited

Hall, John. (2020, March 15). “5 Email Marketing Trends That Can Make You More Efficient”. Forbes. Retrieved May 14 2020 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2020/03/15/5-email-marketing-trends-that-can-make-you-moreefficient/#23ac8d7f1475 

Hangen, Nathan. (2020). “A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing”. Neil Patel. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from https://neilpatel.com/blog/beginners-guide-email-marketing/ 

Rathi, Reshu. (2019, June 9). “11 Powerful Email Marketing Tips You Need To Know”. Search Engine Journal. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/powerful-email-marketing-tips/304009