Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / Email Marketing System To Double Your Booked Projects
Transcript
- 0:00Most contractors don't know this, but there's a gold mine of
- 0:03revenue in your inbox. We've helped companies go from
- 0:06stale leads to book projects with just a few emails.
- 0:10And today, I'll show you how to do it.
- 0:12No spam, no BS, just what works. So first thing you need to do is
- 0:17stop the leak. If you go to your kitchen
- 0:21faucet, you turn it on and you're trying to drink some
- 0:23water because you're super thirsty.
- 0:25If you're using a sieve, it doesn't matter how much action
- 0:28you put into trying to drink water is not gonna work very
- 0:32well. But this is essentially what so
- 0:34many contractors are doing with their lead Jiang.
- 0:36You're spending money on ads, you're putting out social media
- 0:39content, all these different things to help bring in leads.
- 0:42And then you've, you've just got a leaky sieve because if they
- 0:44don't work out, they're out the door and you never hear about
- 0:47them. Yeah, this is where e-mail
- 0:49marketing comes in. Fill your cup up with fresh
- 0:52leads and keep that that steady flow in your business.
- 0:58What you need to do is all the past clients you have, you've
- 1:01already got an e-mail list. You may not have it formulated,
- 1:04but if you go to your accounting software or if you have any kind
- 1:07of CRM, any sort of list at all, even the contacts on your phone,
- 1:11essentially all of those emails, all those past clients or leads
- 1:14that you've had over the years. You can send emails to and and
- 1:18encourage them to join an e-mail list or send some value and
- 1:22capitalize on all of those leads over the years that you've spent
- 1:26money on or time on. But never, you know, never maybe
- 1:30turn into a project, or maybe you did a project for them years
- 1:33ago and now they might be ready to do another one.
- 1:36All right, so now you know how to access your gold mine.
- 1:38The second thing is your tech stack.
- 1:41So what are you going to use to actually send the emails?
- 1:43Organize this automated so you not spending kind of, you know,
- 1:47your days and nights sending out emails.
- 1:49So the one that I recommend is rapidly.
- 1:52This is our own CRM, the rap result creators CRM.
- 1:56It's a fantastic piece of software.
- 1:58It sends out emails, campaigns, automations, all this kind of
- 2:02stuff. So we'll put a link in the
- 2:04description below if you're interested in the rapidly CRM.
- 2:06It is a fantastic piece of software that we've developed
- 2:09specifically for general contractors to be able to just
- 2:13improve their lead Gen. across the board.
- 2:15And if you know us, it's all about systems, all about
- 2:17automation. Second one I'm going to mention
- 2:19is if you are, you know, don't want anything that you have to
- 2:23pay for right now, there is MailChimp.
- 2:26They have a free version. I, they've kind of like
- 2:28ratcheted down as far as what's included with the free version.
- 2:31But essentially, if you just need to load an e-mail list and
- 2:34send an emails to it, MailChimp will do the job.
- 2:37It's great for this specific reason.
- 2:40And of course they have paid, you know, packages as well that
- 2:45give you more options. The third one that I would
- 2:48suggest to check out is Constant Contact.
- 2:50I have not used it personally, but I've heard good things and
- 2:53it seems to do well and is is quite popular.
- 2:57So take a look. What I suggest is, is look at a
- 2:59few different ones. Do a demo of each one testimony
- 3:03to see which ones the best fit. Move forward with what's going
- 3:06to serve you best and be the best investment for you
- 3:08long-term, thinking about how much time you're going to spend
- 3:11and how effective it's going to be.
- 3:13Alright, so now that you've got your software in place, you're
- 3:15going to need to send out a monthly newsletter.
- 3:18So this is a monthly, just start with something simple.
- 3:21Send out a monthly newsletter. Typically this is going to be
- 3:24seasonal, So if there's some sort of holiday or something
- 3:28happening that month or even just the changing of seasons,
- 3:31spring, summer, fall, what whatever, have have an e-mail
- 3:35geared towards that. If it's a specific holiday,
- 3:38again, you can put that in there.
- 3:39You want to be thinking whenever you send an e-mail, if it had
- 3:43$100 inside it, how often would someone click and open that
- 3:48e-mail and read it? Probably every time, right?
- 3:51So think about that when you're sending an e-mail.
- 3:54Is this just a bunch of fluff? Is it just sound nice?
- 3:57Anything is better than nothing, but put some value in it.
- 4:01Could be. It doesn't have to always be
- 4:04like valuable as far as education or saving the money.
- 4:07It could just be something that's a little bit humorous,
- 4:10makes them feel good, whatever it may be, right?
- 4:13So just think about what is the actual value that I'm putting
- 4:16out here and educational is great as well as some tips,
- 4:20tricks, keep it light and not educational necessarily about
- 4:23the building industry. A lot of like realize that your
- 4:27customers, your clients, they're probably don't care what kind of
- 4:31newfangled, you know, insulation or waterproofing or HVAC system
- 4:37is out there on the market. You can maybe if you get certain
- 4:40questions like if you have commonly asked questions from
- 4:43clients, definitely you can answer those in emails.
- 4:46But keep in mind that there are probably more interested in like
- 4:51everyday stuff that is happening for them over like the new new
- 4:57building stuff that's coming out.
- 4:59Alright boy #4 here, if you know us, we are all about systems.
- 5:03If you want to systemize your business, reach out to us.
- 5:06We will help you build out the systems like a well oiled
- 5:09machine for the e-mail marketing.
- 5:11The systems that you want to be thinking about is automations.
- 5:14Any of these software I just mentioned will have an
- 5:18automation component to it. So someone fills out the form on
- 5:23your website, they should get an automated e-mail.
- 5:25They should go on your e-mail list.
- 5:27If any number of things happen inside the company, you can have
- 5:31automated emails that go out. I'm more to talking about
- 5:34marketing emails on this one, but there is a lot of
- 5:36automations you can do with these platforms that help send
- 5:39information for appointment reminders and and a number of
- 5:43different things. So whenever you can utilize the
- 5:46software and automate, if you can't automate it fully, then
- 5:50you need to delegate it and you should get this off your plate.
- 5:53Marketing is something you can be involved with, but you
- 5:56shouldn't not be doing the nitty gritty.
- 5:58So if you got an admin office assistant, even you know, one of
- 6:02your kids or, or or whoever that can put some of the stuff
- 6:06together. It's not hard, especially with,
- 6:08you know, AI and stuff like that, which I'm going to be
- 6:09getting to a little bit further on the video of how to utilize
- 6:12that. But you're going to create a
- 6:15standard operating procedure for specifically what they need to
- 6:19do. So how how do you write the
- 6:21content? Have some sort of brand guide as
- 6:24far as like, how do you want your, like if your company was a
- 6:29person, who would you want them to be?
- 6:31You know, professional, friendly, funny, eccentric, you
- 6:35know, how do you want it to feel?
- 6:37What's important to your brand? What are your, you know, core
- 6:40values and things like that. That should sort of all be
- 6:42provided when you delegate this, you know, marketing stuff to
- 6:46someone else. And then in that SOP, you're
- 6:49going to go through the steps of how do you create, you know, the
- 6:51e-mail? What are some things that they
- 6:54should do? What are some things they
- 6:55shouldn't do? What are the steps to schedule
- 6:58it, to send it out different things, maybe manage, you know,
- 7:02the e-mail list and, and stuff like that.
- 7:04So create an SOP, get it off your plate, give it to someone
- 7:07else. Alright, moving on to point #5
- 7:09here. So now you've, you've got this
- 7:11delegated, you got a system in place.
- 7:14The big sort of gold mine, like I mentioned to really capitalize
- 7:18on that is a nurture campaign. So that the monthly e-mail
- 7:21newsletter that will work in some regards as a nurture
- 7:25campaign. It'll keep you top of mind,
- 7:26it'll provide some value, but a nurture campaign specifically is
- 7:31for those sort of warm bought new leads and they should go
- 7:35into some sort of drip sequence where they're getting like a
- 7:38scheduled e-mail. Do what makes sense for you.
- 7:41But I would say typically you want to send them anywhere from
- 7:433 to 4 emails when they get signed up to the e-mail list
- 7:47over a period of about two weeks.
- 7:49So there's some pretty regular cadence, like you're sending
- 7:52them an e-mail maybe every 2-3 days or so, at least two a week.
- 7:56So it, it stays fresh, but you're not bombarding them every
- 7:59day with an e-mail and they're just going to subscribe and, and
- 8:01you know, you don't want to get spammed.
- 8:04And in this nurture campaign, you want to put time and energy
- 8:07and make sure that it's highly relevant, highly valuable
- 8:11because you want them to stay on your e-mail list.
- 8:14And also you just want to show your value to them and elevate
- 8:18yourself above any other contractors that may be
- 8:20contacting with because of the amount of information, the
- 8:23Polish of, of your emails and things like that.
- 8:25So in this nurture campaign, let's say if you're home
- 8:29builder, the first, you know, e-mail that goes out is you
- 8:32think you'll do like a welcome sort of e-mail, probably for the
- 8:35first one with the information, but maybe you're offering them
- 8:38your free design guide. So you've got a design guide on
- 8:40how to plan to, to build your new home.
- 8:43Include that in the in the e-mail so that you're providing
- 8:47value right up front or on the next one, you know, 5 common
- 8:51mistakes that homeowners make when when planning their home or
- 8:54working with how to choose the right contractor.
- 8:56So all of these like very specific things to what someone
- 9:00is thinking about or should know about.
- 9:02As you know, they're planning to build a home.
- 9:04If you're home builder, if if you do commercial projects,
- 9:07that's that's obviously, you know, you've got to cater to
- 9:09your ideal client, but that is the nursery campaign.
- 9:12Always include a call to action. So you can have some sort of
- 9:14call to action. Download this free template or
- 9:18reply to this e-mail to get a free consultation call or click
- 9:22this link to to book your caller, whatever it may be,
- 9:25right. A call specific called action of
- 9:27what you need them to do. And you could also put in some
- 9:30sort of special offer. So schedule your free
- 9:33consultation call today for, you know, a free 2 hour design
- 9:37session or or something or one hour design session or, you
- 9:41know, whatever you want to do and and put some sort of an
- 9:43offer in there as well. I point number six here is let's
- 9:46supercharge this with a so AI is obviously made things so much
- 9:52easier. I do not like writing.
- 9:53I'm OK with it, but it would take me hours to write out an
- 9:57e-mail and especially think about everything now with AI and
- 10:00get the point across. You can tell what you want and
- 10:03it, you know, gives an amazingly polished, well looking e-mail.
- 10:07So you definitely want to create some sort of standard prompt or
- 10:11if you use like cat GBT and create a custom GPT and give it
- 10:15a bunch of information. If you have any sort of brand
- 10:17guide, if you've got past emails, the copy from your
- 10:20website, any sort of extra marketing materials that you
- 10:24already have, you want to feed it to the AI so that it's, it's
- 10:27pulling from your core values, your brand, your identity, your
- 10:31the way that you would, you know, cadence and speaking
- 10:34style, writing style, all these kind of things so that it seems
- 10:38like a real person. It's more fine-tuned to your
- 10:41ideal clients. You don't want to just randomly,
- 10:43Hey, create a marketing, you know, marketing e-mail for home
- 10:48builders, right? You'll probably get something
- 10:49decent, but it's not going to be catered and it's going to be all
- 10:52over the place. So that's how you build
- 10:53consistency. And once you have that prompt,
- 10:56you can always tweak it and modify it and, and utilize it as
- 10:59you, you know, create more and more emails.
- 11:02You could also use the I for ideation.
- 11:05So if you're like, I'm not sure what I should, you know, put in
- 11:07this marketing e-mail newsletter for this month, asked if for a
- 11:11bunch of ideas and also if you have any stats.
- 11:14So if you've got previous subject lines or open rates or
- 11:19even statistics as as far as like emails and click through
- 11:23rates and all that kind of stuff, give it some stats, give
- 11:25it some background. The more information you can
- 11:27provide about the subject matter or you know, previous emails and
- 11:32things like that, the better the AI is going to be able to, to
- 11:35help you and formulate specifically, you know, emails
- 11:38or marketing or suggestions for you.
- 11:41Alright #7 super important point here is keep it clean.
- 11:46So I can remember one time when I got started on a CR M and I
- 11:49loaded in my e-mail list. I sent out a bunch of emails and
- 11:52all of a sudden I got these like alerts that I, my e-mail got
- 11:57flagged and, and got, you know, shut down because there's too
- 12:01many. I can't remember what the issue
- 12:03was, but eventually it turned out that what I needed to do was
- 12:08make sure I had like a dedicated domain for my e-mail.
- 12:11I'm not going to get into super technical stuff here, but do a
- 12:14little bit of research and ensure that you're complying
- 12:17with any laws and you're utilizing best practices for
- 12:22sending emails so that you don't get flagged for spam.
- 12:25So that's, that's like worst case scenario.
- 12:28But what you want to be doing on a regular basis is after you
- 12:32send every marketing e-mail, like if you're sending 1, like
- 12:35your regular campaigns every month is check for any bounced,
- 12:39bounced emails. So these are like bad e-mail
- 12:43addresses and and things like that.
- 12:45Anything that didn't make it, you want to be cleaning those
- 12:49up. Depending on the software, there
- 12:51are automations that will do this automatically.
- 12:54There's also automations that will verify an e-mail address
- 12:56before the e-mail even gets sent.
- 12:59So if you have those options, use them.
- 13:01If you need to spend a little bit extra, do it because keeping
- 13:05it clean will just save you a ton of headaches.
- 13:07And you don't want to be seen as like, you know, the spam
- 13:10contractor, right? And nobody wants that These this
- 13:13you you want. If someone is, if their e-mail
- 13:16is not working or they don't want to be on your e-mail list,
- 13:18you need to make it easy for them to unsubscribe.
- 13:20They're doing you a favor. If they're not interested, if
- 13:23it's not worth their time, you don't want the money e-mail
- 13:26list. That's the last thing you want.
- 13:27You want people on there that are engaged, that appreciate it
- 13:30and want to open your emails. So if there's also like other
- 13:35automations to put in where if someone hasn't opened an e-mail,
- 13:38let's say you've sent out five emails, they haven't opened any
- 13:40of them, take them off your list, right?
- 13:43Because again, there's no use of sending emails to people that
- 13:46aren't going to open them. It's just going to bring the
- 13:48quality of your your sending address down and they're not
- 13:52opening them anyways. So you're not doing them any
- 13:54favors or disfavors, but taking them off the list and just check
- 13:58your out open rates, check your stats every now and then.
- 14:01Again, this is something you can most likely just delegate to
- 14:03someone and have someone else cleaning this up and checking it
- 14:06and if anything out of the ordinary comes up and notify
- 14:08you. But you definitely want to be
- 14:11doing this. So if you've got some value out
- 14:13of this, check out the links in the description below.
- 14:15I've got a sales stack, lead Gen. stack that has a bunch of
- 14:20resources to help you with your lead Gen., how to get better
- 14:22views, how to get better referrals, a bunch of like sites
- 14:26you can get your business listed on to get found.
- 14:29Lots of great resources to check out the links.
- 14:31Click the button, get our free lead Gen. stack and I'll see you
- 14:37on the next video.