Email marketing can be one of the most cost-effective and impactful marketing tactics out there, if used correctly. Obviously, you want your email marketing to generate interest and ultimately more sales for your brand. Whether you are a contractor running a small concrete business, landscaper, distributor, or a rental / hire business, email marketing should be a key part of your strategy to gain business.

WHY?

Email marketing is an effective way to grow your business for a few main reasons. The first is, the ability to reach a large group of people without investing a large amount of money. Services such as Mailchimp offer the opportunity to create, organize and send out custom emails to your contacts, at little to no cost depending on the size of your email lists, or the amount of emails you plan on sending each month. They also make it incredibly easy to use. All you have to do is put the email together and send it out to the applicable contact list

Another reason why email marketing is so effective is because of the tracking capabilities. One of the most important things to do in any type of marketing is measure your response, but this can be hard to do with many types of advertising. Email marketing offers many different types of statistics that can help gage the impact you're having, and response you’re getting.

So, if you are not already investing in email marketing, you should look into making it a key part of your business. If this is something you are already utilizing, here are a few tips to help you create better email marketing campaigns.

Don't include too much info

This is where many people go wrong. You know the emails I'm talking about... the ones where you have to scroll and scroll through hundreds of words, never fully understanding what the email is about, leaving you feeling super confused.

When you try and include too much information in your emails, people don't understand what you are trying to communicate, resulting in lack of response. If you are looking at your statistics after you send out and email and your Click Through Rate is low, this could be one of your problems. A low click through rate suggests that there is something wrong with the content in the email.

When you try and shove tons of information down people's throat they are much less likely to engage with your marketing.

If you're not sure what a good Click-Through rate is, check out this chart from Mailchimp below. These are benchmarks to help you know where you fall.

Have a Clear Call to Action

When planning out your emails, you need to think through what you actually want the person receiving it to do. Many times we send out emails that are only information based and we wonder why our email stats are not as impressive as we would like them to be.

If you really want to have great metrics, you need to have a clear action for someone to take, once receiving your email. You should also keep in mind that having 100 call to actions is not effective either. Keep it simple and really walk the person reading the email through the path you would like them to take.

You may be thinking to yourself, "We send out emails asking people to buy things, isn't that a call to action?".

Technically it is. It's not a good one, but it is a call to action.

Whether you are a contractor trying to get more concrete polishing work, or a distributor trying to sell more compaction or power trowels, the commitment you are trying to secure from your contacts, is a big one. They need to feel drawn to do so. Email marketing is rarely going to convince someone to spend thousands, but it can begin to walk them through a process and let you take control of the conversation.

Here is a suggestion of a good call to action:

Let's say you're a concrete polishing contractor who is looking to grow the residential portion of your business. You have a list of homeowners you want to send an email to. Instead of sending them an email telling them to get their floors polished, you could write a relevant article, maybe one that talks about how the lifetime cost of polished concrete is much better than other flooring like tile, and then put a link to that article in the email you're sending.

This will do 2 things:

• It will increase your Click through rate because you are directing people to content that is informative, not pushy.
• You will be able to see who clicks on this link and target them directly with a follow up sales call because they have shown you they may be interested in this option.

This will help your sales calls to be more effective because your sales team will have a better background understanding thus, hopefully increasing your conversion rates.

To make this point simply, think of call to actions as a multi-step process rather than a one step slam dunk. Don't expect one email to convert your list to customers.

Get Personal

Depending on the type of email marketing system you are using, you may be able to use personalization in your emails. This helps your emails to appear as though they aren't automated, and are directed to each person on your list This is powerful because it builds relationship in a much deeper way and you can still include important call to actions.

One thing to remember if you are going to go down this road, is that you need to change your writing tone. Don't send a personalized email that is worded the same as all your others. Write as if you are sending a direct email to one of your prospects and it will come across very genuine, because it actually is!

This style of email generally increases all of your email marketing metrics, especially click through rates.

Write Compelling Subject Lines

The subject line is the single most important aspect in getting your list to open your emails. People evaluate the subject line to determine if the email is worth their time. In my experience, write the subject line around the benefits the email is highlighting. Doing this will help the reader to quickly understand what the email is about and why they need to open it.

If you're having trouble with people opening your emails, yet you think you are efficiently communicating the benefit in the subject line, you may not be sending the right emails. Make sure that you do some research to find out what will make your customers excited to open them.

Conclusion

In closing, email marketing is one of the best ways to build your brand and generate new leads and business. You just have to make sure that you have clear communication and quality content that is actually valuable to your market.