How To Use Email Marketing To Promote Your Local Service Business

As a local service business, keeping in touch with your customers is the key to generating more revenue and retaining more clients.

But you may wonder, what’s the most cost-efficient way to promote your business without a large marketing budget?

Turns out, email is the “oldie but goodie” that can help you generate more sales without costing an arm and a leg.

The Benefits Of Email Marketing For Local Service Business

Did you know that 91% of consumers like to receive promotional emails from businesses they have relationships with?

Meanwhile, email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in customer acquisition.

Email marketing can help you build trust, nurture customer relationships, increase credibility, stay top of mind, improve client acquisition and retention rates, increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, and get more referrals.

In addition, email marketing is relatively low-cost and easy to get started. It works on all devices and allows you to communicate with your customers so you can learn more about the market.

Not to mention, by promoting the right offer to the right audience, you can generate immediate results and get a revenue boost with minimum effort.

How To Promote Your Local Service Business With Email Marketing

Your email marketing should focus on building trust and relationships by delivering the right content to the right audience in the right place and at the right time.

Here’s what you can do to get the highest ROI:

Use Mobile-Friendly Templates

As more consumers are reading emails on their smartphones, you should make sure that your subscribers are able to read yours on their mobile devices and take action right away.

You can include a call-to-action with a phone number so recipients can call you with one tap. If you’re linking to your website, make sure it’s mobile-optimized to deliver a seamless user experience.

Most email service providers offer mobile-friendly templates so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Don’t forget to send out test emails to ensure they’re legible on all commonly used devices.

Include Local Keywords In Your Subject Lines

The subject line of an email is one of the most important elements. After all, if you can’t capture the attention of the recipients, they won’t open the email so no matter how good your content is, it won’t get read.

Unfortunately, cutting through the clutter in most people’s inboxes is becoming harder and harder. You need to communicate your message’s significance on the subject line if you want to capture the recipients’ attention.

To do so, use subject lines that are related to the local area, mention local events, or include local keywords so you can communicate the content’s relevance and increase the open rate.

Use Email Automation To Send Personalized Offers

Most email service providers have automation features that allow you to trigger email sequences based on different criteria. Such highly personalized content can help increase open rate by 29% and click-through-rate by 41%.

For example, if you provide a recurring service (e.g., landscaping, housecleaning) you can set up email reminders to be sent automatically a certain number of weeks after each client’s last appointment with a link to schedule their next service.

Share Relevant And Valuable Content

Email marketing helps you build trust with your audience so you can increase conversion, customer retention, and referrals.

Sharing helpful and timely information is a great way to add value, stay top of mind, and build relationships while positioning yourself as the subject matter expert to boost credibility.

In addition, sharing fresh content makes it possible send emails more frequently without sounding too sales-y or becoming a nuisance (nobody likes being sold to!).

Segment Your List

Segmentation can help increase email open rate by 14% and click-through rate by as much as 100%. It allows you to send the most relevant content and offers to different segments so you can increase engagement and conversion.

There are many different ways to segment your list depending on the market, the types of services you offer, your business model, and how the recipients interact with past emails.

For instance, you can segment your list so you can send special offers to new prospects or lapsed clients to generate some immediate sales.

Make It Easy To Join Your List

To increase the ROI of your email marketing efforts, you need to grow your list with high-quality leads.

Driving traffic to your website via social media, paid ads, or SEO is essential but you also need to ensure that your website is optimized to capture leads. For instance, the call-to-action should be highly visible and the web form should be easy to fill out (e.g., by minimizing the number of fields).

If you’re attending local events, you can use a tablet so prospects can enter their information directly into your email service. This can streamline the process while avoiding illegible information. (You could lose up to 20% of new subscribers due to bad handwriting!)

Ask For Reviews

Most consumers do their research on the Internet before engaging with a local service provider. Building a good online reputation by getting good ratings on third-party reviews sites, such as Google, Yelp, and Better Business Bureau, can increase your credibility and inspire more trust in prospects.

You can set up an automated workflow to send an email to each customer after a job is finished to ask for a review. Include links to your profiles on the third-party sites so it’s easy for your clients to submit their reviews.

Add a Personal Touch

As a local service business, you’re likely to be the face of your company. Your clients have interacted with you and trust you.

Take advantage of this personal connection and use it to strengthen your client relationships. For example, include a personal note in your email newsletters, use a conversational tone that reflects your personality, sign off using your first name, and add a photo of yourself (or your team) in the signature.

Be Consistent With Your Mailing Schedule

In order to stay top of mind, you need to maintain the connection with your audience by showing up consistently. Whether it’s once a week or once a month, set a regular schedule and commit to it.

The good news is, you don’t need too much content in your emails for them to be effective. A helpful article, a couple of announcements (e.g., events, special offers) and maybe an employee spotlight are more than enough to help you stay on the radar.

Encourage Sharing

Leverage the power of word-of-mouth marketing by encouraging your subscribers to share your newsletters with their friends and neighbors.

Most email newsletter services allow you to include forwarding and social share buttons in the footer area. Email messages with social sharing icons get 158% more clicks so make sure to include them in your template.

In addition, ask your subscribers to share the content or special offers with their friends in your newsletter content. If you don’t ask… you don’t get!

Make Your Subscribers Feel Special

Cultivating client relationships is the key to success for local businesses. Make your subscribers feel special by letting them know about your new offerings or special offers before everyone else.

For example, you can send out an exclusive coupon code to your subscribers or you can announce a special offer a few days ahead of time to your list so they get first dibs to book an appointment.

Conclusion

Every local business is different and it’s important to tailor your email marketing strategy to suit your target market.

The best way to know what works and what doesn’t is to analyze your metrics and A/B test your emails. For example, you can find out what kind of subject lines work best or what day/time of the week will get you the most engagement.

In addition, your email marketing strategy should be an integral part of your lead generation efforts. For example, you can use SEO tactics, online ads, and an optimized website to drive traffic and capture leads then nurture relationships with prospects using email marketing.

Ready to get your online marketing strategy dialed in so you can get more high-quality prospects and increase your email marketing ROI? See how 99 Calls can help you get found and generate more leads.