Email marketing is a cost-effective way to communicate with and reach out to potential customers. In comparison, people can be skeptics of email but those who utilize it as a marketing tool know its potential.
However, there is a vast difference between running an email marketing campaign professionally and clogging up inboxes with junk emails. A poorly run campaign will fail to produce conversions and could reversely annoy and drive people away.
With competitive surges in the construction industry making companies hunt for opportunities to stand out, a professional email marketing campaign would be a superb differentiator. Sound slightly irrelevant? Unsure of how to begin the process?
Below, we have provided seven essential email tips that will jump-start your communicative marketing journey and prove that professional emailing is a vital resource to the construction industry.
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–Know the Purpose of Your Emails and Newsletter
Before you write an email, sit down and compose. After addressing your target audience, ask yourself why you are writing? What information should be highlighted to your readers? What are your companies ideal results?
An email newsletter, for example, is a generic piece that is replicated and distributed multiple times over a given period. While larger companies tend to gravitate towards email campaigns, many small businesses today rely on community newsletters.
A newsletter should keep people engaged and indirectly gain their interest in facets of your company. Avoid hard pitches, aim to create a message of opportunity, not a forceful sell.
Let’s say you’re a safety consultant who oversees and advises the activities at construction sites. If you sent out a newsletter discussing current safety tips and developments at monthly intervals, your target audience, or people involved/interested in construction, will repute you as a competent and trustworthy source.
Your Email Content Should Be Balanced and Valuable
Sendable marketing content is not limited to newsletters; other emails, such as company updates and promotions, are just as effective. However, approximately 90% of your content should project as informational, not a sales pitch. Calls-to-Action (CTAs) are an exception, but consistently checking your tone and purpose is crucial to keeping your emails out of the junk folder.
Informational emails, including your newsletter, should always add value. A construction company, for example, might send monthly maintenance tips.
Timing and Frequency Are Important
How often should your newsletters and emails be distributed? A single monthly newsletter accompanied by promotional or informational emails on occasion is usually a solid start for smaller companies. If you’re a construction or trade company that just entered the marketing sphere, a single monthly newsletter may be enough.
On the other hand, if you’re running a large construction company or trade company, weekly newsletters are undoubtedly appropriate. Adding value, no matter the email frequency, should still be prioritized. For prospective customers and people who recently onboarded, you might add value by sending them more emails, proving you are attentive to their interest in the company.
Make the Visuals Look Great
While the written content is perhaps the most critical faction of creating emails and newsletters, visual appearance should be prioritized next. Appealing design and organized features, such as balanced white space, bullets, and headers, help viewers initially engage and commit them to read more.
When conveying complex information, its presentation should be structured and enticing. Consider creating a chart, graph, or infographic, visuals that will be communicated more easily. A safety consultant, for example, might put together an infographic, laddering the various accidents from the previous year and pairing them with appropriate safety solutions.
Choose Right the Format
From the vast number of email formats, choosing the right one is essential. After reviewing your purpose, target audience, and sources, select a structure that will mirror your writing tone without distracting the reader from your message.
For example, a large construction firm might create a digest newsletter containing some homegrown email content along with information from other sources. Content heavy, this firm’s newsletter should avoid rich texts and intense graphics, focusing on organizing the material. It should also be interesting and easy to navigate through.
An independent safety or construction consultant, on the other hand, might focus on a single issue every month. Easier to manage, their content can be balanced with a creative template and non-technical writing style. With lighter content, this consultant might spotlight a customer or product success story to inspire other prospects in the community.
Know Your Abilities and Capacity
Are you a good writer? If so, can you manage the time required to create newsletters and emails on a regular basis? If not, you may want to consider outsourcing your marketing projects. Consistency is immensely important in the email marketing process.
A consistent output is just as vital to a construction firm as a digital marketing agency. If capacity or skill will be an issue, make sure you address it.
Inform Readers, Promote Your Letter, and Constantly Analyze
Tell your readers how often they should expect the regular newsletter. If it’s once a week, make sure they know when they sign up. Make it easy to unsubscribe as well.
If you are going to send newsletters multiple times per month, consider breaking them up into different themes. One might be a company newsletter, another might be a safety newsletter, and still, a third would focus on construction. Readers can unsubscribe from the ones they are not interested in while sticking with the ones they enjoy.
Make sure you promote your newsletter. Use social media. Promote it on your website. Consider offering gated content in exchange for newsletter sign-ups.
Get feedback. You can send out reviews. If you are personally close with some of the readers, ask them. Finally, use analytic tools to understand how readers behave and what they value.
Conclusion: Email Marketing Takes Effort
Email marketing isn’t rocket science, but it does take effort. Random spurts of marketing motivation will produce subpar results. By committing your time to the study of email marketing dynamics, you can drastically improve your reputation and customer base. This is true for technology companies, construction and trade companies, and everyone else.
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