What PCOs Need to Know about Email Marketing.

Email is a sure fire way to keep in contact with current customers and reach new ones with promotions and upsells. There are a ton of things to know about email marketing but Pestnet® Media has narrowed it down to the essential tips for PCOs.

Make joining easy: Your list when visitors to your website enter to join your company emailer. These new subscribers could come from people that you already do business with, and people that you drive to your website through Facebook and other promotions. You need to make it easy for someone to join your email list. Don’t create a bunch of hoops to jump through. Only require the users email. The first and last name can be optional.  Visibility is key. Make sure that your newsletter sign-up form is seen on almost every page of your site.

What value do you offer: You can’t just have a form on your website saying “signup now!”. You need to offer the subscriber value.  You could do a giveaway, or you could offer a coupon, or you could offer advice like “How to know if you have termites” The ideas are endless, the point is the same, offer value. Ask yourself if you would sign up.

Frequency is the key: Once a week is fine. If you have a lot to offer your subscribers you could do an email blast twice weekly but that’s pushing it. For our clients we only send out one or two blasts a month.  Any more than that and people will start to get annoyed and your messages don’t hold as much value.

Where is the out: You need an unsubscribe method. You need to give people the option to opt out of your email blasts. Not only is it common courtesy, it’s the law. According to the CAN-SPAM Act, you need to offer a way for your email newsletter subscribers to unsubscribe. For more information you can go here. http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Reply to: This seems super simple but is missed by a ton of PCOs.  Set a reply address to an email you check often. Many PCOs just assume that the reply message would come back to them. Don’t assume. Test and make sure. Most of the time the reply would go to noreply.randomwebserver.randomnumbers@randomwebsite.com

Browsers and screen sizes: Okay here we go – you have iphones, ipads, other tablets, other smart phones, and not to mention browsers. With all the time and hard work spent on your email campaign it’s important to test your email on all browsers and screen sizes. Is it a pain? Yes it is, but well worth it.

Spam score: You don’t want your email blast to be marked as spam. Spam is calculated on a bunch of variables but as long as you design a good looking email and people don’t actively mark your email as spam you should be fine.

Your buddy Hank is brilliant! If you have a referral deal already set up with say a contractor, you should ask him if he does email marketing. If he does, ask him to plug your message in his next email. You need to make sure your buddy Hank is complaint before you send your message.

Tracking: If you don’t track you are wasting a lot of time.  You would be surprised to find out which email messages drive visitors and sales to your website. If you test and track, you can hone your strategy into a finely-tuned customer driving machine.

Contact mail monkey? There are many email services out there to help you with all these tasks and more. Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Vertical Response, and Get Response just to name a few. There are literally thousands of services. So which one is the best? Well that depends on who you ask. For our PCO clients we use Get Response. We have found Get Response to be very liable in delivering messages. Get Response also has a variety of great tools.

Summary: Email marketing for pest control takes some time to set up and constantly manage but it’s worth it. Email marketing will quickly help your business attain new customers and will increase upsells from current customers. Depending on your level of technical know-how you could get your email marketing strategy set up in no time at all. If you need help feel free to contact us.