Roto-Rooter Plumbing and Drain Service jumped aboard the ServiceTitan Marketing Pro train last year, taking advantage of a free trial to send automated email campaigns to its customer base in Medina, Ohio.
Marketing specialist Ilene Hackett says the plumbing company started its marketing campaigns by sending “boring stuff” — like “5 Tips to Keep Your Water Heater Running Properly” or “We Miss You” email messages. “Nobody was responding to it,” she says.
Hackett quickly changed tactics, once she realized she could access all of Roto-Rooter’s funny videos from the corporate office.
“Nobody wants to open emails that tell you here’s the top five tips to keep your water heater in tip-top shape,” Hackett says. “But, when you send them an email with a funny headline that says, ‘Don’t Hire a Clown to Do Your Plumbing,’ and indicate it’s a video, they actually open it and watch the video.”
Capitalizing on the whole scary-clown phenomena, Roto-Rooter’s Halloween video shows a family getting ready for bed while a clown wanders around undetected, until the mom walks in on the clown in the bathroom, causing both to scream with fear. “What are you doing? I thought you left hours ago?” the mother asks. The video ends with the tagline, “Don’t hire a clown to do your plumbing!”
Using the video in emails in October worked, Hackett says, with the one-time campaign bringing in $24,000 from both new and existing residential plumbing customers. She followed up by sending videos for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the phones at Roto-Rooter continued to ring.
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“I'm really focusing on funny video content emails to our customers, because that's what I found they respond to,” she says.
As a new Marketing Pro user, we asked Hackett to explain more about how she uses the email marketing platform to increase revenue for the Roto-Rooter franchise in Medina, Ohio.
(Roto-Rooter marketing specialist Ilene Hackett)
Q: What kind of results are you seeing in terms of calls or revenue from the Marketing Pro email campaigns?
A: In October, we saw $25,000 in revenue. In November, we saw $10,000 in revenue, and we were just under $18,000 in revenue for December, mostly from the video series campaign. A little bit trickles in every now and again from the “We Miss You” campaign. But it's mostly from the video series that I sent.
Q: Which Marketing Pro features do you find to be the most helpful?
A: The audience builder was pretty great, because I could drill down on the customers I wanted to include. The stock templates were OK. I definitely tweaked, changed and added stuff, but it’s always nice to just start with a template and not have to build one from scratch. I wanted to put my own brand spin on it.
Q: What are you able to do with Marketing Pro that you weren’t able to do before?
A: That was the biggest thing for me. In my previous life, I worked for a private school where I did all the marketing and communication … with a database that had no email capabilities. I tried to use another email marketing provider, but it was a constant struggle to maintain a proper mailing list.
With Marketing Pro, not having to export and manage the mailing list is mind-blowing. I define my marketing by lead generation and branding, and Marketing Pro kind of crosses both of those borders.
Q: Has Marketing Pro helped you save time?
A: I would definitely say Marketing Pro has been one of the final puzzle pieces in my marketing plan for the company. It was something we were completely not doing. So, now I can sleep easy at night, knowing there's not this whole big thing out there called email marketing that I'm just not doing.
Q: Would you recommend Marketing Pro to other plumbing companies?
A: Absolutely. You’re not going to find a better email marketing platform than Marketing Pro, especially if you’re a ServiceTitan customer, because of the database integration. For the folks in this group [Roto-Rooter plumbers], it seems like a must-have.
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ServiceTitan Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Our comprehensive, cloud-based platform is used by thousands of electrical, HVAC, plumbing, garage door, and chimney sweep shops across the country—and has increased their revenue by an average of 25% in just their first year with us.
