Plumbing Email Marketing: 9 Pro Tips to Nail Your Campaigns

Defining Your Email Marketing Goals

Clearly defining email marketing goals gives your strategy direction and purpose. If you know where you’re heading from the start, it’s much easier to create and adjust your email marketing strategy accordingly. 

Here are some steps to help you define your email marketing goals:

• Understand your overall marketing objectives: Start by aligning your email marketing goals with your broader marketing objectives. Consider what you want to achieve as a business and how email marketing can contribute to those goals. Common marketing objectives include increasing sales, generating leads, building brand awareness, improving customer retention, and driving website traffic.

• Identify specific goals: Once you have a clear understanding of your broader marketing objectives, identify specific goals that you want to achieve through your email marketing efforts. These goals should be specific measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART goals). For example, your specific email marketing goals could be to increase email open rates by 10% within three months or to generate 100 new leads through email sign-ups each month.

• Prioritize your goals: Depending on your overall marketing strategy and resources, it's important to prioritize your email marketing goals. Determine which goals are most crucial for your business, and focus your efforts on those. It's usually more effective to have a few well-defined goals that you can dedicate time and resources to, than spread yourself too thin across multiple objectives.

Tip #1: Build a Digital Marketing Strategy

If your growing plumbing business doesn’t have a strong online presence yet, you’re missing out. 

According to research, 77% of B2B customers say that they do their thorough research before buying a product or service.

That means cold prospecting (e.g., door-to-door sales, cold calling, etc.) has become ineffective.

Consequently, more and more small local businesses have turned to digital marketing as their main customer acquisition strategy.

Almost 70% of small businesses are on social media. Some even say that social media (25%) and online advertising (18%) are their most efficient digital marketing tools.

Regardless of their tool of choice, almost all small businesses (91%) agree on one thing: Digital marketing is important.

So, instead of trying to find customers solely offline, put your brand out there in the digital realm. Doing so will help you reach potential customers and build an email list that generates sales over time.

How do you start? By doing some or all of the following: 

• Create a dedicated plumbing company website with a compelling landing page that persuades visitors to join your email list.

• Set up a social media profile for your business to boost awareness.

• Create expert articles on your website, which lure visitors to the site.

• Improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) game so that it appears prominently in search results.

• Run pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns that put your name and what you offer in front of the right audience.

• Claim a Google Business listing to boost local SEO and increase your brand’s visibility.

• Invest in video marketing.

There are many other digital marketing tools out there that can help you build trust and grow your email marketing list while providing alternative ways to engage with your customer base.

However, ServiceTitan user Tommy Mello, owner of A1 Garage Door Services, recommends that home-service providers invest time and money in their presence on Google — be it through paid ads, Google Local Services, or Google My Business.

 “Just understand Google is God when it comes to home service,” he says.

Tip #2: Narrow Your Target Audience

No matter how tempting it might be, don’t blast all of the customers in your database with the same email while disregarding details like:

• Customers’ last interactions with you

• How often they need your services

• Their budget

 At least not if you want to avoid your emails being labeled as spam.

On the flip side, sending targeted emails can improve click-through rates by 14% and conversions by 10%.

The key to targeted email marketing is audience segmentation. When you divide your email list into smaller groups, you can personalize your campaigns according to your customers’ needs. Doing so will improve email deliverability. 

In other words, segmenting your audience so that your emails are relevant to their recipients ensures a lower bounce rate, meaning your emails reach more and more people. 

A high bounce rate can put your campaigns at risk of being marked as spam. This makes it difficult when you’re trying to get new customers, as they might never hear from you.

For example, let’s say you email a list of 100 customers. 

Ten of the emails bounce back (e.g., because the address is no longer valid) two recipients unsubscribe from your emails because the content isn’t relevant to them. Three people are so annoyed at receiving irrelevant information that they mark your emails as spam.

This ultimately reduces the performance of your campaign by bringing your delivery rate down to 85%.

If not addressed, bouncing or being labeled as spam will also affect future email campaigns.

To improve that number, you can use our marketing automation solution, Marketing Pro, to set up your email campaign. 

Marketing Pro is an upgrade to our plumbing business software that helps companies like yours send professional marketing campaigns to the right customers at the right time.

With Marketing Pro, you can turn your customer data in your ServiceTitan account into target audiences based on specific criteria. To do so, you’ll use groups and filters to narrow the list of customers your campaigns target.

You can use one or multiple groups and filters to include or exclude customers based on specific criteria such as:

• Plumbing job estimate status

• Estimate created on a specific date

• Estimate of a specific value

• Membership ZIP codes

• Type of recurring service

• Next follow-up date

• Credit card expiration date

• Equipment manufacturer, model, installation date, etc.

Plus a lot more! For a complete list of inclusion and exclusion criteria, go to our support post on how to create audiences.

Further, you can choose to apply dynamic or static filters to your audiences. The difference between the two is that:

• Static filters can be used to set a fixed date or date range to filter your audience based on events before that specific day (e.g., include only customers who last called on or before 3rd December).

• Dynamic filters continuously adapt to new events. For instance, you can set a dynamic filter to add people to your audience every time a criterion is met (e.g., adding customers who have an estimate more than two weeks old).

Once you’re done adding your inclusion and exclusion criteria, Marketing Pro will score your audience targeting efforts as follows:

• Strong targeting: Your campaign will be more likely to reach only the customers interested in your emails.

• Moderate targeting: The campaign will be sent to a larger audience, which can decrease its effectiveness.

• Broad targeting: You’ll be sending emails to a very large number of customers, which means your emails will be less relevant and will not have a good opening rate.

To create audiences with Marketing Pro, go to Marketing > Audiences and click Create New to open the Create Audience page.

Go to Retain Customers and select Email or Direct Mail to build a campaign that will nurture your existing customers. 

Next, name your audience and click Begin to start adding groups. Then, click Add Group in the Include section and tailor the filters relevant to your campaign goals.

Once done, click Continue to save and use your newly created audience in your campaigns.

In a webinar we did with Megan Bedford, owner and founder at Mugyver Consulting, Megan said that the unsold estimates campaign “is my favorite because it's like having a salesperson working for you 24/7.”

And there are more categories to further customize your email campaigns. For instance, you can target a particular segment of customers with certain emails based on their interests. 

For example, a customer looking at annual maintenance might not be interested in getting an estimate on membership renewal at that time. 

Another example of customizing your campaigns based on customer segmentation might be customers who have been interested in your offers in the past. In this case, you would contact that specific audience group with your current offers. 

If you have customers who belong to a group of unsold estimates, Marketing Pro allows you to follow up with a tailored email campaign specifically about the services they were interested in when they first got in touch with you.

The same goes for customers looking for more information on annual visits or membership renewals. You reach out to them through customized emails.

Robin Cody, director of marketing and business development for Cody & Sons Plumbing, Heating & Air, told us that Marketing Pro helped them halve the time spent on building email campaigns. Now it takes them only 30 minutes (or less) to set up a campaign instead of over an hour doing the same thing with different software. 

“I just don’t have the time to look into our data, research, and start doing things like building audiences,” Cody says. “That’s what’s so great about ServiceTitan Marketing Pro. I can essentially use it as our customer relationship management software now. I can use and analyze our own data to target customers appropriately.”

Tip #3: Optimize Your Email Content for Mobile

According to a HubSpot report on the state of marketing, marketers use mobile-friendly emails as a way to improve their performance. So should you.

The entire world is now using their phones to check their emails, which means that if your emails aren’t optimized for mobile, you’re missing out on engaging more customers. And this is precisely why you need a fully optimized and responsive email campaign. 

Here are a few ways to make your emails mobile-friendly:

• Try and keep your subject lines between 25 and 30 characters so that they look great on both Android and iOS devices.

• Keep your email content short and sweet. Since people are viewing your emails on a smaller screen and multitasking between apps, you must get your message across quickly. Try to limit the amount of text you're including, but make sure it’s easily scannable by using headers, short paragraphs, and bullet points.  

• Say what you need to say upfront. Place your call to action (CTA) near the top of your marketing email, using at least 44 x 44 pixels. This ensures the most clickability.

Note: Try to stay up-to-date with updates on iOS and Android that can affect your email marketing open rates. 

Without a doubt, engaging, efficient, and mobile-friendly emails can go a long way toward generating more leads and customers.

Tip #4: Automate Your Email Marketing

Automating emails can simplify the process of sending the right messages to the right people at the right time. 

According to the Marketing Automation Report 2021, marketing automation brings multiple benefits to businesses. 

In fact, 39% of participants state that they enjoy better lead quality with such technology, and 45% state that automation increases their marketing efficiency and return on investment (ROI).

ServiceTitan’s senior marketing operations manager told us in a recent ServiceTitan Toolbox for the Trades podcast that:

“The way our society is going and the way that we are running our businesses, we need to be automated. We need to be more efficient because it hits the bottom line when we are not … The tools that we are providing you with, Marketing Pro, is about creating that automation and efficiency, and having transparency in your numbers so you can learn.”

Automating your email marketing campaigns lets you:

• Send hundreds of emails automatically.

• Send perfectly timed emails.

• Personalize your emails so people get messages they’re interested in.

• Nurture potential customers until they are ready to close a deal.

• Send targeted emails, because you can break down your mailing list according to age, gender, location, and past interactions.

• Weed out the glitches that harm your campaigns. Some email software, for example, can detect if emails are winding up in the spam/junk folder.

So, in reality, your only task is setting up the workflow; automation will take care of the rest.

To further simplify the email marketing automation process, Marketing Pro comes with four examples of automated email marketing campaigns that you can customize and send to your customer base right away. 

Alternatively, you can use the sample campaigns to guide you when creating your own.

The examples include campaigns for the following use cases:

• Aging equipment 

• Idle account

• Expiring memberships

• Unsold estimates

To create an email marketing campaign with Marketing Pro, follow these  steps:

1. From the navigation bar, go to Marketing > Campaigns > Create Campaign. 

2. Select the campaign category (in this case, Email).

3. Choose the type of campaign you want to create. 

• Thank You: Show your appreciation to customers.

• Customer Welcome: Welcome new customers and introduce them to your service offerings and membership plans.

Other: Establish a custom campaign type.

4. Next, name and describe (optional) your campaign. 

5. Click on the Start Building button and you’ll be prompted to the email draft campaign page.

6. Set up your preferred Delivery by configuring the following fields:

• Choose the Automated or One-Time Delivery logic.

• Pick a Launch Date by entering a date manually or clicking on the calendar icon and choosing a launch day.

• Enable or disable the Stop sending emails when a customer leaves the audience toggle. This option allows you to keep your emails relevant to specific audiences.

• Add a delivery condition to the Send emails until field. This will stop your campaign drip once a customer acts (e.g., opens the email, books a job, or calls the phone number associated with your emails). 

• Input the sender name, sender email, and an email address for customers’ replies.

7. Add a unique phone number in the Tracking Number field to enable Marketing Pro to collect metrics on the success of your campaign.

8. Click Save.

9. Select or create an audience (see step number two for more details on audiences).

Once you fine-tune all the settings and options we’ve covered above, you get to build your email sequence.

To do so, follow these steps:

1. Type in an email Subject Line (SL) and click the Badge icon to evaluate it. Click the Badge again to get tips and suggestions on how to improve your SL.

2. Input the Preview text that displays in people’s inboxes before they open your email.

3. Choose the Time of Day during which you want your emails to be sent.

4. Browse the Template Catalog and select a pre-built template that fits your campaign goals.

All of the available templates have been developed by our in-house designers and copywriters. 

This means that you don’t need to spend additional money on outsourcing creative services to run a campaign.

5. Add your branding elements and custom content to the selected template to make it your own.

6. Repeat these steps to add more emails to your sequence. You can add up to 12!

7. Go to the Days field and set up the wait time before you’re ready to send your next email. Your campaign’s wait time can be as long as 60 days.

8. Click Next, review your campaign, and schedule it.

Pro Tip: Send a test campaign before your campaign goes live and ensure everything is displayed properly and your copy doesn’t have any errors. To do so, simply go to the Email Sequence section and click on Send Test.

Go to our support portal for a detailed, step-by-step walk-through on how to set up your first email campaign with Marketing Pro.

Tip #5: Maintain Brand Consistency

Being consistent with your brand identity helps you engage better with your audiences and increase brand awareness across different marketing channels. 

According to Demand Metric, consistent brands can increase their revenue by up to 33%.

So, make sure your branding extends to your emails, website, and social media profiles, as they must all align seamlessly with your brand value and your business. 

Do this, and your customers will trust you more. 

When you rely on email to expand your customer base, your plumbing customers must have a seamless transition from your email to your website. If they feel lost or confused, you’ll lose them.

To prevent this, you can create a steady stream of email templates through Marketing Pro and customize them according to your business’s branding, adding your company’s colors, images, and other branding elements to your email campaigns.

ServiceTitan Senior Manager of Marketing Operations Sarah Ghirardo and her team constantly experiment with the templates in Marketing Pro to fit the needs of all professionals using the tool. 

She explains, “Campaign creation is all about the intent of your message. Utilize your brand and tell your brand’s story.” 

Long story short, every email you send must be consistent with your branding. The template you choose must reflect that to instantly engage customers better.

Tip #6: Stick to a Schedule

Like you, most contractors are busy doing their job and aren’t able to stick to a schedule to manage email marketing plans. 

But sticking to a schedule helps you ensure that your emails are delivered when they are most likely to be opened, which improves each campaign's chance of positive ROI.

Not only does this help with better brand recognition, but it also helps your business establish its authority over its competitors.

So, how do you achieve that without hampering your other business activities? A few tips to get you started:

Figure out when people check their emails for a better chance of being seen 

Typically, 10 AM and 1 PM produce the best click-to-open rates, with 21% and 22%, respectively. Use these times in your Marketing Pro workflow to send out regularly scheduled email blasts.

Work out the days that your customers want to hear from you 

You definitely don’t want to send your estimate over on a busy Monday morning. Tuesday or Thursday seems a more viable option for a good email open rate. ServiceTitan allows customers to track audience email delivery history in Marketing Pro to gain insights on when would be the best time to contact them. 

More precisely, to track your audience’s email-delivery history in ServiceTitan, you should follow these steps:

1. Go to Marketing > Email.

2. Go to the All Campaigns table and click the campaign you want to track.

3. On the Campaign Details page that opens, go to the Email Metric Totals table and click the Delivered metrics.

4. On the Email Metrics page, you can view:

• Who the email was sent to

• The email address of the customer

• Number of emails sent

• A history of emails sent from the campaign showing sent and open dates

• To which campaign the email belongs

• If the email was clicked

  Prioritize quality over quantity

  Customers don’t like to receive too many emails. It’s a sure way to annoy them into unsubscribing from your list. So try to send only 1-2 emails in a week to keep them engaged. 

  Sticking to a schedule might seem daunting at first, but Marketing Pro can help you avoid feeling overwhelmed. It will improve your communication with your customers and take the struggle out of keeping on schedule. 

  You can simply start with a limited number of fully functional email campaign templates and schedule them to send on certain days. With Marketing Pro, you can then build your email campaigns based on pre-built plumbing email templates for common uses, including:

• Warranty and maintenance

• Service agreements

• Unsold estimate follow-ups

• Membership renewals

The platform even lets you edit templates to suit your needs. Plus, if you aren’t able to find the right template for your campaign goals in our repository, you can request a template to be made especially for your business.

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Tip #7: Keep Your Email List Clean

Email list cleaning is all about updating your email lists regularly by getting rid of all inactive and duplicate email addresses. 

This also reduces the list of inactive and fake users or those who have unsubscribed from your emails. By doing this, you make sure that you’re sending out the right messages to the right people. 

Overall, cleaning your email list can help you:

• Increase your deliverability rate.

• Save time and money by not sending emails to invalid user accounts.

• Boost your customer engagement rate.

Having a list of email receivers that’s small yet fully engaged is much better than having a larger list of inactive and disengaged subscribers.

Tip #8: Follow Email Marketing Best Practices

Using the right words in your subject line increases your emails’ visibility in busy inboxes. 

You may already know that sending personalized emails is a great way to show your customers you care about them. 

Email personalization starts with the subject line (SL). Personalizing your email SL can help you increase your open rates by as much as 50%. 

Aside from including the names of your customers in the SLs, you can also:

• Send follow-up emails asking about the customer’s experience with your service or product within 2-3 days of providing it.

• Send coupon codes to customers to persuade them to buy from you again and soon.

• Send them good wishes on their birthdays, anniversaries, or other significant life events. 

• Send them behavioral emails based on their activity on your website, including welcome emails, emails to re-engage them, follow-up emails after a query, or emails upselling your services. 

Tip: Sprinkle personal details about the email receiver throughout the email and you’ll enjoy a better click-through rate (CTR) and ultimately gain more value from your campaign.

To grab customers’ attention, make sure your subject lines include power words and phrases like:

• “x% off on your next plumbing maintenance”

• “Discount coupon on your annual maintenance”

• “Grab your last chance at a free faucet inspection”

• “Congratulations on your new piping!”

• “Easy ways to clean drains”

• “Get your drains inspected NOW!”  

• “Today-only offer on drain inspections”

• “Book your annual maintenance fast”

• “Limited-time offer on membership renewals”

Further, you can spark your customers’ curiosity through thoughtful questions. Sending them a simple “Are your faucets really clean and why does it matter?” will have a deeper impact than a generic “salesy” subject line.

Tip #9: Measure and Optimize Your Campaigns

To further tailor and optimize your campaigns for maximum results, you need to make sure your strategy works. That’s possible through tracking relevant key performance indicators, such as your campaigns’ return on investments (ROI).

Email marketing ROI is the net gain your business generates from the marketing emails you send. This figure indicates exactly how cost-effective and profitable your email campaign is. 

On average, the ROI for an email marketing campaign stands at $36 for each dollar spent.

Moreover, the lead acquisition cost of a targeted email campaign can be about $12 per lead, dropping to as little as $7.14 per lead. 

As Megan Bedford told our webinar audience, “I don't know too many other types of advertising right now that you can do for home services that have a cost-per-lead under 12 bucks.”

Other common metrics to consider include:

• Open rate: The percentage of recipients who open your emails.

• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who click on links within your emails.

• Conversion rate: The percentage of recipients who take a desired action (e.g., make a purchase or fill out a form) after clicking on a link in your email.

• List growth rate: The rate at which your email subscriber list is growing.

• Revenue generated: The amount of revenue directly attributable to your email campaigns.

• Customer retention rate: The percentage of customers who continue to engage with your brand or make repeat purchases as a result of your emails.

Overall, measuring your email marketing optimization becomes important to understanding if you’re getting your dollar’s worth or not. 

Measuring it can be pretty easy, too — you just need to use the right tool. You can track the overall performance, deliverability, and insights of your campaigns with Marketing Pro, to understand if you’re getting back more than you invested.

The tool allows you to:

• Monitor your email marketing spend.

• Identify areas that are working in your favor.

• Keep track of your booked jobs, sold jobs, and revenue.

It’s a transparent solution that lets you see how your ROI measures up to your campaign. 

Now, with that in mind, are you ready to elevate your plumbing business’s email marketing efforts?

Ready to Elevate Your Plumbing Email Marketing? 

Email marketing campaigns might seem overwhelming at first, but once you know the tactics needed, they are worth the time and effort you put in.

We know you want to make the most of your email marketing efforts for your plumbing business. 

ServiceTitan is here to help you elevate your plumbing services business.  

Try ServiceTitan’s Plumbing Software for all your plumbing needs!

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution that caters to the internet marketing needs of small businesses such as plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and other home services, by streamlining operations and boosting profits! The cloud-based platform can help your plumbing business increase revenues by almost 25% in just one year!