Days after starting Marketing Pro, Bill Joplin’s Air Conditioning and Heating Saw ROI. Here's how.

Before Randi Thompson clicked “Launch Campaign,” she made sure her customer service reps were ready.

The service operations manager at Bill Joplin’s Air Conditioning and Heating was about to release her first-ever campaign using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro, an all-in-one marketing automation solution for the trades. More than 900 emails would be sent to their Dallas Fort-Worth area customers—all at once—which meant the phones would soon be ringing.

“Be prepared,” said Thompson, who had already bought donuts for her five CSRs that morning.

Thompson had spent 16 years at the residential, commercial and new construction HVAC shop, watching the company evolve from typewriters, fax machines, Rolodexes and tractor-feed printers. In March 2021, Bill Joplin’s switched to ServiceTitan, a decision Thompson had petitioned for years. But after receiving a demo on Marketing Pro, she wanted more.

“We need this,” Thompson said to her boss at the time. “I know it's going to benefit us.”

But Thompson was told she had to wait.

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“You can't prove that we’re going to have a return on investment (ROI),” her boss said.

Thompson persisted. In 2022, Bill Joplin’s hit the $20 million mark, a company record. But Thompson pulled numbers from ServiceTitan on their unsold estimates that they hadn’t followed up on—because they had no way to—and showed her boss what they were leaving on the table.

This time, he agreed. Bill Joplin’s made the move to Marketing Pro at the beginning of 2023, and now, a few months later, Thompson was finally about to test her hypothesis.

She clicked “Launch Campaign.”

Supercharging a business—efficiently

Before joining ServiceTitan, Bill Joplin’s used to outsource their marketing to an agency that managed their website, social media and email campaigns. 

“That was a disaster,” Thompson said. “[The person] had no idea what an air conditioner was, so it was just a constant, ‘No, you can't post that.’”

When Bill Joplin’s switched to ServiceTitan, they stopped using that agency and hired an in-house marketing manager, Lauren LaTour. But they also pressed pause on marketing for a year as they familiarized themselves with the new software. The Bill Joplin’s brand was established enough that they didn’t lose any customers.

“But we also couldn't reach anybody new,” Thompson said. “We didn't have ways to follow up on things, pull audiences. There just wasn't an efficient way to do that, and then outsource it.”

That’s why Thompson was hooked by Marketing Pro. It would give Bill Joplin’s the ability to leverage customer data and supercharge their business with more calls, booked jobs and higher customer spend. These were the other features that stood out:

• Direct mail: Streamlining the campaign building process for direct mail would be simple. 

• Reputation: Bill Joplin’s could boost their online reputation and visibility with more five-star reviews.

• Create audiences: Best of all, Thompson loved the idea that Bill Joplin’s could create audiences based on customer information they already had in ServiceTitan—like unsold estimates, aging equipment, and memberships that were expiring—and create email campaigns and follow-ups with that data.

“Before ServiceTitan, we couldn't pull that information,” Thompson said. “Then to get it down to a granular enough audience, we just never even thought to do it.”

Reaching new audiences

After sending out that first campaign, the calls started coming in.

From her desk, Thompson could hear the CSRs answering the phones. She could also see a boost in online bookings—traffic Bill Joplin’s never really saw before. Within just a few hours, they already had 75 bookings and an appointment scheduled for the following day.

Thompson was ecstatic.

Since then, she and LaTour have found huge success with other campaigns. By far the most successful has been the campaign regarding aging equipment.

“We've had almost $51,000 in ROI on that campaign,” Thompson said.

The ability to build hyper-targeted audiences has been a game-changer, she explained. Next up, they’re doing an acquisition postcard mailer for new customers. She also loves the reputation feature—and so do the techs who receive good reviews.

“We give our guys a spiff for getting mentioned by name in a five-star Google review,” Thompson said.

Just two weeks into using Marketing Pro, Thompson had seen exactly what she’d hoped for and projected—and made it known to her boss, the one who was originally skeptical of ROI.

Thompson wrote an email to her team on Feb.24 detailing the overnight, $51,000 success of the aging equipment email campaign.

“Prior to Marketing Pro we didn’t have an efficient way to pull this audience or a creative way to reach this audience so this was just money we would have left on the table!!!” Thompson wrote in the email. “Also the talented Lauren added our online booking link to the email and in the last 3 days we have had 91 online bookings, which is a HUGE timesaver since no conversation is required.”

Before she clicked “Send,” Thompson wrote the subject line of the email.

It read, “And that ladies and gentleman is ROI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”