New features in ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro helps home service companies educate homeowners on how to stay safe and healthy during the COVID-19 outbreak
Deemed an essential service in most states, home service workers like plumbers, electricians and HVAC techs are doing all they can to keep America safe. While continuing to provide critical services to their customers, many are also going above and beyond to help their communities where needed.
At ServiceTitan, all employees are working remotely (as ordered by the state of California), but we are still here for our customers — the hardworking and dedicated contractors who still have a critical job to do.
In recent days, many of you asked about best COVID communication practices. How do you communicate with customers in a helpful way without appearing opportunistic? What’s the best way to educate customers without trying to sell them something?
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“The point is to get the right message to the right homeowner at the right time, and be as helpful as possible,” says ServiceTitan Pro Products Specialist Madeleine Laplanche.
To that end, Laplanche and David Hoffman, Director of Product Management for ServiceTitan Marketing Pro, shared a webinar with ServiceTitan customers discussing the latest features released in Marketing Pro, as well as email templates they can easily access for communicating with customers.
“You guys are providing an essential service that is just so critical right now. So, thank you so much,” Hoffman emphasized.
“We want to help,” Laplanche explains. “We want to give you ideas on what to send to your customers. We don’t want your attempts to help educate homeowners to inhibit your ability to send other hyper-relevant emails later on.”
Email templates to get you started
Start by letting your customers know you’re still operating at this time, but taking all of the necessary precautions to keep your employees and customers safe.
Homeowners are worried about their indoor air quality, plumbing health and smart-home connections. Be helpful, educational and send messages that offer peace of mind.
The pre-filled email templates released by Marketing Pro make the communication process easy by giving you a place to start, then allowing you to adapt the content to make it your own.
Recent email campaign topics released by Marketing Pro include templates on Indoor Air Quality and UV Lights for Cleaner Air. Marketing Pro will also include more COVID-related templates including emails to remind customers that you are open and to assure them of the safety precautions your company is taking.
Marketing Pro enhancements help you communicate better
Communicating with your customers, especially during times of crisis, can be difficult for any marketing professional. Here are some primary enhancements from our most recent release for Marketing Pro to help you serve customers better:
Consumer Unsubscribe Preference Page — Allows customers who want to unsubscribe from your mailing list to choose which content they still wish to receive. For instance, they may want to opt out of your newsletter, but they appreciate equipment service check-in emails or membership reminders. It also helps with timing, targeting the right audience at the right time.
Integrated Subject Line Grader — How do you ensure your subject lines are compelling enough to get customers to open your email? This tool grades your subject line, and offers direction on how to improve it. It also helps with deliverability, delivering the right message to the right audience.
Marketing Campaign Tracking — Some of the new features to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns include: adding unlimited new tracking numbers; generating unique campaign phone numbers in the ‘Campaign Creation’ workflow; adding campaign phone numbers as a merge tag; or manually typing in campaign launch dates.
New Customer Campaigns — Send new customers a welcome message by filtering your customer list down to those customer records created in the last 90 days, or whatever time period you choose.
Best Practices for Email Marketing
Here are some further tips to help improve deliverability of your content:
Don’t blast your entire contact list with information. Send smaller batches of targeted, automated campaigns. Send them content relevant to residential customers, the equipment you’ve sold them or the jobs you’ve completed.
Provide engaging, educational content with links to your blog or YouTube channel videos. You can send multiple messages, but look at the drop down menu for “Send Messages Until” and select “Email Opened.” If you’re sending two or three messages in an educational email series, you’ll only email subsequent emails to people who haven’t opened the first email.
Clean up your lists regularly by removing inactive and unengaged email contacts. ServiceTitan Marketing Pro will soon be adding an Automated Opt-In Feature to do this automatically.
Keep your subject lines free of spam triggers! Using the word “free” or exclamation points in your subject lines typically garner a bad grade.
Stick to a consistent email send schedule.
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive business software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. Our award-winning, cloud-based platform is trusted by more than 100,000+ contractors across the country.
Ready to learn more about what ServiceTitan can do for your business? Contact our team to schedule a demo today.
