Don’t Waste an Open Email on a Misfired Message
There are a few business models that get more personal than residential contracting. Trainers at the gym, anyone in the medical field poking or prodding anything, barbers who can see what hair’s there (and what hair isn’t), and others that get so up close and personal with the body that they take the lead.
Yet residential contracting is definitely in the next wave of “getting personal” – because you’re in the home, seeing people as they actually live, and sometimes as they overcome the biggest, messiest home repair they’ve ever known.
So, now that you’ve solved their pain and discomfort, what makes you think they want to receive your impersonal email offering to do exactly what you just did – and in fact sounding like the two of you have never even met?
Lesson: segment your customer database. Target your messages strategically, not globally.
The principle at work is that you should leverage what you know about your customer. Maybe a new system installation gets a follow-up email in three months, asking how things are going – or prompting a request for a referral. Or a year from now, an anniversary email checks in on their comfort satisfaction and reminds them to schedule a tune-up.
But a new system installation should definitely not get an offer two weeks later for a new system installation. That’s where the un-segmented list takes a detour into “unhelpful.” Plus, it’s a costly waste of time and effort.
The hurdle is already high to reach an inbox and get a message opened – even higher to get the click. So don’t waste any inbox karma you might have stored up from your good service and successful installation by sending your very valuable customer something they neither need nor want. When you do that, you use up their positive feeling about you and waste your inbox open.