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February 1, 2020 – By Aaron Hockel
Even though email marketing has been around for over 25 years, it is widely considered to have the highest engagement and ROI of any digital marketing medium. According to the Data and Marketing AssociationData and Marketing AssociationData and Marketing Association, email marketing delivers an average ROI of $38 for every $1 spent. On a percentage basis, this is a staggering 3,800%. It also drivers significantly higher engagement than social media posts and ads.
Commercial contractors need to use email marketing to their advantage. This guide breaks down building an email newsletter for a commercial contracting business:
Keep reading to learn how any commercial contractor can build and execute an email marketing campaign or click on any topic to jump to the specific section of the guide.
First and foremost, email newsletter campaigns should have clearly defined goals. Before designing the template or creating content, commercial contractors must decide what they hope to accomplish by sending the email newsletter. Common email marketing goals include:
A well built and consistent email newsletter marketing campaign will accomplish most of these in each send. Goals can be adjusted for each campaign, but should always be established before creating content.
Commercial contractors should utilize a template style layout for their email newsletter marketing campaigns. It should present information clearly and concisely. A template makes it easier to compile the newsletter every month because commercial contractors know exactly what information they need and where it goes. There are thousands of potential template layouts. The most important thing is being easy to use and performing well on mobile devices. The below example template will be used in the next section to show how content is built.
Email newsletter content and the email newsletter template go hand in hand. In the example template above, there is a main banner section plus four dedicated content sections, labeled Article A, B, C, and D.
This does not mean it requires links to four articles. Let’s look at how a commercial contractor could populate relevant content into the example template above:
Just like the template and the content work together, the content and the audience work together. The most important and relevant information to the email newsletter audience should be presented first. To illustrate using the example template, assume the campaign is being sent to commercial property and facility managers.
The banner image, newsletter headline and Article A should contain the information that is most relevant to our audience. This information should aim to accomplish four main goals:
As email audiences grow larger and larger, it can be challenging to create content with broad appeal. One way to overcome this challenge is segmentation. Assume a commercial trade contractor works directly with both property managers and general contractors. They could create one campaign for their property manager audience and one campaign for their general contractor audience.
MailChimp is easy to use, has a drag and drop template creator and is free if you have less than 2,000 contacts in your email newsletter audience. It can also be synced with your social media pages and website contact forms to automatically grow your email newsletter audience. In terms of ease of use and functionality, this is hard to beat.
MailChimp also makes it easy to manage the unsubscribe process and comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM Act. Other popular email marketing platforms include Aweber (which is free up to 500 contacts), Constant Contact and GetResponse.
The final, and most important part of building an email newsletter for a commercial contracting business, is putting it all together and sending the campaign. While executing the first email newsletter can be challenging, it typically gets easier with every campaign. To help make the process easier, many email marketing platforms offer tools to easily create templates plus tips for content.
Additionally, AltaVista Strategic Partners is available to help. Our team of email marketing experts work with commercial contractors to help them create and execute successful email newsletter campaigns. To see how our team can help, just fill out the contact form on this page.
Aaron Hockel is a Partner and the VP of Digital Marketing at AltaVista Strategic Partners. A University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) alumnus, Aaron expertly crafts digital marketing strategies that drive success for clients, leveraging his deep industry knowledge and innovative approach.
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