In today’s digital world, there are a wide range of digital marketing tools and options available to businesses looking to grow their market share including social media, online advertisements, content marketing, influencers, and Google Ads. It can be confusing and overwhelming for pest control companies to know where to start. While there are plenty of fancy websites and sophisticated tools, there is one digital marketing tool that has stood the test of time – email.
Every day, there are nearly 350 billion emails sent worldwide to businesses and individuals. Many of these emails are part of a company’s email marketing strategy to engage with their existing customers and attract new ones. With nearly 70 percent of marketers using email as a way to reach their target audience, it should come as no surprise that the email marketing industry is valued at over $11 billion.
Reasons Why Email Marketing is a Solid Digital Marketing Tool
Some businesses might assume that email marketing is outdated and no longer relevant. After all, the first email marketing campaign happened over 45 years ago. For pest control companies, it’s important to understand why email marketing continues to be a highly effective digital marketing strategy that has many advantages over other digital options.
1. Targeted Messages
One of the key advantages of email marketing is that it’s highly customizable. Traditional advertisements (like a television ad or billboard) can’t be changed easily. With email, pest control companies can quickly update their messaging and even tailor it for specific customers. This ensures that the message received is relevant and resonates with the reader. For example, restaurant owners can receive a message that focuses on the types of pests that are common in the food service industry (like rodents). Receiving a tailored message gives the customer the sense of individual attention and care which can lead to higher engagement and conversion rates.
To make the most out of your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to segment your subscribers and customers into specific groups. Residential customers should be on a separate list from commercial customers. You can even separate customers based on their geographic location or the types of services they have purchased in the past.
2. Cost-Effectiveness
Email is one of the most inexpensive ways to reach your pest control customers. With traditional marketing channels like print advertising and direct mail, you have to rely on expensive printing and postage costs. This makes email marketing a great option, especially for small pest control companies with a limited marketing budget.
While each campaign will perform differently, lower costs for email marketing can translate into impressive ROIs. On average, a well-crafted email marketing campaign can return $36 of value to the business for every $1 spent. Of course, this all depends on the number of customers that have subscribed to your email list and the quality of your email marketing messages.
3. Brand Awareness
It can take some time to build trust with your customers. It’s unlikely that they will hire you for their pest control needs during your first interaction. Consistent email marketing can help build brand awareness with your target audience over time. By delivering valuable content, such as helpful tips for pest prevention, you can demonstrate that your company is the leading expert in your area. Simply sending one to two emails per week can help keep you top of mind with your customers without overwhelming their inbox and pushing them to hit the unsubscribe button.
In addition to selling more services, email marketing can help you stay connected with your existing customer base. Sending newsletters, exclusive offers, and maintenance reminders can provide value and encourage them to return to your business again and again.
4. Continuous Improvement
Not every email marketing campaign will be effective or successful. However, email marketing is one of the easiest forms of digital marketing to monitor performance and make improvements over time. The most effective strategy is to leverage a technique known as A-B marketing. With this method, you design two different marketing messages. Half of your subscribers (group A) receives one version of your email while the other half (group B) receives the other. This allows you to test different options, designs, type of information, and subject lines to see which is the most effective. This enables you to adjust and optimize your email marketing campaign through trial and error.
There are a number of tools available to track and monitor important email marketing metrics such as read, clickthrough, conversion, and unsubscribe rates. Many of these tools are integrated with most email marketing platforms.
5. Automation and Low Maintenance
There is a small amount of effort to set up your email marketing system. However, with the right email marketing tools and platforms, pest control companies can set up automated messages to reduce the time and effort it takes to interact with customers. For example, your business can create a 10-week informational series for homeowners that automatically gets sent to new subscribers. This can also be done with automatic reminders to customers to proactively schedule seasonal treatments to stay ahead of peak pest seasons.
This low maintenance approach will help you maintain ongoing communication with your customers without having to hire an extensive team of marketing professionals or social media managers to keep up with the volume.
Overcoming the Challenges with Email Marketing
There are benefits and disadvantages to each form of digital marketing. It’s important for businesses to carefully consider which options are right for their company. While email marketing does have some limitations and drawbacks, there are clever ways to mitigate these challenges.
1. Delivery and Open Rates
Some email marketing reports estimate that only about 21% of all email marketing and newsletters are even opened. Unfortunately, much of this is a result of the high volume of emails that most people receive in a single day. Considering, half of all email is spam, you’ll need to make sure that your message stands out as important and valuable.
This can be extremely frustrating. However, pest control companies can mitigate this by following email marketing best practices such as building high-quality email lists and using double opt-ins to avoid being marked as spam.
Ultimately, your audience has the option to unsubscribe. If you are seeing a high unsubscribe rate, pay attention to comments left on the unsubscribe form. There might be valuable insights on how to reduce this rate.
2. Test Delivery Times
Email is highly reliable and can be programmed to be sent on specific days, times, or at certain intervals. It’s important to track the day and time that email marketing is scheduled to be sent. Your open rate could be low as a result of reaching people at the wrong time. Be sure to test out the timing of your delivery before making any major changes to your email strategy. For example, pest control companies should avoid sending messages to commercial customers outside of normal business hours or on the weekends.
3. Content Relevance
There is only so much useful information that the average person can consume regarding the topic of pest control. Most people simply aren’t as excited about the topic as pest control business owners. For this reason, it can be quite difficult coming up with ideas to keep your email content fresh and engaging.
Variety is a great way to mitigate this. Customers might get burned out from promotional overload but providing a wide range of topics and formats such as pest identification guides, tips, infographics, and how-to videos can make the content more entertaining.
Turn Boring Email into a Lead Generating Machine
Email has the potential to unlock a large number of leads and new customers for your growing pest control business. At Rhino Pest Control Marketing, our digital marketing specialists can help you create an email marketing strategy, write engaging and compelling email messages, and automate the process so you can get back to running your business. Contact our team today to find out how to turn email into your digital salesman.
