The HVAC newsletter. So many people have them, but so few are making use of this powerful HVAC marketing tool. A newsletter is a semi-regular email or letter that keeps people – most likely your clients – updated on news from your business and other information that might be of interest to them. Businesses like them because they are a really direct way of getting in front of client’s eyes, with the added benefit that many of the people on the list that you send to – the mailing list – have signed up of their own free will.
They WANT you to tell them about your business!
It’s an especially great way to communicate with customers in the HVAC sector, because for you, other types of marketing – like social media, content marketing, and video marketing – are a big ask, depending on your company style and the breadth of your marketing imagination (which can be tough when you’re talking about heating ducts!).
Assess what you’ve got
Do you already have a HVAC newsletter? Do you think it’s as powerful a tool as it could be? Many HVAC businesses don’t. They have a newsletter, but it’s old, unplanned and, speaking honestly, just a little boring. Maybe you haven’t even made the move to email, and still send out a postal mailing a few times a year?
The great thing about newsletters is that it’s very, very easy to check out the competition. Either sign up for a rival newsletter yourself and check it out when it lands in your inbox, or Google “brand +newsletter” to see what the big names in your industry are doing – many have copies online for people to browse. Either way, take a long hard look at your newsletter and decide if it’s up to scratch. If not, now might be the time to take your HVAC newsletter from average to something that’s definitely top of the class.
No goal, no newsletter!
If you’ve decided to renovate your newsletter, the first thing you need to look at is your overall business and marketing goals. Newsletters are a type of content marketing, and like blog posts, ebooks and videos, it’s something where it is easy to lose time and money without getting anything back.
The way to prevent this is to make sure your newsletter has a goal that helps your marketing goals, which in turn help your business goals. If there’s no goal, warning bells should ring – if you don’t have a goal, you’ve got nothing to aim for, no way of measuring your work and nothing to improve!
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Improve your newsletter
How to make an excellent newsletter is a whole article that we’re going to save for another day. That said, we do have a few tips to get you started…
- Style – Pay attention to style. Your newsletter should look good and respect company branding
- Goals – Bear your goals in mind when writing or planning your newsletter to ensure no effort is wasted
- Tools – Consider using a tool like Mailchimp, Maropost, AWeber or Emma to automate the job and make it more professional
- Help – Consider outsourcing your newsletter to a professional if you don’t have the skill or desire in-house
- Clients – Remember that newsletters are all about your clients, not your company!
- Educate – You should be trying to entertain or educate your clients, not selling to them
- Continue – Always add a CTA (call to action) to your newsletters. This could be something like “book a check-up”, “download our app” or “talk to an expert” – it should be something that helps facilitate another goal
Getting more subscribers to your HVAC newsletter
Whether or not you have a newsletter, you should be collecting email addresses to add to your mailing list. This often happens when someone becomes a customer, but to add a little extra to the process, consider pop-up notifications on your website asking people to join the list, add new customers (paying attention to local privacy and data collection laws), asking potential clients to join on contact with your company, or simply leaving physical sign-up sheets at events and in shops.
Once you’ve built up a decent audience, try the mailing sequence of content – content – sale (new product, updated product, upsell, etc.) – content – content. Then try to improve the newsletter with every mailing – there are more resources out there than you could possibly need.
A final word of warning – getting email addresses from clients is an impressive feat. It shows they trust you and are confident you won’t abuse that trust. Treat them like gold, or risk losing your customers, and your reputation!
