May 26, 2020 quick update
The Johns Hopkins CSSE dashboard is reporting 5,549,131 confirmed cases, 348,302 deaths and 2,269,868 recovered globally.
1,672,714 million US cases and 98,636 deaths and 379,157 recovered as of 11:32am on May 26.
Daily COVID-19 deaths in the United States are generally on the decline.
Brazil surpassed Russia and is now #2 globally in terms of cumulative confirmed cases. Brazil’s daily incidence is also second to only the United States, and if the current trends continue, it could become #1 globally in the coming days.
US IMPOSES TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS FOR BRAZIL
In response to the recent acceleration of Brazil’s COVID-19 epidemic, US President Donald Trump imposed travel restrictions on Brazil. The order restricts entry for arriving travelers with travel to Brazil in the past 14 days.
The New York Times continues to track state-level COVID-19 incidence, with a focus on state policies regarding social distancing. A number of states began to relax social distancing measures—including resuming operations at restaurants, retail stores, and barbershops/salons—at the end of April/early May. After several weeks of increased activity, several of them appear to be experiencing a continued increase in daily incidence. These states include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Texas. Following numerous reports of large gatherings at beaches and other locations over the Memorial Day holiday weekend , with many people appearing to relax social distancing steps, we will continue to monitor state-level incidence trends for signals of increased community transmission.
NHL PLAYOFFS
The National Hockey League (NHL; US) is moving forward with tentative plans to resume the 2019-20 season. League and player representatives collaborated to develop a modified format that would enable the season to resume. Player representatives from each team recently voted in favor of a plan that would resume the season with the playoffs—expanding from 16 to 24 teams—with seeding based on the standings when the season was suspended in March. The exact format may change, and the timeline has not yet been determined. Notably, this agreement does not constitute a commitment to resume play; however, it provides a framework under which the NHL season could resume, if the league determines that it is safe to do so.
Email Marketing 101
Special Guests: Christy and Kindra from Housecall Pro
What’s your experience with marketing and email marketing specifically?
My experience with email marketing started at Housecall Pro, learning as she went along
Past year or so, just started doing it at Housecall Pro and you learn the fastest when you make mistakes
FB ads are cool, search ads are cool, but why should email marketing still be a part of a home service business’s marketing strategy?
Email is not dead. 99% of homeowners check their email everyday. – get your customer’s email address at every opportunity. There will always be customers that don’t use it, etc, but you should make it a habit to ask for your customer’s email address when collecting info. Don’t forget the most important part of your marketing is your current customers
You already have your current customers information so reach out to them
So let’s start with the don’ts – what are the first things that come to mind when talking about what NOT to do with email marketing?
Do not be spammy- this is the big one. It’s easy to get carried away since it’s a cheap form of marketing but it is easy to annoy your customer. Make sure that it is valuable and that you are sending the right message to the right person
All capitalization in subject line- people and spam detectors think it’s spam
Email service providers have words that can be triggered as spam, so make sure your email subject lines do not have these words. Exclamation marks are a common red flag for spam filters.
https://emailcopychecker.com/ is basic tool you can use to check your email content before sending or , glockapps if you need something fancier
What about what they SHOULD do?
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes before you send any emails out to your customers
Make sure you get your customers permission before sending them an email. Great way to start is through creating a newsletter. Let customers sign up on your website
If collected email for invoices through HOusecall Pro, can you send them email marketing messages? Yes, they are an existing customer and someone you have a relationship with. The first message cannot be marketing though, it needs to be their invoice. In Canada, the rules are different and you will want to explicitly get permission from your customers that they opt in to your emails.
Be original and personal and make sure what you’re sending is relevant to the person opening that email.
Think about timing- make sure your email is relevant. For example, a thank you email should go out no later than one week after you did the work for the customer.
Housecall Pro helps with tags to know who your audience is
Make sure that you are testing subject lines and you can always adjust and try something different
MailChimp and Constant Contact lets you send an email to a smaller group of your customers to run a few subject lines and then their software will identify the subject line that drew the most engagement and then send that one out to the rest of your customer list
Don’t be afraid to start with the not so great subject line first, because you will learn from it
Email should not be your only marketing channel but one of your marketing strategies in combination with others.
100 Email Subject Lines That Work
Now that we know the do’s and don’ts, let’s talk about HOW to do it? What is your process for creating an email marketing campaign?
- Set a goal
- What are you trying to accomplish with this email?
- What actions do you want your customers to take?
- Determine who your audience is
- Then figure out your message that aligns with the goal, the audience, and what you want them to do
- Formula you follow?
- Simple
- Personal
- Actionable
As a pro, where do I start with all of this? What is your advice here?
- Think about where would a touch be nice to have?
- Send email confirmations after a job is booked so that customers
- Automated through Housecall Pro
- What content or piece of value can you provide to your customers
- Ex. how often you should be getting XYZ cleaned or tuned up
- Ask yourself, is this relevant and something you would read? If not probably best to not send it
What tools can our pros use?
- Mailchimp
- Constant Contact
- ActiveCampaign
- If you want to be fancy, you can use Autopilot
- Start with the simple ones and use their templates
- If someone opts out, do not put them back on the list
- If you can, sign up for a competitors email list to see what they are sending out and learn from them too.
What are some other types of emails to send?
- Your goal should be to stay top of mind for your customers
- Newsletters
- Service updates
- Customer/job spotlights
- Put a picture in your email that looks like a YouTube video or a GIF and then you can link that to a page on your website
- When you aren’t busy, make it seem like you are busy and appointments are filling up
What is the best email subject line you have ever read?
- lol WTF is back – this was a follow up email after an oopsie email which added humor to their mistake
- Coffee on me – this grabbed my attention because they knew what I wanted
- Using Re: as a subject line when its with a customer that you have good rapport
GIF or Emojis? Yay or nay
- GIFs are fun and a nice little surprise when you open the email
- Christy makes her own GIFs using https://giphy.com/
- Record a quick video of your team waving and turn this into a GIF
- You can link your GIF or image because people love to click on them and link them to your online booking page or website
How to think about the timing of email marketing?
Start off slow. It depends on your goal, make sure your emails have a purpose. Don’t send an email just to send an email.
Look at your open rates and click through rates to see what is working/not working are customers finding what you are sending valuable
Questions from The Audience
- Should you have email marketing with seasonal holidays throughout the year?
- Yes, your email marketing needs to be relevant and seasonal
- Keep a reminder on your calendar for every 2 weeks to make sure emails you re currently sending out is still relevant
- Let them know you are real people behind the brand
- Dress up for your holidays and take photos and include them in your email, makes it personable and people love people
- If you have local community holidays or back to school emails are great
- What email campaigns do you recommend for customers that are weekly or bi-weekly customers?
- Referral campaigns- ask for referrals to people they know
- Viral Loops is a referral marketing solution
- Reviews- ask them to leave a review for your services
- How to videos or tips and tricks that they can share with friends and family or what not to do between visits
- Before and after photos are great too
- You should teach them how to do everything you do because this reinforces your value of why they pay you to do what you do. Make it seem and show them the hard works because you will make them want to not do it themselves
- Referral campaigns- ask for referrals to people they know
- How long should emails be?
- The shorter the better, get your point across in as few words as possible
- Read back over whatever you write and have others read it and make not osf when you/they get bored
- Get creative with the appearance and font sizes by keeping the main points bold or larger font size
- If sending out newsletters prepare your customer by setting the expectation of 30 second read or 1 minute read etc.
- Roland’s secret app is http://www.hemingwayapp.com/– keep the reading level at 3rd grade, keep emails 200 words or less, and try to not use commas
- What would be the goal of putting together a monthly newsletter? What would the CTA be?
- The CTA depends on the content within the monthly newsletter
- It should be aligned with the content and goals of the content within that month’s newsletter
- What is an open rate?
- The Percentage of people that open email compared to the number of people you sent the email to.
- 30% is a really good open rate. If it is a more engaged customer 40-50%. 15-20% is average
- Email marketing tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact will provide you with this information
- What about Click To Open Rate?
- The percentage of people that opened the email and clicked on the links within the email compared to those customers that opened the email
- A good click to open rate is 5-10%
- What about the timing of emails?
- Wednesdays at 7am according to the internet is the best time to send an email but this is something you have to test and compare open rates between days and times
- Every industry is a little different and demographic of recipient varies too
- What is one thing you would tell our pros do tomorrow?
- Make it personal and keep it real. I want to buy from someone who is real, supports the community
- Put yourself in your customers shoes or mindset and think about their day to day and what situation they will need your services and this will help you resonate with them and then create the content that they need from you.
