The lack of effective email is a growth barrier
Deliver better customer experiences with email tied to a CRM (and don't ditch good customers)
It is frustrating! I know they have my email address and my phone, but my house hasn't been pressure washed for more than a year. I think the power washing company has abandoned me. I think I know why.
It's not because I was a bad customer. I had plenty of dirt on my vinyl siding, and I paid promptly. The technician was only here for a couple of hours and I said thank you, even though some of the spray fluid came through the kitchen door and ruined the tablecloth.
When someone leaves you high and dry you wonder what caused it (no pun intended). Maybe they got so busy with really big jobs and just didn’t have time to come back for my annual siding and window cleaning. Perhaps they found a neighborhood with houses that were a little bit bigger and a little bit dirtier, and the pockets a little bit deeper.
How businesses ditch their customers
I really think the reason that they forgot me is that they don't understand the cost of new customer acquisition and the key methods to retain new customers. What should have happened—at a minimum—is a thank you email, an offer for additional services, and an email six months later asking me if I was ready to schedule again.
You know for your own business just how expensive it is to acquire a good new customer. In this case, they acquired me from an organic online search—you know, I looked for power washing online.
They are probably paying to be found in a top search position, and are probably investing in digital ads, too. Even with all of those costs, and the fact that I had already ordered once, they missed any follow-up beyond scheduling and payment.
Instead, it's just crickets. But that's what happens when your business systems are not organized for growth.
The most basic growth system is email tied to a CRM. It's often one of the most neglected parts of growth.
A good email has a few critical elements:
- first, it always lives in a CRM (customer relationship manager). This allows the contact information to be sorted into segments based on interest. As a result, email is sent with information that people actually interested in.
- Second, it uses a quality email delivery system. That not only means that it has high deliverability rates, complies with the US CAN-SPAM act, and is easy to create and send, but it also provides deep analytics about what's happening with email.
Email plus a CRM is the bare minimum for growth.
For my MIA pressure washer friends, that could be as simple as making sure that my name and contact information, and service information are added to the CRM.
Then, they would ensure that I get both follow-up emails related to the specific service they provided and that they are in my inbox with something valuable to me at a minimum of once a month. They would add to that some priority dates, at which it would be appropriate to start asking me to come back and pressure wash again.
How to upgrade your email
For more sophisticated operations that would take this up to another level by adding a specific series of emails to make sure I knew what makes the company special, and then introducing me to all the other things they could do to help me to keep my home in great condition.
In my case, they should have been offering some kind of asphalt treatment for my driveway, or window washing. Following the initial sequence which a good CRM will automate, they would stay in my inbox to provide me with valuable information about how to keep my home maintained.
For growth-minded companies, they should be looking at the analytics from emails to see whether or not they were effectively reaching me, or even being opened. That's become a much more challenging task given the changes in the way that mail is being pre-opened by large email providers like Apple and Microsoft.
I review a lot of email systems for companies and nonprofits. You might be shocked to know just how few have optimized this vital combo of email and CRM.
Below you'll find an example of what that analytic report from an email should look like. You’d be able to tell a variety of things about your email that would allow you to improve and optimize its value for your customers and prospects. If you have that resource you would know:
- when your emails are getting opened,
- what kind of device was being used who was most interested,
- and what links they were clicking in the email.
We also know that an open rate below 20% is the equivalent of zero because many of the email services are now opening and clicking emails before the individual actually sees them.
While failing to follow up with me for another power wash is a minor inconvenience for me, because I’ll just search for another one, it's the loss of a customer to that company. There was no reason that I could not have become a regular service stop for them if they had simply followed up.
It's this kind of marking essentials that companies have to improve as we look at continuing changes in the business cycle.
If your email system is not optimized, here are the steps to set up your email for growth:
- Sign up for a few of your competitor's email lists. See how often they are sending emails and look at the quality and value of those communications.
- Make a list of the kind of information that your customer needs to know about your company and your services. That information should find its way into emails that are delivered before and after services.
- Make another list of valuable insights that are in some way related to your product or service that you could deliver to your customers following service and leading up to your next opportunity to work for them.
- Identify the earliest possible dates at which you could renew, upgrade, or provide additional services and book those on your calendar for each customer.
- Test all of these emails with a group of customers and track the open rates and click rates to see if your email approach is being well received.
- Once you got high-performing emails set them up in automation that keeps you in their inbox.
- Sync your sales team into the responses that your emails are creating in your CRM so they can follow up and help your business grow.
If you need help with this reach out to us we can walk you through it or show you a free CRM that you can use, along with some examples of emails that are working well.
