Email marketing and newsletters for home service companies

• One list of past customers in your business's name, built from your invoices and job records
• A short newsletter a few times a year, each issue with something useful in it
• Service reminders timed from the date of the last job
• An easy way for customers to pass your name to a neighbor
• Emails sent from your company's own address, with your name and phone number
• A working unsubscribe link in every email, and removals handled right away
• A count of the replies, calls and booked jobs that come from each email

Robert Earl, who started Home Service Guild, learned the value of a list in real estate. For years his website sat at the top of Google for condos in Reston, Virginia. When Google changed its results, he spotted the change and added another channel alongside the website: a monthly newsletter to his past clients and the neighborhoods he targeted. His repeat and referral business grew from about ten percent to fifty or sixty percent of what he sold. He puts it this way: you rent the path, and you own the list.

Google and Facebook can change their rules overnight. A list of customers who know your work and hear from you stays yours. We gather your past customers from wherever they live now, whether that is a spreadsheet, an old invoicing program or a box of paper invoices, into one list with each customer's name, email, address, the date of the last job and what was done. The list sits in an account registered to your business, so it stays with you whatever happens.

Each issue carries one or two things worth a homeowner's minute. That might be a reminder to change the furnace filter before the first cold snap, a tip on flushing the water heater, a new service you have added or a town you now serve. A photo from a recent job with your crew in it says more about your company than a paragraph of claims ever could.

The newsletter is short enough to read on a phone, and it sounds like your company talking. It goes out a few times a year, at a pace your business can keep up through busy seasons and slow ones. How often to email or text past customers explains why steady beats frequent.

Your business holds the date of the last tune-up, inspection or treatment, and the customer usually doesn't. A service reminder works from that date and reaches the customer before the work is due, so she books with the company that already knows her house. Customers tend to welcome these, because the email is about their own home. Service reminders for the next visit explains why the timing matters.

Some customers would rather get a text, and some want reminders in their inbox. Email carries the reminders for the second group, and follow-up after the job covers the check-ins and text reminders that sit alongside it.

Referrals come up at random moments, usually long after the job, when a neighbor mentions a leaking faucet over the fence. A customer who has heard from you a few times this year still has your name handy. Every newsletter carries a simple link she can forward in a few seconds, and we record who sent whom so you can thank the customer who made the introduction. How to ask happy customers for referrals covers the rest of the habit.

The federal law for marketing email is the CAN-SPAM Act, and the basics are plain. The From line and the subject line have to be honest about who is writing and what the email is about. The email has to make clear that it is marketing, show your business's mailing address, and give an easy way to stop receiving emails. A request to stop has to be honored within 10 business days, and we take people off right away. Your business stays responsible for its email even when someone else sends it for you, which is why we keep these basics in place on every send.

We email customers who have done business with you or asked to hear from you. We don't buy lists or add strangers. Texts carry stricter rules than email, so marketing texts go only to customers who have agreed to receive them. This is the plain version, not legal advice, and an attorney is the right person for questions about your own business.

Your emails go out from an address on your company's own website domain, with your business name in the From line. We set up the records that email providers check to confirm a message really came from your business, which helps your emails reach the inbox. The design stays simple, with your name, your phone number and a way to book, so the email looks the same on a phone as it does on a desk.

Open counts have become unreliable, because some mail apps open messages automatically before anyone reads them. So we count what you can bank: replies, calls and online bookings from each email, booked jobs from customers who received it, neighbors who came in by referral, and how many people unsubscribed. An issue that brings in replies tells you what to send more of. A jump in unsubscribes tells you to slow down or change the subject.

After each send you see those numbers next to the jobs they became. The rest of what we do is on all our services.