Seasonal Email Campaigns for a Service Business

Why this outperforms everything else in the channel

Three things stack.

They already paid you, so the trust question is settled and the message is not an intrusion.

The timing is relevant, because the work genuinely becomes necessary at a predictable point.

The alternative is them forgetting, which is what usually happens. A customer who used you three years ago and needs the work again will call whoever comes to mind first.

That third point is the actual mechanism. This is not persuasion, it is being the name that arrives at the right moment.

The timing

Earlier than feels natural, and it is the decision that determines whether the campaign works.

The message should arrive when the thought is forming rather than when the need is urgent. By the time somebody has a problem they have already searched and called somebody.

For most seasonal work that means three to six weeks before the season. Gutter clearing in early autumn rather than during the first storm. Heating service in late summer. Air conditioning in early spring.

The businesses that get this right are booked before the rush; the ones that send during it are competing with everyone else for the same week.

How many a year

Two or three for most service businesses.

That is enough to stay present without becoming frequent enough to be unsubscribed from, and it is little enough work to survive a busy period, which is what determines whether it actually happens.

The temptation is to send more once it works. Resisting that is worth doing, because the list is an asset that degrades with overuse and cannot be rebuilt quickly.

Segmenting these properly

The version that turns a decent campaign into a good one.

A general seasonal message to everybody is fine. A message to people whose specific work is due, using the date from your own records, is considerably better because it is relevant to every recipient rather than to some of them.

That requires only what your invoicing already holds: the date and what was done. Somebody whose furnace was serviced last September receives a message in August; somebody whose roof was replaced last year does not receive the roofing message.

The difference in response between a general message and a personally relevant one is large enough to justify the sorting.

What the message should contain

• Why it arrived now, stated in the first line.
• What specifically is worth doing at this point in the year.
• Something useful whether or not they book, such as what to check themselves.
• One clear way to respond, usually a phone number and a reply address.
• A note that slots fill, where genuinely true.

The third item matters more than it appears. A message offering only to sell reads as a sales message; one that also tells them something useful reads as a business looking after its customers, and the second gets opened next year.

What to avoid

Manufactured urgency, such as a deadline that does not exist or a limited number of slots that is not limited. Customers who have used you before will recognise it.

Discounting by default, which trains people to wait for the seasonal message rather than calling when they need you.

A generic newsletter, which is a different thing and performs considerably worse than a specific timely message.

Sending to people whose basis has expired, which is worth checking before a seasonal send to a list that has been sitting.

The follow-through

The part that is usually missing.

A seasonal message produces replies over the following two weeks, and some of them arrive when you are busy. Having decided in advance who handles them, and within what timeframe, is what converts the campaign.

It also produces some who do not reply but book three months later, which is worth knowing when judging whether it worked. Attributing only the immediate responses understates it.

Measuring it

Not opens, which are unreliable. Replies, calls received in the following fortnight, and jobs booked.

The comparison worth making is against the same period in previous years, since the seasonal rise happens anyway and the question is whether the message added to it.

Even roughly, a business that sends in August and books more August work than the previous August has an answer. That is imprecise and sufficient to decide whether to send again.

The version that takes an hour

Export your customers with dates and work type. Sort by what is due. Write four paragraphs. Send.

Twice a year, at the two points where your work becomes seasonally relevant, and the whole thing runs on records you already keep. The same material also becomes the seasonal page and the social posts, which is where the writing gets reused, as covered in seasonal content and the shelf life problem.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.