At a time when the whole world is trying to find solutions to the rapid climatic changes, solar companies are creating waves through their digital marketing endeavours. Over the years, solar businesses have embraced different digital marketing strategies, and email marketing is definitely one of them.
Email marketing offers a multitude of benefits and arguably outperforms some other marketing techniques. If your solar company hasn’t quite warmed up to using email marketing, presenting your first campaign would be an efficient way to attract and convert valuable new leads. Listed below are the tips that you will find useful.
Determine the target consumers
Insights: With the traditional methods of marketing like billboard ads and television ads, your advertisements will reach out to a huge number of your consumers. However, it’s hard to know who those consumers are.
With internet marketing, your campaigns can be much more targeted – and that’s particularly true in case of email. If the consumers give you their email addresses, it indicates that they’re interested in your company.
You can send out emails to specific groups within your email list and even particular individuals depending on characteristics.
For instance, if someone signs up for your organization’s newsletter, you could have your email marketing platform automatically send them an email. You can thank them for subscribing and ask them if they have any questions. This kind of communication can enhance consumer relationships and boost your conversion rate.
Segment your email list
Insights: In case of your email list, most of your opt-ins have at least one thing in common; they’re inclined towards solar energy. But it’ll still be better if you segment your lists a bit. That way, you can provide content tailored to each user’s experience.
For instance, you might consider creating separate segments for residential and business clients. You might also distinguish people based on those who live in colder parts of your market from those who live in tropical areas.
Try not to go overboard with segmentation. However, you must remember the more personal your emails come across to the recipient, the better your results will be.
Try some creative content with segmentation
Insights: Every email marketer knows that you need to segment your subscribers into lists and create relevant content. But it’s also crucial that you study your lists for creative content opportunities that will resonate more personally with each segment.
For instance, for both solar manufacturers and installers, you could make your emails more geographically relevant to your consumers. You could create content for cold weather and separate content for warmer regions. You can also design one template with images and copy that’s relevant to Californian consumers, and another that’s significant to the ones residing in New York.
Establish relationships
Insights: Maintaining relationships with your consumers is essential for businesses in every industry. The more consumers know about your company, the more comfortable they’ll be while making a purchase and suggesting you to their friends and family.
Sending regular emails will help you keep a line of communication open between you and your consumers, thus making them feel more connected with your business and brand. “You can also customize your emails by including subscribers’ names and mentioning services they’ve looked into. This makes the communication a lot more relevant to their interests”, states Mark Hansen, an expert on marketing homework help from Tophomeworkhelper.com.
Engage with prospects through a sales funnel
Insights: Engaging with the prospects through a sales funnel lets them know your brand and business objectives, without a hard sell. Here’s an instance of how you can set up a three-step sequence for lead nurturing:
Email 1: Welcome message, images highlighting recent installs, call to action.
Email 2: Share an article that would be useful for someone willing to invest in solar power. Something like ‘Reasons why cheap solar panels will cost you more in the long run’ should do the job. Don’t forget to add an impactful call to action.
Email 3: Highlight a consumer testimonial. Include a solid call to action.
Understand how often is “too often“
Insights: While many consumers prefer email, there’s no actual consensus about frequency. So you’re going to have to conduct A/B testing to see what’s optimal. In this case, any modern email program should be able to answer the following questions.
- How many emails do target consumers receive before they unsubscribe?
- How many emails does it require to convert a solar sale for your organization?
- Why do people unsubscribe?
Tools like MailChimp program give everyone unsubscribing to your emails a quick multiple-choice survey asking the reason for unsubscribing. Use all of these vital details to maintain the right frequency for sending emails to fulfil your business’ goals.
Make it worth their while
Insights: In today’s world, it’s common for most people to consume more advertising than our brains are equipped to deal with, so we’ve learned to tune it out. It’s also common for us to mute the commercials. In fact, we don’t even look at the upper right-hand corner of websites. We wait for 5 seconds and click “Skip Ad.”
If you don’t want your emails to land up in the trash folder, then you’ll have to provide your clients with a reason to actually read them. Engaging content in the solar industry is a great start. Also, consider incorporating the occasional special offer or exclusive invitation with your mails.
You don’t have to host a lavish event to get their attention. Start with a webinar or a free e-book that they’ll find useful and entertaining.
Win over with simplicity
Insights: Try to keep your emails simple. Use one or two key messages at best.
If you send out long and rambling emails that elaborate on all your products, consist of a bunch of images and a list of testimonials, you’re only going to bore the reader.
Remember you can always incorporate links to your website for further details. The idea is to hold their attention and find a solution to their issues and concerns.
Surprise subscribers (in a good way)
Insights: Who doesn’t love a little personal touch to their emails?
Solar manufacturers could have a birthday email that congratulates the installer for being a client for many years. Think about it; a birthday discount couldn’t hurt when nurturing an existing consumer.
Similarly, reminding a customer that their solar system is a year old and providing them with a free onsite check-up can be a great offer too. That kind of unexpected, warm, consumer service interactions will show your consumers that you care.
In turn, this will inspire them to refer you to their family and friends again. “Guess what? My solar system is a year old, and my solar installer is doing a free check-up.”
Measuring the metrics is simple
Insights: One clear advantage of email marketing for solar companies is that it offers you with concrete data that you can use to boost your campaigns over time.
By evaluating the metrics like open rate, subscriber retention rate, and click-through rate, you can find areas in which your campaign has succeeded and aspects that need improvement. You can then alter your campaign depending on your findings and use that detail to inform the rest of your marketing plans as well.
Links help as well
Insights: If and when you add a link to an article, your website, or an email address, make sure to test them before you send the email. Nothing looks more unprofessional than having contact details that aren’t linking accurately. You need to check and then double-check.
Email marketing is one of the most cost-efficient ways to get in touch with prospects who have already taken an interest in your business. By engaging them through a sequence of email messages, it’s a powerful channel to delight and convert them from prospects to customers.
Spamming is a strict no-no
Insights: It may take some evaluation and fine-tuning to figure out how often to send your emails. In fact, you’ll want to check how many emails it requires to convert your average prospect and how many emails most recipients receive before clicking the “unsubscribe” button.
Pay attention to the answer that people who have unsubscribed opted for in the questionnaire. If they mention that the reason is receiving too many emails, then you know you’re dangerously close to spam territory.
Additional ideas on effective marketing for your solar business:
Now that you have gained some perspective on email marketing for solar business, here are some general marketing tips for you to consider.
Maintain a referral system
Insights: Anyone who has done their research on the solar industry would know that it has ideally survived off a referral system. For quite some time, the pattern has been something like this – Your neighbour installs a solar panel. You have a chat with them regarding the installation, and then you do the same. Now, it was only logical to take this kind of referral system into the digital world.
This can operate in multiple ways. The first is to ensure you have strategies in place to get good reviews of your work and display them clearly on your emails. The second is the modern-day equivalent of a referral system—link building. If you can get authoritative sources to link to your company’s work, you immediately up your credibility. It’s the digital equivalent of Word-of-Mouth, and it works like a dream in solar marketing.
Promote your solar business strategically
Insights: A solar company may overlook simple things. One of which is its availability to consumers. The best thing to do is to make your contact details public and promote it by creating a social media page or a website to visit. You can also put them on directories like Truugo, True Local, Sensis, Yellow Pages and more to ensure that your consumers can reach you anytime.
If you already have a page on any of the social platforms, make sure you use it strategically for your business. Keep it updated with your contact information, promotions, latest products, and include brilliant content that supports your business.
For instance, find out when your consumers receive their electric bills. Publish content on how a solar system saves a household from the rising cost of electricity at that very nick of time.
Emphasize on education over advertising
Insights: It’s rarely a secret that people do want to see continuous advertisements. So much so, that 4 out of 5 people have left a webpage because of a pop-up or auto-playing ad, as per Hubspot.
So here’s the thing. Don’t discourage people with too many ads. Instead, offer them with meaningful content that will inform them about the advantages of solar installation. Make it concise and informative. This will be your greatest asset when it comes to garnering traffic and getting people to engage with your business.
Reward loyal customers
Insights: Your existing consumers could be a huge help to get new consumers. Word-of-Mouth remains the most effective tool in generating new leads. Happy consumers can serve as your brand ambassadors and be an excellent marketing tool to jumpstart your business.
To do that, you can create an incentive-based system for your loyal consumers once they refer other people to use your products. This will not only leave you with more connections, but it will also give them more reasons to stay in business with you.
The Takeaway
Email marketing for solar companies can help draw in new consumers, retain present ones and increase revenue. Through effective email marketing, many of your consumers will welcome your expert assistance. We hope these ideas help make the most of your next email marketing campaign.