If you want to bring in more new customers and improve your customer retention rate for your HVAC company, this article is for you! In this blog, we’ll share with you the different types of emails you can send along with some tips that will surely help you generate more leads!

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is one of the digital marketing strategies that businesses like your HVAC company can use to inform your customers about the latest promos you have, gather reviews, and nurture customer relationships. The main goal of this marketing strategy is that helps you boost your conversion rates by providing valuable content to your customers and subscribers.

Since almost everyone checks their emails on a daily basis, this platform will surely help you reach your target audience in an instant. In fact, 69% of businesses use email marketing to distribute relevant content such as monthly newsletters, promotional emails, useful guides, and more of these in the later part of this blog.

Still not sure if you should try email marketing for your HVAC business?

Learn More From Our Experts!

Why email marketing for HVAC Companies?

You might be wondering, does email marketing still work? Experts say that despite the number of new marketing platforms you can use, email marketing still remains one of the most effective ways in connecting with your customers.

What’s great about email marketing is that you can easily send targeted email campaigns directly to your customers or subscribers.

Unlike other marketing platforms where there are chances that your posts cannot be seen on their newsfeed or timelines because of changes in the algorithm, in email marketing, you can make sure that your messages will be seen by your target audience. All you have to do is segment your mailing list based on customer behavior, profile data, geographic location, etc. to increase the chances of your emails being opened.

Another advantage of using email marketing in promoting your HVAC services is that it can help you get additional traffic. For example, if you are planning to send seasonal email campaigns and you have blog posts that can give your email recipients tips on how to prepare their HVAC systems for the winter season, you can add the link to that blog post to your winter email campaigns.

By adding relevant links from your website to your email newsletters, you get to educate your subscribers and at the same time, you get to acquire additional traffic to your site.

Lastly, email marketing improves customer loyalty. If you have previous customers who haven’t been in touch with your HVAC company for quite a while now, it’s probably because they’re too busy or they might have forgotten you already. With email marketing, you can directly send re-engagement emails to win back your previous customers.

As long as you know how to personalize every email that you send to each subscriber (e.g. providing relevant content, building emotional connections by sharing user-generated content) they are more likely to stick with your HVAC business.

Different Types of Emails for HVAC Contractors

Before creating your email marketing campaigns, you should know the types of emails you can send to your customers and subscribers. In this section, we’ll share with you the different types of marketing emails you can send to your target audience along with some of the best practices to boost your conversion rates.

1. Welcome emails

The first email that a customer or subscriber receives after signing up for your monthly newsletter is a welcome email. It usually contains a warm greeting from your HVAC company, a brief overview of what they should expect to receive from you, and a special offer to encourage them to do business with you. Basically, it’s like you are setting a first impression for your brand.

This is a sample template of a welcome email:

[Source]

Best practices when sending welcome emails:

• send your welcome emails immediately after they sign up
• using engaging subject lines (e.g. Welcome to [name of your HVAC company]! You’re now an exclusive member!)
• segment your welcome emails based on how you acquire every new subscriber
• using a welcome email series before you send promotional emails.

2. Promotional emails

Promotional emails are the ones you send to your subscribers whenever you have limited-time offers, customer exclusive deals, seasonal promotions, or giveaways.

Here’s a sample template of a promotional email:

[Source]

Best practices when creating promotional emails

• Focus on highlighting the features or benefits that your promos have to offer
• To add a personal touch to your promotional emails, have your emails sent from a person or someone from your team
• Add a professional signature that includes a photo of the sender, their position in the company, and social media handles

3. Milestone emails

Whenever your HVAC company receives an award or achieved something big, you can also share it with your email recipients. This makes them feel that they are part of your success. Some examples of milestone emails are subscriber birthdays, company birthdays, user anniversaries, or if you opened a new branch.

Sample template of a milestone email:

[Source]

4. Transactional emails

Transactional emails are the ones that you send to your customers after they completed an action on your HVAC website. This could be receipts, password reset, or double opt-in emails (to confirm if they really want to receive emails from you).

Sample template of a transactional email:

[Source]

Best practices when sending transactional emails

• avoid using no-reply addresses
• add links to your social media pages
• make sure that you set triggers whenever a user performs an action on your website (e.g. sign up for your monthly newsletter, book an appointment, after sending payment, etc.)

5. Re-engagement emails

Re-engagement emails are usually sent to subscribers who are no longer engaging with the emails from your HVAC company. Possible reasons why this happens could be because you’re sending too many emails, your emails are no longer relevant to the subscriber, or their inbox is full of messages from other brands.

Sample template of a re-engagement email:

[Source]

Tips on how to win back those inactive subscribers

• segment your email recipients
• offer discounts to inactive subscribers
• use emotional trigger words
• add FOMO (fear of missing out) in your email

6. Review request emails

You can also use emails to gather reviews from your previous customers. If you have customers who chose email as their preferred mode of communication with your HVAC company, you can use this platform to ask for feedback.

Like in this example:

[Source]

Best practices when creating review request emails

• send review request emails at the right time
• make the steps easy to follow
• provide a link to your review site
• make sure that the link to your review site is accurate and working

Looking for ways how to effectively gather reviews from your previous customers? Check out our blog on How To Get Reviews for HVAC Companies to learn more.

Email Marketing Best Practices

Now that you have an idea about the types of emails you can send to your customers and subscribers, here are a few things you have to keep in mind:

1. Never buy an email list

Organically growing your HVAC company’s email list is much better than buying an email list from mailing list providers that you have no idea of how they acquired the email addresses that they sent you. Aside from that, gathering emails in the right way gives you an assurance that your subscribers are genuinely interested in your HVAC services. This means that there are higher chances of turning them into your actual customers!

That’s why as much as possible, you’ll want to avoid buying such a list because it will result in lower open rates and worse, it might damage your reputation as an HVAC contractor.

Since the list of emails that will be sent to you didn’t actually opt-in to receive monthly emails from your HVAC company and most of them are probably old email addresses that are no longer active or invalid when you start analyzing the performance of your email marketing campaign, you’ll see poor performance and that’s mainly because you are not targeting the right audience in the first place.

Not only that, but it will also damage your reputation. In email marketing, your deliverability rate matters. If you choose to purchase an email list it is likely that most emails that you send will be marked as spam and this can be perceived as an invasion of their inbox which will result in ignored emails.

2. Personalize your emails

It is important to personalize every email that you send to your subscribers because it makes them feel that the message is tailored just for them. In fact, personalized emails can improve your open rates by 26%. Some ways how you can personalize your emails are by mentioning the name of your email recipients in the subject line or on your email’s body, sending relevant content based on their location, as well as the previous services they booked from your HVAC company.

Another reason why you should consider adding a personal touch to your emails is that it drives engagement. Sending emails to the right people at the right time increases the chances of them taking an action based on the emails they got from you. You just have to find out the best time to send emails.

3. Regularly clean your email list

You should also make it a habit to check your email list. This way, you get to improve your deliverability, remove the ones who are no longer interested and retain only your active subscribers.

Here are the steps on how to clean your email list:

1. Find out inactive and disengaged users from your mailing list
2. Analyze the possible reasons why they are no longer engaging with your emails
3. Remove the email addresses of subscribers that mark your emails as spam
4. Try sending a re-engagement email campaign to these users. If they still haven’t done any action toward it, start removing them from your list.

4. Don’t forget to use call-to-action

Call-to-actions guide users on what they should do next after reading your mail. It could be in the form of buttons or hyperlinks. The recommended number of CTA you should add to your mail should be between 1-3.

Tips when using CTAs on your email marketing campaigns:

• It should create a sense of urgency 
  • Adding time-based words to your call to action encourages your email recipients to act quickly. To boost your conversion rates, you can use words like “hurry”, “now”, “today only”, or “last chance.”
• Use the reader’s personal point of view (POV)
  • According to a study, using the reader’s pov has a 90% chance of getting better conversion rates. So, instead of using “you” or “your”, try using “I” or “my” to see the best results.
• Use powerful action words 
  • Another element that should be in your call to action is the use of action words. Define the action that you want your audience to do next after reading your mail. For example, “Book an appointment”, “See offers”, or “Learn more.”
• If you’re using buttons, make sure it’s visible
  • When designing your call-to-action buttons, here are some tips on how to make your CTA stand out in your emails: (1) There should be enough white space around your call-to-action buttons, (2) Apply a hover effect to inform your email recipients with clickable elements on your mail, (3) For better user experience, use adequate color contrast (it should match the theme used on your email.

5. Write compelling subject lines

An email subject line is the first thing that your email recipients see as they receive your HVAC emails. To make sure it gets opened and doesn’t go straight to trash, make sure that it’s optimized for your target audience.

Tips on writing effective subject lines:

• Create catchy subject lines (hook them with your subject line)
  • You can start your subject lines with a question that is helpful in igniting curiosity in your email recipients.
• Keep it short but specific
  • Shorter subject lines tend to have higher open rates. If you can keep your character count low as possible but full of impact (let’s say 41 characters or less), keep it that way.
• Add a sense of urgency
  • Another factor that can help you get more open rates is by adding a sense of urgency in your subject lines. Adding time-sensitive phrases always works because it pushes your email recipients to take an action and if they leave it as it is, they’re bound to feel the fear of missing out (FOMO). So, if you want to increase your email marketing campaign’s open rates, make sure to add urgent language in your subject lines.
• Use emojis
  • You can also use emojis on your subject lines if you want to emphasize an idea. Just remember not to use too many of these as they may trigger spam filters.

6. Optimize for mobile devices

When it comes to the device that people mostly use to read emails, 81% use smartphones. With that, you have to make sure that your emails are viewed the same way as those viewed on other devices.

For example, since the screen display of desktop users is bigger than mobile users, you have to keep in mind the length of your subject lines. It shouldn’t appear cropped or else your email recipients will not get the gist of what your email is all about.

What does a mobile-optimized email mean?

• the design of your email fits exactly on smartphones
• font size is not too small or not too big
• the email looks good whether in portrait or landscape view
• use of touch-friendly call-to-action buttons
• compressed image file sizes

Need help optimizing your HVAC web pages?

Let Us Help!

How to create successful email marketing campaigns

In this section, we’ll walk you through the steps on how to start creating your email marketing campaign.

1. Build your email marketing list

The first step is by building your email list. There are lots of ways how you can gather the email addresses of individuals who are interested in the services you provide. It could be in the form of exit pop-ups, sign-up buttons on social media platforms, or opt-in forms on your website like the example below:

Just remember these three factors as you build your email list (1) Quality, (2) Relevance and (3) Quantity.

(1) Quality – The emails that you’ll be sending your promotional campaigns should be from real people, not spam accounts.

(2) Relevance – It’s easier to convert individuals who are actually interested in your HVAC services than those who aren’t. That’s why when building your list, make sure it’s from your target audience.

(3) Quantity – You can start expanding your email list after you gather the email addresses of individuals who have the potential of turning into your actual customers.

2. Set your goals

After gathering emails from your potential customers, the next thing to do is identify your goals. It’s important that you identify your goal before you start creating your email campaigns because it gives you a sense of direction and will make it easier for you to analyze results later. Here’s a list of goals for email marketing:

• boost your brand’s engagement
• re-engage with inactive customers
• educate subscribers
• improve engagement rate
• nurture relationships
• increase customer loyalty
• improve open rates

3. Start writing your email

After setting your email marketing goals, then you can start creating the emails you’re going to send to your subscribers. If you are not a pro when it comes to designing, there are tons of email templates that are available in Campaign Monitor.

4. Make sure to follow email regulations

 

If you’re using emails for your HVAC company, you should know about the CAN-SPAM Act. This is a law that sets limitations when it comes to sending commercial messages. To provide you with an overview of the CAN-SPAM Act, here are the things that you should be aware of when sending emails to your subscribers:

• Don’t use misleading headers
• Your subject lines should clearly state what the email is all about
• You should include your physical address in your emails
• Provide them with clear instructions on how they can opt out of your future emails

5. Run A/B tests on your subject lines

By testing out various types of subject lines for your HVAC email campaigns, you get to have a better understanding of which works best for you and which ones don’t. Just remember to test one aspect at a time (e.g. length, emojis used, replacing one word, using other variations, etc. ), this way, you’ll know which has better performance than the other.

Want to check the effectiveness of your subject lines before sending your email campaigns? Try Ominsend’s Email Subject Line Tester. It’ll evaluate the length of your subject lines, wordings used, and scannability issues, and give you suggestions on subject lines that will give you improved open rates.

6. Keep track of results

Your task doesn’t end with sending your email campaigns. As you start analyzing the performance of your email marketing campaign, here are the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should be focusing on:

• Open rates
  • This key metric tells you the percentage of email recipients who opened your emails. The average email open rate varies depending on what industry your business belongs to but in the HVAC industry, it’s around 23%.
• Click-through rates (CTR)
  • This refers to the number of clicks on the links or call-to-action buttons you have attached to your emails got.
• Conversion rate
  • This refers to the percentage of individuals who have successfully performed an action from your emails (e.g. booked an appointment).
• Unsubscribe rate
  • This metric refers to the percentage of individuals who no longer want to hear from you.
• Return On Investment (ROI) 
  • This refers to the profit you gain from your email marketing campaigns.

Want to learn ways how to improve your performance in each metric? Check out this guide for more details.

Bonus tip: If you need help with your email marketing campaigns, you can use email automation software like Mailchimp, SendinBlue, or HubSpot. This will up your marketing strategy to the next level and at the same time, you get to have more time to do valuable tasks other than sending emails to your subscribers and customers.

Need help tracking the results of your HVAC email marketing campaigns?

Schedule A Free Strategy Session!

Things to consider when choosing an email service provider:

1. It should be easy to use
   • Since you will be working with your team as you manage your email marketing campaign, you have to make sure that the email service provider that you will be choosing is something that’s easy to navigate. This way, you and your team will become more productive and efficient in creating your email campaigns.
2. It should have tons of good reviews
   • The next thing that you should look at is the reputation of the email service provider. Do some research and read case studies (if you can find one) to see if the one you’ll be choosing has already helped lots of businesses in their email marketing campaigns.
3. It should prevent your data from a security breach
   • Go for an email service provider that gives you an assurance that your data will be protected from any breach in security. You don’t want to put your HVAC company’s reputation at risk.
4. It should have a good customer support
   • There will be instances where you’ll experience difficulties navigating email marketing software. Because of that, you’ll want to check if they provide 24/7 customer service or have guides or documentation that can help you resolve a problem instantly.
5. It should be cost-efficient
   • Lastly, when looking for an email service provider for your HVAC business, you should also consider its cost. You have to make sure that you’ll be using email marketing software that has all of the features that you need and meets your budget.

Want to know how you can start running HVAC ads on Google? Check out our blog on Google Ads for HVAC Companies to learn more.

Don’t have time to run ad campaigns for your HVAC company?

Get On A Call With Us!

Key takeaway

Email marketing is still considered one of the most effective marketing strategies that businesses use in today’s time. You just have to be creative and use various strategies (which we’ve mentioned earlier) to stay on top of the minds of your target audience.