If you’ve been following us for a while, then you’re already aware how much we like recommending email marketing to HVAC businesses. We even included it in a previous HVAC internet marketing guide! Indeed, it can bring many benefits to your HVAC company (or any other businesses for that matter). Aside from being very affordable and easy to measure, it allows for targeted messaging. This will help you increase brand awareness, improve customer outreach, and encourage customer loyalty. So again if you want your HVAC business to reach new heights, HVAC email marketing is something you need to take seriously.
That being said, there are plenty of ways to make your HVAC email marketing campaigns more effective. The techniques below revolve around optimizing the email’s subject line and writing a great email, so check them out in case you want to try them later.
Phase 1: Optimize Your Subject Line
The success (or demise) of your HVAC email marketing campaigns will depend on how strong your subject line is. According to a SuperOffice article written by Steven MacDonald, up to 33% of people open emails based on its subject line. So before proceeding with writing the email’s body, better test your subject lines’ performance first.
12 Hacks to Optimize Your Subject Lines
There are quite a few ways to properly test an email’s subject line, including:
Pick the Right Letter Case
Whether you’re making a personal or a business email, you have to be a bit careful when capitalizing your email subjects. To give the subject line a more personal and casual tone, then use sentence cases (where only the first word is capitalized). But if you’re writing for business purposes, then choose title cases (where all the words are capitalized) since they have a more professional and formal tone.
Keep It Short
At the same time, you need to mind the subject line’s overall length. Subject lines need to grab your target audience’s attention as quickly as possible. By limiting it to 50 characters or less (the ideal is 17 to 24, including spaces), you’ll increase your emails’ open rates by 12% and your click-through rates by a whopping 75%. In other words, keep your subject lines as short and brief as you can.
Employ A/B Testing
Then there’s the word order in the subject line. By A/B testing your emails’ subject lines, you’ll significantly improve not only your emails’ open rates, but also many of the other metrics in your entire HVAC marketing campaign, leading to many wonderful things for your HVAC business.
Add a Sense of Urgency
Making your subject lines feel urgent will help grab your target recipients’ attention, triggering their sense of FOMO and getting them to perform valuable action (buy a product or service, etc) more quickly. Bear in mind that you should not give your subject lines an urgent tone all the time; there are situations where a more relaxed tone will get better results.
Use an Active Voice
To write killer email subject lines, you also need to stick with an active voice rather than a passive one. That is, the subject of the sentence must be the one performing the verb instead of the other way around. For example, look at the sentences below:
Sentence 1: Kelly loves Starbucks.
Sentence 2: Starbucks is loved by Kelly.
Both sentences are grammatically correct, but the first one uses an active voice while the other uses a passive one. As you can see, the former feels more compelling and concise.
Make It Witty
On top of it all, you also need to add wit to your email subject lines. Laughter is always a good thing. By getting your target audience to smile and smirk at your subject lines, you can considerably raise your click-through rates, as well as get more people to look at what your HVAC business has to offer.
Share Something Unique
One of the best ways to grab your audience’s attention is by giving some unique news. This can either be an online event you’re hosting, or a promo your HVAC business is currently offering.
Add Data and Numbers
You can also try adding numbers on your subject lines. Used properly, data and numbers can clearly demonstrate what your brand is all about, and it can set the right expectations. The most common way to use numbers in subject lines is when you want to refer to the title of your list articles. However, you can also use numbers in other situations, like when offering specific discounts, showcasing statistics, and many more.
Insert the Recipients’ Names and Locations
This involves the things you’ll actually include on your email subject lines. Try adding your recipients’ names and location in line. Doing so gives it a personal touch, making it feel more friendly. Great examples include:
- Amazing cinemas near you, Anne.
- Amazing restaurants in White Plains, Westchester.
Limit the Topic
You should also consider the number of topics to include on your email subject lines. Try sticking with only a single subject. That way, your recipients won’t be confused as to what your email is all about. Great examples include:
- Mix drinks contain more sugar than ever before.
- Keep mice off your HVAC system with these tips.
Make It Related to Your Industry
You should create email subjects based on your industry as well (in your case HVACs). That way, you’ll be able to focus on people who are actually interested in your industry in one way or another. Great examples include:
- One day left to avail our HVAC service promos
- Your air conditioner warranty is expiring soon
Add Some Emojis
Finally, add emojis to your subject lines. These special symbols have an uncanny way of building emotional connections with its audience, in ways mere words could not. By adding them to your subject lines, you’ll enable it to do the same. Great examples include:
- 🔥🔥🔥Exclusive deals on select HVAC services🔥🔥🔥
- 📢 Save Money By Choosing Our HVAC Brand📢
Write a Great Email
So now that you’ve finished sprucing up your subject lines, time to proceed with the main part of your HVAC email marketing campaign: writing the actual email itself. It takes strong (sometimes mad) copywriting skills to craft a killer email. But once you pull it off, it will reap numerous rewards for your HVAC business.
8 Hacks to Write Great Emails
As with creating the subject line, there are plenty of tricks that will help you create fantastic emails, including:
Avoid Generic Templates
There’s technically nothing wrong with relying on a template when writing emails. In fact, some templates out there can greatly aid you in getting your target audience’s attention. However, bear in mind that everybody else will probably have access to these templates. If your competitors end up using them, too, your emails will look and feel bland and unoriginal. So take the higher road, and create your emails from scratch. That way, you’ll offer something new and fresh to people, as well as make your HVAC email marketing campaigns unique.
Keep It Brief and Skimmable
Similar to the subject line, you must keep your email’s main body as short and concise as you can. Additionally, you should make your emails in such a way that readers can get the gist of it with just one glance. Here’s a list of guidelines to follow to accomplish all these:
- Keep the sentences under 20 words, and the paragraphs under three sentences.
- Get straight to the point, with every word and sentence in the email serving a clear purpose.
Put Your Readers First
Nobody likes it when someone talks too much about themselves, and the same goes for HVAC businesses. So when writing your emails, always put your readers’ interests first. That means helping to solve their problems, listing the benefits they could get by doing business with you as well as building a strong connection between product and consumer.
Offer Something Valuable
A great email won’t just settle with giving you something crappy or generic; it will strive to give you something that’s actually valuable. So if you want your target audience to take your emails seriously, then better make sure it’s offering something substantial. To that end, here are a few questions you should ask yourself before sending the email:
- Is the content really offering high-quality products or services? The quality of a product or service will always be a subjective issue. However, you could at least make sure you’re being truthful while writing the emails you’ll send on your marketing campaigns.
- Would I actually want what I’m selling? Put yourself in your readers shoes. If you read your own email, would you consider getting the HVAC product or service? Be honest.
- How can I make this email more valuable? Think about adding a few more things to your email. Perhaps a link to one of your articles? Or maybe a discount coupon for select HVAC products or services.
Show the Benefits, Not the Features
Focusing on the benefits instead of the features of your HVAC products and services is another surefire way to hook your target audience (not to mention it puts your readers first as suggested above). People generally buy products or avail a service because they like the benefits being promised. They won’t care if your HVAC system is cooler than others; they will if it helps keep their homes cooler. So as mentioned above, list the benefits your readers could get in your emails.
Develop a Unique Voice
By giving your emails a distinct voice, you’ll be able to make it stand out better, as well as provide readers with a consistent picture of your brand. So follow the steps below to establish, create, and maintain your HVAC brand’s own voice:
- Gather a few samples of your content, including videos, web pages, e-books, and blog articles. Group them together based on how the voice they exhibit feels.
- Describe the exhibited voices in three words. Invite your content creators (including your PR, sales, and customer service teams) to help you with this one.
- Create a voice chart that you can use as a reference tool. This will ensure your emails have a consistent voice.
- Understand how to put your brand’s voice into action. If you’re working with a team of email copywriters, then you have to help them learn this, too.
- Continually revisit and revise the voice chart as your HVAC business grows and evolves.
Insert Only One CTA
Calls to Action or CTAs have always been an essential part of any webpage. Without it, your readers won’t know what to do next, and you’ll lose the opportunity to get them to buy your HVAC products or services. So if you want your emails to properly direct your target audience, not to mention improve your brand’s conversion rates, you should give it a good CTA. And while you’re at it, make sure you add only one. That way, your readers won’t be confused as to which course of action to take first. Bear in mind that this bit of advice is to be taken with a grain of salt, as every consumer will react to your emails in their own unique way.
Add a PS Section
Last but not least, you should consider adding a postscript at the bottom of your emails. Acting like a sort of dessert in your emails, PS’s can bring several benefits. For one thing, you can use it to communicate an important thought that doesn’t fit with the main message. It also provides an opportunity to promote bonuses, or share some surplus values. But more importantly, it allows you to add a few links to your emails, which could prove helpful if you want to share new content and improve your SEO in one go.
Try These HVAC Email Marketing Hacks
Through the 20 HVAC email marketing tricks listed above, you’ll be able to optimize the emails you send your target audience, subject lines and all. So as you embark on an email marketing campaign for your HVAC business, don’t forget to keep these hacks in mind.
