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Opportunities & Pitfalls in Home Services Marketing (with Phil Risher)

More Perfect Marketing · 2025-03-17 · 34 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

50 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density11 / 20
Originality8 / 20
Guest Caliber11 / 20
Specificity & Evidence13 / 20
Conversational Craft7 / 20

Home services businesses - roofers, electricians, plumbers, HVAC contractors - often respond to slow periods by demanding more leads, when their real problem is lead management. Phil Risher, who spent years as director of business development at a $3 million home services company before becoming a consultant, walks through a concrete 10-step framework for filling schedules faster. The core thesis: you've already paid for your database of past customers and prospects; reactivate them first through email promos and nostalgia (Dean Jackson's nine-word email approach: "Are you still looking for help with [X]?"). Second, stop trusting ad platforms' metrics - pull ROAS data directly from your CRM (Service Titan, HubSpot, Go High Level, Jobber, House Call Pro) to see which channels actually convert to revenue, not just leads. Risher shares a case study of an electrical contractor who spent $4,000 on Google Local Service Ads and generated $60,000 in closed deals (10X ROAS), but $4,000 on search ads yielded zero closures. The conversation also covers lead nurture sequences - capturing email and phone during initial inquiry, then sending a pricing guide, follow-up texts and emails over 7-9 days with value-adds like blog posts and testimonials, ending with a humorous "are you moving forward?" email. Personal touches like owner video messages, monthly email newsletters highlighting community work and staff spotlights, and cross-selling other services cement local brand loyalty in ways national competitors cannot replicate.

Key takeaways

  • →Most home services businesses have a lead management problem, not a lead generation problem - reactivate your existing database through email promotions and follow-ups before spending more on ads.
  • →Track return on ad spend by channel directly in your CRM to identify which marketing sources actually close jobs and generate revenue, not just lead volume.
  • →Build automated lead nurture sequences (email, SMS, video) over 7-9 days that deliver value before asking for the sale, with a humorous final check-in email to prompt a yes-or-no decision.
  • →Use personal touches - owner video messages, monthly newsletters featuring staff and community stories, cross-selling of related services - to reinforce your local brand and prevent customers thinking you only do one thing.
  • →Email is your owned channel with 100% deliverability to your list, unlike social media; use it monthly to build community relationships and brand awareness beyond transactional "$30 off" promotions.

Guests

Phil Risher

Topics in this episode

HubSpotGo High LevelJobberService TitanGoogle Local Service AdsHouse Call ProChirpGoogle Search Ads (PPC)Dean Jackson nine-word emailLead nurture sequences

Questions this episode answers

What should a home services business do first when the phones stop ringing?

Start by sending an email or text to your existing database of past customers and prospects offering a time-limited promotion (e.g., "Schedule now, get $10 off"), then follow up by calling warm responders to offer neighborhood specials. This reactivates leads you've already paid for instead of chasing new ones.

How do I know if my Google Ads spending is actually working?

Pull a new customer report from your CRM that shows the lead channel, customer acquisition cost, and actual closed revenue by source. A contractor spending $4,000 on Google Local Service Ads but $0 on search ads is a sign to shift budget to what converts, not to spend more overall.

What is a lead nurture sequence in home services?

After capturing a prospect's email and phone (via form fill or call), send a value-add over 7-9 days: day 1 a pricing guide, day 3 a follow-up check-in, day 5 a blog post or video, day 7 a customer testimonial, and a final humorous "are you moving forward?" email prompting a yes, no, or referral.

How can a local home services business stand out from bigger national competitors?

Record short owner videos for your nurture sequences, send a monthly email newsletter featuring staff stories and community spotlights (not just discounts), and cross-sell related services to remind customers of your full range - things national PE-backed companies won't personalize for your local market.

What CRM tools work best for home services lead management?

Service Titan, Jobber, House Call Pro, and Budget are good for dispatch and job management, but they lack lead nurture structure; layer in Go High Level, HubSpot, or Chirp as your lead management system before converting to the main CRM.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

11 / 20

The episode delivers a handful of genuinely actionable tactics - shoulder-season text blasts, lead nurture sequencing with explicit timing, and the 7-part email framework - but they are buried in a lot of host summarising, affirmation, and filler. The ideas are useful but spread thinly over 34 minutes.

a lot of times people don't have a lead problem. They have a lead management problem.
we build up a war chest of all of our contacts for the shoulder season january february march that's when we do these text blasts we don't need them in the summer we don't need them when we're busy

Originality

8 / 20

Most advice is standard digital-marketing doctrine (track ROAS by channel, nurture unconverted leads, own your email list) adapted for a home-services audience. The Dean Jackson nine-word email reference, cross-sell newsletters, and video-in-nurture are well-circulated ideas; the shoulder-season text-blast framing is the freshest angle.

most companies, they're praying to the Google gods for search ads, SEO, traditional digital marketing things
Well, they're not doing it because they've been bought by PE and now they don't care about home service, local service business, being a local guy

Guest Caliber

11 / 20

Phil Risher is a genuine practitioner - former director of business development at a $3M home-services company turned niche marketing consultant - giving him real, relevant credibility. However, his scale is modest and he is not a well-known operator who has built or scaled a large business himself.

I was home. I was a director of business development at a $3 million home service business.
we work with home service businesses typically 1 to 10 million revenue is our sweet spot

Specificity & Evidence

13 / 20

The episode has several concrete data points - a real client example with exact spend and revenue figures across two Google channels, a $20,000 closed deal from one email, and open-rate benchmarks - which lift the score meaningfully. Some claims (e.g. '95% text open rates') are stated without sourcing.

on the Google local service ads, he spent $4,000 and he generated $60,000 in actual closed deals. So over 10X return on ad spend. He also generated $125,000 in potential quotes.
that turned into twenty thousand dollar estimate that then they closed that estimate just from that email

Conversational Craft

7 / 20

The host asks reasonable follow-up questions (profitability vs. acquisition cost, what happens after the pricing guide is sent) but rarely challenges a claim and frequently restates what Phil just said rather than probing deeper. The interview leans heavily promotional toward the guest's YouTube channel and consulting service.

I like what you said about the difference between these two lead sources from the same vendor, right?
I love this idea of just re-engaging people who are prospects

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Most-used words

email38marketing22home20text19service18customer17leads17send17call15lead15google14estimate14businesses13usually13services12spend12

Episode notes

In the home services industry, success isn;t measured by racking up leads... it's about building solid, long-lasting customer connections through smart marketing. Many businesses in this space chase after new leads while overlooking a goldmine of potential in the relationships they already have. In this episode we're chatting about how these businesses can shift their focus to not just ring the phone, but also keep it ringing with the right strategies. Our guest, Phil Risher, has been in the digital marketing trenches, especially for home services. Since 2019, he’s been helping businesses step up their marketing game, focusing on tactics that are all about long-term success. Phil is the owner of Phlash Consulting which helps local service businesses increase their sales and keep their schedules full through data-driven digital marketing consulting. After helping a 20-year-old $3M service business scale to $5M in 24 months and sell to private equity, Phil took that blueprint and now helps other home service businesses grow. Phil’s efforts in technology and small business have been featured on Jobber's Masters of Home Service, Forbes, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, The Wall Street.

Full transcript

34 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

You're listening to More Perfect Marketing, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs always on the lookout for smart marketing ideas to keep their business moving forward. And now, here's your host, David Baer. Well, hello and welcome to another episode of More Perfect Marketing. It's David Baer here.

And today, we're going to be talking about the trades. Well, okay, we're going to be talking about home services and we're going to be talking a little bit about how do we market in that world more specifically. So in order to really get into this conversation, I want to share a story of, it's an aggregated story. It's a story that I have encountered many, many times with businesses in the home services world.

And so when I say home services, I'm talking about roofers or painters or electricians or plumbers, etc. And these are businesses that typically serve a local audience, right, because they are physically coming to your home for residential services. Some of them also do commercial services, but they are looking for customers to call them up, book an appointment, get an assessment of the customer's needs, and then do the work, right? That's the typical process.

Well, many of these guys have a fabulous business until they don't. And this is particularly happening quite a bit right now where there was an upsurge in activity on residential services during and immediately after the pandemic. So these businesses scaled up, maybe they started hiring more employees, and suddenly things started changing again for them and their new normal became abnormal. Well, I'm so happy to have somebody who knows this world inside and out as my guest today.

Phil Risher is joining me from the DC metro area, if I remember correctly. And he comes from this world. He actually has been a digital marketer, worked in the duct cleaning world, doing business development for a company, and since 2019 has been serving home services businesses as a marketing consultant. And I got to tell you, just watching his YouTube channel, I'm blown away with the kind of stuff that he's bringing to these businesses.

And even if you're not in the home services industry, there's a lot of gold there. And we'll make sure to link to that as well. Hey, Phil, thanks so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me.

I'm excited to talk about home service, which is near and dear to my heart, and marketing, which are both things I love. So it's going to be a great conversation. Cool. I saw you nodding a lot as I was going through sort of that scenario, that aggregated situation that a lot of businesses find themselves in.

Can you expand on what I've shared so far? Like, what are you seeing out there? Yeah. So I was home.

I was a director of business development at a $3 million home service business. And, you know, when you're running a business trying to grow, you're looking at your schedule and you're looking at my trucks. You know, my routes are not full. So what do I need to do to get full routes?

and how do I keep the routes full so that I can get more technicians on the road and grow my business? This is logically what people are thinking. And then they say, okay, well, I just need more leads, more leads, more jobs, more technicians, more money. It's basically what they're thinking.

And they're not wrong, but a lot of times it's very reactive, right? You're looking at your schedule the next day, trying to optimize your routes. And then you're like, oh, this whole route's not even filled up. So what do I do?

Oh my gosh, the phones aren't ringing. I don't have enough leads. And that's very reactive approach when it comes to marketing. So that's exactly what you explained.

And a lot of times people don't have a lead problem. They have a lead management problem. And they also are focused more on just new customers coming in when there's other buckets in marketing that they need to fill, like remarketing to their past customers, optimizing their lead management process inside of the conversion funnel, which are some things that we can talk about. So I said to you before we hit record, you know, there's often a question that we get of, I need the phone to ring right now.

And you said, oh, well, that's great. Let's talk about our 10 steps or our 10 activities that we do. And so I want to understand, like you've already dropped a couple of ideas about having a structure, a system in place, and maybe putting some of your focus in a place that's not obvious to the business, like getting back in touch with past customers or getting in touch with people. When you said remarketing people who might have visited a website and then moved on.

And so you're reminding them through ads that pop up in front of them that you still exist and maybe they still need the thing that you that you can help them with. So why don't you talk a little bit about how you approach this and what are the things that businesses should be looking at? How do they get out of this rut of the, I need more leads, make the phone ring, make the forms get filled on the website? Yeah.

So most companies, they're praying to the Google gods for search ads, SEO, traditional digital marketing things, which of course you should do them and you should be executing on them. there's a layer to that which is when they go to your website are they actually converting into a lead or not and that's something that someone needs to look at from call to actions but let's just talk about you're slow you need the phone to ring you can go to google and pray for some more leads but that's not always going to be a quick fix so the first thing that we always recommend is you need to have a database with all of your customers and prospects usually it's going to be inside of your crm service titan house call pro jobber a budget whatever that looks like inside there you should have all of the people that's ever reached out to you before all your leads all your prospects all your customers so the first thing you can do is literally just send out an email to every single person and offer them something like hey schedule now get ten dollars off whatever service ten slots available send that out to every single person and then people are going to respond and say yep sign me up inside of that email you can just say yes you know say yes reply yes to get on the schedule get an estimate so that's usually the first thing is take your your database and just reach out to them.

Then everyone that opens that email. Now you have a warm list of people that you can call them. You don't want to be creepy, but you can say, Hey, we're going to be in your neighborhood tomorrow. We have this promo going on for $30 off X, Y, and Z or whatever that sounds like.

Did you want us to stop by and take care of this service for you? So those are two of the strategies that I mentioned in these 10, that is a way to use your database and leads that you already paid for to then fill your schedules going ahead. And I'll give you one other one that is very common is people are like, oh, my phones are not ringing right now. I'm slow.

Well, what about the last 30 days? Have your phones not been ringing for the last 30 days? Yes, they have. Go back to all those leads, those people that called you, those forms that filled out and say, hey, were you able to solve this problem?

Were you able to get this outlet fixed at your home? Were you able to get the siding replaced on the side of your house? If not, well, let's have the conversation. What's stopping you?

Is it price? Is it timing? How can solve that because we have people ready to go for you tomorrow i love this idea of just re-engaging people who are prospects there's um you may know this um uh you know looking at some of the uh the folks you follow uh tend to be a lot of the same folks i follow so you may be familiar with dean jackson and his famous nine word email and so you know what you've just described is is exactly that maybe maybe i'll let i'll let you fill in the the blanks from what i just said there because i I saw you nodding saying, yo, I know the nine word email.

I don't know the nine word email, but I know Dean Jackson and I know email marketing is very effective and a lot of people think it's dead. Yeah. So, I mean, Dean's approach is simply to send out a nine-ish word email. Are you still looking for help with fill in the blank?

Yeah. And it is such an obvious and logical question to ask. But as you just said, most businesses don't think of that. We're always looking for where's the new thing or where's the new opportunity rather than revisiting the ones that we've already paid for.

And so that's a great point that you've made. That's right. And another really big one that we see in home service is they're going back to the Google gods and they're running search ads, Google local service ads, Yelp, Facebook, whatever. But the big issue is that they don have return on ad spend data So every single month they should be getting return on ad spend data out of their CRM So whatever leads go in they should know what coming from that And a big focus for me when I was in the home service business was we were working with these cookie cutter digital marketing companies.

And I'm like, okay, we got this many conversions from Google ads, but who are these people? Who are these leads? Then I would go into the CRM and say, okay, well, how do I know if these people converted into actual revenue and know if it's actually working? And most traditional digital marketing companies are not getting into the client's CRM, pulling the data, they're relying on them to do it.

And so one of the big things to do is if you have this return on ad spend data, you'll know, just spend more money on this and don't spend money on this. So we had an electrical contractor. This was actually last month. He was running both Google local service ads, which is Google guaranteed thing.

And then Google search ads, which are traditional PPC and on the Google local service ads, he spent $4,000 and he generated $60,000 in actual closed deals. So over 10X return on ad spend. He also generated $125,000 in potential quotes. Like he obliterated, crushed it.

In his search ads, he spent $4,000 and generated $25,000 in potential revenue. And he closed $0. We're like, dude, first off, take the money from your search ads, spend it over here. Second, you need to have an estimate nurture sequence inside of your conversion funnel to close more than 50% of these people and follow up with them.

That's more performance marketing. and that's something that people should be doing. But a lot of times they don't have the data so they don't know what they should be spending on and they just feel like spend more money on ads is the fix. When it's not, it's spend more money on ads that are working.

So I like what you said about the difference between these two lead sources from the same vendor, right? Both from Google, but they are resulting in some very, very different outcomes. And the fact that you're looking at not just what was spent in the aggregate of Google, but you're breaking it down between the two. And then looking at the value that's coming out of each of those channels is really, really important for folks to hear.

I'd add one additional thing, and maybe you can speak to how you address this piece. There's the cost of the lead itself, right? What are you paying on the ad spend, right? And then there's the cost of acquisition of the customer.

And so what additional costs are there? And then there's one additional thing that we have to look at, which is the profitability of the job. So how do you work those things into the equation? Yeah, exactly.

So we have several reports that we pull inside of client CRMs. And one of them is the new customer report. The new customer report will show you how many new customers that you had added to your CRM on every single month. And it will show you the lead channel, whatever CRM you it will show you the lead channel and the new customer.

So if you were to just zoom out and say, I'm spending $10,000 on marketing and I got a hundred new customers, you would know what your customer acquisition cost is just holistically. Then you could drill down by the actual marketing channel and then you would know what's producing your actual customer acquisition cost, which will create a flywheel in your business because then you know what you need to spend on to get more leads. So that's usually how we would figure that number out.

And with some CRMs like Service Titan, for example, it's like the bigger player, it's much easier to get these numbers because everything flows all the way through to the end and you get a campaign summary report all rolled up. But other ones, you kind of have to figure it out yourself. And that's kind of how we layer in with businesses is like figure it out or use the CRM to the full extent. So I think you've brought up something kind of interesting in there and it looks like you've frozen at my end, but hopefully you're still with me.

Yes. Okay. You are still with me. me.

You brought up the different tools, the different CRM tools that exist there. And you mentioned a couple that have varying degrees of usefulness in the way that they report. And I think one of the things that home services businesses are much better off than a lot of other industries with these industry-specific tools, CRMs that we've been talking about. But I will say that there are limitations to these tools compared to best in class sort of CRMs, marketing automation tools that exist for non-industry specific things.

And so when you get locked into a tool like this, knowing that there's more that you can put into the metrics that you're thinking through, right? Don't just rely on what the tool gives you. And so Phil, you know, the point that you've made about being able to add additional value on top of what they have through the work that you're doing with clients is really, really important to understand that there's more that's possible than what the tool can give you. Yeah, that's right.

And I'll be completely honest with you that most of these CRMs are client relationship managers, which means when you enter someone into this database, it's they've turned into a client and they're using them more as dispatch. So that way you can send out technicians and manage the jobs. Where people fall short is that lead management structure. They need somewhere that the leads go into.

So when they convert, then they put them into their CRM because most of these CRMs don't have a lead management structure in place. So they're using tools like Go High Level, HubSpot, Chirp, external tools that are lead management things that then they would convert them into their actual CRM tool. and that's where people miss the mark is because they don't have a lead management plan. They don't have any automations managing their leads and they're trying to use Jobber Housecall Pro Service Titan to do that.

Love it. And apparently your Apple computer loved it too because it gave you the big thumbs up while you were talking there. Yeah, I think that understanding those activities to be able to move somebody along in the sales process are important. A few minutes ago, you mentioned this lead nurture concept.

And I wonder if you can take a couple of minutes to sort of talk about what that has the opportunity to look like. Because as I said earlier, a lot of people might just be looking around for a problem that really isn't critical, but they might want to address. and that's somebody who isn't going to necessarily buy today, but may buy in a couple of weeks or a couple of months or a year from now. That's right.

So most companies, they get a call and there's two different calls that they get. One is, I have no heat, I have no AC, and they're going to charge a dispatch fee to go out there. Exteriors, they're going to set up someone to come onsite and do a sales pitch consultation of some sort. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, they're usually going to send someone out in a dispatch fee to come solve the problem.

That's the first call that usually people get usually the booking rates are going to be much higher on those because there's you don't have to pay anything or there's no estimate given the other one which is like duck cleaning which is what i worked at was everyone's like how much is it going to cost to get my ducks cleaned and when can you do it are the questions so regardless of which ones that you have you need to have some type of a way to capture their email address and to start the nurture sequence when you don't book the job so kind of what you're mentioning about is this lead management plan so I'll give you an example.

Someone calls in and says, how much does it cost to get my air ducts cleaned? It's like, well, don't just say, you know, it's 500 bucks. Ask them some qualifying questions and say, I'm going to send you an estimate. In order to send you an estimate, I need to put it into the system so I can email it to you.

So that way we have it on our records. In case you call in and speak to someone else, we have it on file and I'll email you a physical copy of it. Now you have the ability to start an email sequence with them. And also you could say, could text it over as well.

Now you have the ability to text them and communicate with the text follow-up sequence. The other side of it is, hey, you know, I need to set up an appointment, but just trying to get some pricing on what this might look like. No problem. We actually created an entire pricing guide for you.

Let me email it over to you and I'll shoot you a text just to make sure you got it. Does that sound good? Now you have the ability to nurture these leads and you don't miss those calls. Most people, they're paying for these calls and they just get one shot at it, like one shot and it's gone.

And so you need a way to make those leads worth every single dollar that you pay for and add them into your management plan. All right so you been talking a little bit about the capturing their contact information and that first step after the capture happens And we know that especially if we in business and we waiting for the OK well I sent them the thing When are they going to call back? Right. We're always sitting there waiting and we need to take more responsibility to sort of nudge them ahead.

But we have to do it delicately and we have to do it in a way that adds value and doesn't irritate them. so what happens after that initial let me send you the pricing guide yeah for sure so let's say that it's a call that's a good example on the website let someone fills out a form or does something on the website same thing we they need to get a text and an email right away asking them for pictures of the job additional information to start the conversation so let's say after you send them this value thing blah blah usually wait two days it depends if it's like i have no ac no heat, my roof collapsed, right?

Obviously don't wait two days. You want to, you want to hit them up like, Hey, get the solve. What's going on. What's going on.

But if it's a general inquiry, you wait two days. Hey, just checking in one to see if you had any follow-up questions. That could be a text or an email. Then another two days, Hey, just checking in or, or, you know, we're able to get this problem solved type of thing.

A lot of people are asking this question. We made this, you know, blog post about this or this video answering this question. You're kind of walking them through this thing after, you know, four, six, seven, eight, nine days. It's like, Hey, check out a customer testimonial about this specific service.

You're adding value, but in a way that's also talking to them about your company. And usually at the end of this sequence, you want to be like, Hey, a couple of things that aren't going to happen here. You're either, you know, found someone else, which is okay. Just let me know.

Two, you don't really know. And you kind of push this product out or three, you fall in. and you can't get up and I need to call 911 for you or something like that. Basically, you try to get to an endpoint of a yes or a no and you have a nurture sequence in there for your leads.

That last email that you just sort of described there where there's a little bit of humor and I have seen that be so effective and there's a whole bunch of variations on that email but perhaps the most effective of all of the follow-up emails is that last one which is like, hey, are you gonna move forward? And because it puts a smile on their face in the formula that you've just described, it often gets the biggest response in that entire sequence. Yeah, that's right. At the end of the day, like people might know that it's automated.

They might even think it's AI. But the more that you can personalize whatever you're sending to them in like a really good example is we have a client who who after someone fills out a form on his website, he gets like 100 forms a month. after someone gets a form on his website, they get a video from him that he just recorded on YouTube. And it just says, here's a quick message from the owner.

We look forward to working with you. People watch it and it's like, hey, really look forward to working with you. Can't wait. And you could have one of those in every single step of your lead process from the owner.

Yeah. I love that idea. You mentioned email and then you said, and shoot you a quick text. Now you're incorporating video, which I think is another sort of touch point that is personal and or personable, I guess I should say.

And it gets a connection to the people behind the business name in a way that a lot of the competitors likely are not doing. Well, they're not doing it because they've been bought by PE and now they don't care about home service, local service business, being a local guy who grew up on this field playing football over here. My kids go to the same school as your kids. That's the story that people want to hear.

And even the icing on the cake is that as business owners, you can do this one time and record a one minute video, seven different times, take 30 minutes and record all these videos. And now you have this process that's so personable to build the relationship and the brand locally in your market and people don't do it. This I think is an important point that you've made because we're talking again about businesses that serve a local community and they have the the opportunity to reinforce the fact that they are local that they know the area that they're people who have been in that community and will continue to be part of that community how else do you reinforce that yeah a really big one is inside of the remarketing side of things i'm sure people have gone into a home or they talk to a past customer and the customer's like yeah you know i just got my bathroom remodeled and you're You're like, your bathroom, we do bathrooms too.

Why did you, you didn't call me? Oh, I thought you guys only do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So inside of your email newsletter that you should be sending out once a month, you wanna cross sell other services, but you also wanna highlight other things that you're doing in the community to build a relationship. You don't want it just to be that hard sales pitch of like get $30 off, you know, schedule tomorrow.

You can layer those in, but your newsletter should be telling the story about what you're doing in the community, maybe featuring a technician, maybe featuring a local story or customer testimonial. And that's really how you'll build a brand. The reason email is so good is because you could post something on social media and you get 10 people that see it or millions of people, who knows? But your email list is what you own and it's going to go out to 100% of your people are going to be able to see your email if they open it.

So that's a really great way to then cross sell and show the things that you'll be doing and stand out on a monthly basis. So you bring up this monthly newsletter concept and I have to say, I watched a bunch of your videos. And one of the ones that really, really resonated with me was the one where you talk about the $6.1 million email, the framework of that email.

And I don't know if you have this memorized. So I have it up on my screen to help us walk through this. But you had some very specific steps and some really great nuggets about the structure of the email and things to make sure that you include in the email that I think, you know, would be worth walking through. Yeah, that sounds good.

So yeah, we we've sent out millions of emails every single year for our clients. And we analyze the top emails that generate the most revenue. We had one client that generated a quarter of a million dollars off of his email. And we send out 12 emails one every single month.

And there's seven parts to this email that I'll share with you. Before we get to the seven parts it's very important most companies they're just I'm slow I'm gonna post something on social media and there's no cadence to what they're actually doing so what we recommend is having a monthly content theme or calendar and talk and knowing what your blog content your social media your email newsletter all should be about these things so it's cohesive in the messaging and also it's relevant to the time so like spring is coming so you should be doing this fall is coming winter is coming whatever you should be talking about every single month should be cohesive So the first thing is have some type of a theme for your monthly stuff.

The seven part framework is first, you got to have a subject line tester. So there's a subject line tester. If you go to Google, type in subject line tester, you'll find a bunch of them. We use one called OmniSend.

We're not affiliated, but basically it will score your subject line to give you the best opportunity to get an open. And our open rates are usually around 30, 40% open rates, which is good. Usually 20% is about average. The next step is when someone gets into your email, right below your logo, you want to have two call to actions.

One is a call now button. The other one is a request an estimate, schedule service, whatever that sounds like for your business. The reason is because this will act as an anchor on your email newsletter. People can come back here and take action.

The third one is you want to create some type of a blog post or a content piece about that theme. So let's say you're talking about getting a new generator for an electrician. You want a blog that is talking all about five reasons to get a new generator in Maryland or whatever your target area is. After that, you want to put in a frequently asked question.

Usually at this point, people are saying, hey, okay, that sounds great, but how much does a new generator cost? Or how long does it take to install? Or is it going to be affected by tariffs coming up? Or whatever this sounds like.

Whatever that frequently asked question is, you want to put that in. Right after that, you want a strong call to action for that. Get an estimate for a new generator here. So that's walking through those one, two, three, four steps.

The fifth step is having a customer testimonial. The customer testimonial is social proof at this point saying like hey if you don think it great you should because this is what it is right Here a customer that got their generator installed Then after that I kind of got my numbers mixed up. But anyways, after that, you have a call now and then a request estimate schedule service button. That's the basic walkthrough of what a newsletter would look like.

Well, if you did that off the top of your head, I'm very impressed because I was following along in the blog post and you got it almost right. You certainly got all the components. So congratulations on that. And yeah, I think it is a very, very smart setup for how you're communicating what you're communicating it, it taps into sort of the, the where the reader is where the consumer is in their mind, and it reinforces some of the things that they need to hear in order to have the beliefs to yes, or the confidence that they need to have to move forward.

And if you are consistent about this. And I think that was the point that I heard early on. You have a much better likelihood of not having that phone not ringing and not having those forums filled because you have a system of communicating with people who are likely to at some point need you in this 12 month cycle. That's right.

And I'll give you a quick story on this. We had a custom closet company that we where we work with they had never emailed their customer database ever 12 months prior to working with us they had a customer come in for a custom closet that they gave an estimate to but they went with someone else then we sent out an email all about building a home office custom home office with cabinetry and everything as the it's the first email we've ever sent out to all their customers get a custom home office the woman emailed back and said i didn't go with you with the custom closet and i wish i did because it was a terrible experience and i'm actually going to be building a home office here i want to get an estimate that turned into twenty thousand dollar estimate that then they closed that estimate just from that email and it wasn't even a customer of theirs they lost the job 12 months ago so this is the power of emailing the customers cross-selling services talking about what you do it works there's something to be said and and you know i i spend a lot of time in a lot of of different media, sometimes even involving things that are offline, like direct mail.

There's this belief among businesses that a lot of things like email or direct mail are dead, but in fact still continue to be some of the most powerful channels that we can use. And when we rely entirely on Google ads and meta ads or social posts, hoping that somebody actually sees it, right? That's when we fall into the trap of why is my business not getting, you know, inquiries. That's right.

And I'll give you the honey hole that most people are not doing that they should be doing, which is text marketing. So all these people are in your database, emails are great, but it gets a 20, 30, 40% open rate, maybe text gets 95% open rates. So you want to use this sparingly, maybe once or twice a year, but you will send a text that says, Hey, David, this is Phil with flash consulting. I'm going to be in your area next week, doing a carpet cleaning at one of your customers, your, your neighbor's homes.

Wanted to see if I could stop by and take care of yours. And since I don't have to pay for gas, I'll give you 20 bucks off. And you send this out to every single person in your database, or just segment out the cities that you want to target. And you could say the same thing.

I'm going to be in your neighborhood next week doing spring inspections or HVAC tune ups. Want to see if I can stop by and take care of yours as well, since I'm going to be right around the corner. And now you send this out to thousands of people and imagine the flood of texts that you get back. Very important piece here though, you want to make sure that you use their name and your name.

It makes it way more personable and it seems real. If you just say, hey, this is Flash Consulting, we're doing this, it sounds like it's automated type of thing. Yep. So I want to just revisit one point that you made at the very beginning of that, which is do it a couple of times a year.

And, and I, you know, I think whenever somebody tries to sell me on the idea of text marketing in general, I think of all of the ways to communicate with me, that is the most invasive, right? That's the one that as the consumer, I feel like, you know, you're, you're intruding in my life, right? If you're calling me on the phone, and these days, We all have problems with our phone getting calls from bots and all kinds of nonsense. And then if you're texting me, these are invasive.

And so they're very effective, as you pointed out, but we want to use them as intelligently as we can. And so the reason why you make it personal using their names really helps reinforce the, oh, this feels like a real person communicating with me and I don't feel like I'm being bullied into or being bothered by too frequent texts. That's right. So usually the way this works is someone fills out a form on your website.

They get a text and an email acknowledging that they got it, starting the conversation. Maybe they text back, maybe not. Then you send them an estimate. you start the nurture sequence for estimate follow-up text and email that kind of stuff then they they're completing the job you send them a review request via text and email blah blah so you kind of have this text thread already there so then when you send them this text usually what we do we build up a war chest of all of our contacts for the shoulder season january february march that's when we do these text blasts we don't need them in the summer we don't need them when we're busy we wait and we hold all these people and then we hit them with those three months that everyone's slow because everyone's getting these my my phone's not ringing i'm not getting the leads i'm not doing this perfect we got thousands of people that we're going to text this offer to and we're going to fill our schedule i love it phil there are so many nuggets like this as i was just going through your videos i was like wow this guy's just got you know tons of this great material and fortunately you have all of those videos on your website along with all the services that you provide and where people can learn a little bit more about you why don't you tell them what that site is where they can find a little bit more about you and who you serve and what you do yeah sure flash consulting calm it's phlas h consulting we work with home service businesses typically 1 to 10 million revenue is our sweet spot we help them grow use technology automations Google Ads SEO all that kind of stuff and we do these free marketing audits you go to our website and do discuss your business and we'll go through and walk through a playbook that would help you grow your business as well.

And if you like content, we have it on our website or our YouTube channel. We do interviews and a bunch of other stuff. Excellent. Phil Risher from Flash, that's P-H-L-A-S-H, consulting.

Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, David.

Folks, you've been listening to more Perfect Marketing. If you know somebody who could benefit from listening to this conversation, and I'm pretty sure you do, send Marway. Until next time, I'm David Baer. Bye-bye.

You have been listening to more perfect marketing. Now you can put what you've learned here into practice when you join the free listener community at mpmcommunity.com. That's mpmcommunity.

com. When you join today, you'll receive David's collection of 26 smart marketing cheat sheets to help you master your marketing, plus additional business building training. So don't delay. Join us today at mpmcommunity.

com. We can't wait to welcome you. Thank you.

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