Email Marketing

I was thinking about emailing them. I was woundering how it would work also like if it was a good idea or not.

******** said:

Has anyone had success with emailing to your local realtors, property managements companies, small Apartment complexes, etc. about your services?

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I have a couple realtors i work with and get lots of leads from them. The property managers and apartment complexes i kinda stay away from cause there is not much money to be made with them. To answer the question, no, i don't use e-mail as a marketing tool.

It gets caught in spam or they delete it or forget. I find sending a letter with your services and a card, followed by a phone call a week later works better.

The key to using e-mail marketing is get the possible clients to make sure your email address is in their approved list. I do have a few, but these are people who I have developed a working relationship with.

As Roadog suggested a letter, card and follow up with new folks seems to work well. I have targeted areas of my city that I want to focus, I send a post card about once every 6-8 weeks. It will usually take 3-6 mailing to begin to receive calls. I believe this is due to people want to make sure you are going to be around, and are not some over night company.

As far as realtors go, you can check with the local board of realtors. chances are you can join the board as a contractor. It's not that expensive, and once you do a job the word gets around. There's usually someone already there, but this is all about competition anyway.

Hi, my name is Lauren. This past week, I sent 6 emails out to Realtors and received 1 hit. I send a cover letter, a basic resume, referrals. I am going to try this for the next couple of weeks if not a month. I will let you know how it goes.

Hi Lauren

I wouldn't give up on that process too soon. In 2006 we began mailing to 60 realtors each month, and continued for about 18 months. We are now on a lot of their preferred vendor lists. It took some time, and numerous exposures, but it paid off.

Brian Phillips

I do a newsletter, that I drop off to the Realtors in my city (about 20 offices). The one-on-one contact is good. This has produced both some good referrals for people wanting/needing to paint before or after a sale, and some property management type accounts. Key is to get to know the office manager or property manager by name. Real estate offices often rotate sales people to the front desk, if you have a name to ask for you will have greater results.

My strangest oddest referrals comes from a dental office. My Dentist and partner dentist like my work..

Housepainter said:

I do a newsletter, that I drop off to the Realtors in my city.

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I've done a newsletter for about 10 years. I mail it to past customers, as well as anyone who got an estimate from me. The ROI is tremendous. We stay in front of our customers, and each year I get a fair amount of work from people who first hired the cheap guy and weren't happy.

We do our newsletter in house, but Retention Cental offers newsletters for painting contractors if you don't want to do it yourself.

Brian Phillips

Thats a nifty program. Enter the lead when it comes in and walaa mass marketing with the click of a mouse. Thanks Brian

It gives the option to enter email address. I wonder if theres a way to send out emails to clients and prospects who I enter into the database

welovepainting said:

It gives the option to enter email address. I wonder if theres a way to send out emails to clients and prospects who I enter into the database

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Not sure what data base program you are using, but generally if you can enter the email the program has a way to send email through its address book. Try doing a search in the programs help file for "email".

A second option is the use of programs like one called "Group Mail". There are also a couple of good autoresponders that would allow you to set up a email or newsletter series. If you are interested in autoresponder let me (pm me) know I have a couple of companies that I would recommend. You can also set up the names in your regular email program. I like one called IncrediMail. I like this as one due to the fact you can customize their premium system with your own logo design.