Email newsletters are one of the most effective, low-cost, high-ROI marketing channels for keeping your contracting business top of mind with existing customers and attracting new ones.
Email newsletters and email marketing campaigns can:
Help drive recurring business and referrals from existing customers (residential or commercial).
Nurture potential customers who reach out but don’t close immediately (for example, homeowners or property managers).
But creating effective contractor newsletters means not just blasting the same “winter is coming” message to your entire contact list every autumn. Instead, it means sending carefully crafted, relevant newsletters to specific audiences, for example:
Homeowners who have signed up to receive your newsletter via social media and are interested in seasonal tips, maintenance advice, and special offers.
General contractors interested in your recent success stories, for example, a before-and-after case study on an office remodel, or the latest news about your company expansion.
Using a generic email marketing platform (such as MailChimp or Constant Contact) can help you segment your target audience, automate email delivery, and track results.
But if you're a contractor in a specific industry (e.g., HVAC, plumbing, or electrical), using an email marketing tool — like the one we offer in ServiceTitan — can make a big difference. ServiceTitan integrates with your other business marketing activities (such as direct mail and Google Ads) and business operations (such as call booking and estimating). This means you can track the entire customer journey from one place — from email newsletter delivery to actual job bookings.
In this post, we’ll share 10 tips on how to create successful contractor e-newsletters. Then, we’ll explain how ServiceTitan can help you send personalized, hyper-targeted newsletters that you can track and analyze together with the rest of your marketing data. We’ll also provide 16 email campaign templates and newsletter topics that you can use to drive more business with existing customers and close deals with prospective ones.
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Email marketing, which includes e-newsletters, refers to sending emails to your existing customer base or anyone who has opted in to your list. It’s an extremely effective marketing channel for two main reasons.
It’s extremely low cost: There is minimal incremental cost to sending emails, and the monthly cost of most providers spread across every email you send to each customer is tiny (especially compared to ad channels like Google Ads, Yelp Ads, Angi, etc.). Email marketing typically brings in $40 of revenue for every dollar spent — that’s a whopping 4,000% potential return on your investment.
Marketing to people who already know you is more effective than trying to convert strangers: Existing customers, or subscribers who have opted in to receive emails from you, have already shown an interest in your business. They may buy again, or keep you top of mind for future projects, or recommend you when friends or contacts ask for a contractor referral.
When contractors fail to tap into the valuable resource of their existing customers and email subscribers with consistent, informative newsletters, they risk leaving money on the table through missed opportunities such as:
Unsold estimates that never receive follow-up
Big-ticket replacements of aging equipment that never happen
Repeat business from general contractors who have forgotten them
Referrals for new construction projects
And while customer relationship managers can nurture specific relationships with property managers, facility teams, and general contractors on a one-to-one basis, a contractor newsletter is a powerful additional way to maintain contact consistently that builds trust and keeps your business top of mind.
Here’s how to create and execute an effective contractor newsletter within your email marketing strategy.
10 Tips for Creating Successful Contractor Newsletters
Tip #1: Accurately Segment Your Audience
If you’re sending the same newsletter to your entire customer database, then you’re not following the golden rule of email marketing: sending the right message to the right audience at the right time. You also risk your newsletters being classed as spam.
For example, if your newsletter’s focus is on how to know when aging air conditioning equipment needs replacing, customers who have recently had new equipment installed won’t find this useful, so they should not be part of the intended audience.
When you segment your email list into specific groups, you can personalize your newsletter campaigns according to your customers’ needs. This means your customers receive the right kind of newsletter content, it reduces your email bounce rate, and your newsletters reach more people.
Take a look at your customer list and see how you can segment and target them with relevant messaging that resonates with their needs. For example, you can create different newsletters for homeowners and commercial customers, and a separate one for important general contractors who could offer you significant contractual work.
While generic email marketing services will allow you to segment audiences by, for example, ZIP code, they don’t have the breadth of customer data offered by operational software like ServiceTitan, such as whether a customer has an open estimate or whether they signed up for your newsletter via a specific Google Ads campaign.
Segmenting customers by these traits is powerful.
Audience Segmentation in ServiceTitan
With ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro you can “set and forget” audience lists and narrow down your customer lists into segments, such as:
Residential: Commercial:
ZIP code - Property type/s (retail, school, offices, etc.)
Age of homeowner - Number of properties
Has an open estimate - Number of previous projects
Age of equipment - Size of previous contracts
Membership status - Details of upcoming projects (e.g. apartment
Date of last service new build)
New homeowner
In addition, with ServiceTitan, you can choose from two audience filter options:
Static filters: Select a certain date or date range (for example, customers who called before May 7)
Dynamic filters: These can be set to continuously adapt to events, for example, to add people to your target audience every time a customer has a project over a certain financial value.
Marketing Pro will even score your target email marketing efforts (as “strong,” “medium” or “broad”) so you can further fine-tune your audience to achieve a better opening rate.
Segmenting and customizing audiences is seamless when all the necessary data is stored within the same software; there’s no need to waste time jumping between different tools or spreadsheets.
How ServiceTitan Halved the Time Spent on Email Campaigns
Robin Cody, director of marketing and business development for Cody & Sons Plumbing, Heating & Air, told us that Marketing Pro helped them halve the time spent on building email campaigns. Now it takes them only 30 minutes (or less) to set up a campaign instead of over an hour doing the same thing with different software.
“I just don’t have the time to look into our data, research, and start doing things like building audiences,” Cody says. “That’s what’s so great about ServiceTitan Marketing Pro. I can essentially use it as our customer relationship management software now. I can use and analyze our own data to target customers appropriately.”
Tip #2: Clean Your Newsletter Subscriber List
Clean your email lists regularly by removing inactive and unengaged email contacts who haven’t opened any of your emails in the past 18 months to two years.
This way, you’re communicating with customers who want to receive your emails, and they are less likely to be perceived as spam.
Additionally, stay legally compliant and allow recipients to opt out of future emails if they choose. Or, allow customers to update their email preferences to receive only your newsletters or messages about certain topics.
Tip #3: Set Expectations with Your Newsletter Recipients
When asking customers to subscribe to your email newsletter, tell them what they’re signing up for. Whether it’s seasonal homeowner tips, newsletter-only deals, or construction project case studies, let customers know what to expect.
You should also inform them how often they’ll receive your content. Then they won’t be surprised when they get your newsletter, and therefore less likely to delete it or unsubscribe.
Tip #4: Build Trust with Consistent Design & Branding
Are your newsletters professional looking, easy to read, and actionable? When your customers open your emails, will they think your company is experienced and reputable? Customer-service oriented? Take the time now to build trust with your customers by using professional newsletter templates that you can customize for your business.
When creating email newsletters specifically, it’s good to remember that less is more. Newsletters typically have more content than other types of marketing emails, so it’s essential to keep them clutter-free.
Some good basic guidelines:
Be consistent and use your logo and branding in the heading and body copy fonts
Increase readability by using white space to help highlight headings
Keep your newsletter content organized by using pre-made templates
ServiceTitan’s library of email templates has been developed by our in-house designers and copywriters, which means that you don’t need to spend additional money on outsourcing design work for your email newsletters. Simply add your branding elements and content to your selected template to make it your own.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on our support portal to walk you through the process.
You can also watch our YouTube video on how to build your brand using ServiceTitan's email templates.
Bonus tip: If you want to promote content that requires more space than your newsletter provides, add links that direct customers to a landing page or blog post on your website where they can read more. You’ll get a better email conversion rate and increased website traffic.
Tip #5: Craft Catchy Subject Lines
Your subject line and, to some extent, your preview headers (“preheaders”) will determine whether subscribers open your newsletter. You want to capture their attention and get them curious enough to open your email and find out more.
It might seem intuitive to include the word “newsletter.” However, email open rates decrease by nearly 19% when “newsletter” is in the subject line.
Instead, here are some tips to create subject lines that drive higher open rates:
Avoid spam triggers — including words like “Free,” using all caps, and using multiple exclamation points or dollar symbols.
Create urgency by adding a deadline like “New equipment install special ends tomorrow!”
Ask a question: “Embarrassed by your bathroom? Call for a bathroom remodel estimate.”
Add a number: “Top 5 ways to improve energy efficiency in your property.”
Keep it short. Remember, many subscribers will be reading your email on their mobile phones (more on this below), so keep subject line length in mind. Move the most important information to the beginning of your subject line so it doesn’t get lost.
Read our full article on how to write successful email subject lines here.
Tip #6: Create Newsletter Content That’s Engaging and Relevant
When choosing what to include in your email newsletter, educational and locally focused content works well, as it provides value beyond just a sales pitch. You can include promotions, such as a newsletter-only coupon, but don’t let that take up too much of the newsletter’s real estate.
Locally focused content about your community and nearby properties is ideal for email newsletters, as customers tend to find it more relevant. For example, did your business make a “Best-of” list in your local newspaper this year? Is there a weather event affecting the community? Sharing this type of local content helps you connect with your customers.
As we discussed in Tip #1, keep your audience in mind. Commercial customers and general contractors will find different content valuable than homeowners.
Consistent, informative content builds trust and authority with your customers. Some ideas you can try are:
For Homeowners:
Chimney fire prevention tips for fall/winter
Preparing your HVAC system for cold/flu season
How weather extremes affect your garage door
For Commercial Customers and/or General Contractors:
Case studies of your recent work on a construction job
Before and after photos of commercial projects
Company accolades and relevant team news (e.g. Meet our new Commercial Project Manager)
Don’t be afraid to have a little fun with your newsletters. A sense of humor goes a long way in generating positive customer sentiment. Memes, dad jokes, or funny pet photos—get creative with these, so you keep your subscribers engaged!
For more ideas, see our email newsletter campaign section below.
Bonus tip: Always include a call to action (CTA) with clear instructions about what you want customers to do next, for example, “Call us today to book your free estimate” or “Call John Doe to discuss your construction project.” And don’t forget to include an unsubscribe button on every email so customers have the choice to opt out if they don’t want to hear from you.
The #1 newsletter for the trades.
Optimizing your email newsletters for mobile gives your audience reach a serious boost. Almost half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, with another 42.3% of people saying they delete emails that aren’t mobile-friendly.
Most email services will optimize for mobile automatically. Here’s how you make an email newsletter mobile-friendly:
Keep email subject lines short, and include preheader text
Make your body copy clear and concise
Avoid padding your newsletter with too many images
You can also use mobile-responsive newsletter templates (like ServiceTitan’s) that look great on any device, which saves you a lot of time and effort. Just be sure to test your newsletters on different devices first, so you can see what your customers might see when they open them.
It’s important to never miss an opportunity to make a sale or engage with your customers. You should already be following up on all your open estimates, sending thank-you emails after a job is complete, and sending emails to your customers whose memberships are about to expire, reminding them to renew. Sending a regular newsletter is another email campaign to include in your marketing efforts.
Without software to help, manually finding this data is a laborious process. And with a generic email marketing tool, it’s not much easier. With ServiceTitan, because your email marketing is linked to your other marketing activities, your operational business processes (call booking, scheduling, billing), and your entire CRM, you always have an up-to-date picture of the status of each customer so you can trigger the next appropriate actions, such as delivering specific newsletters.
Automating your newsletters and all your other email marketing campaigns lets you:
Send hundreds of emails automatically
Send perfectly timed newsletters
Personalize your emails and newsletters so people receive emails that are relevant to them
Nurture potential customers (such as general contractors) until they are ready to close a deal
Send targeted emails and newsletters by breaking down your mailing list according to market, age, gender, location, and past interactions
Weed out the glitches that harm your campaigns (for example, if emails are winding up in the spam/junk folder for certain email service providers).
Marketing automation will ensure that your email campaigns don’t fall through the cracks, freeing you to focus on more strategic areas of your business.
Tip #9: Find the Best Time to Send Newsletters
The best days and times to send newsletters really depend on your audience. It’s important to test and see when open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates are highest for your email campaigns.
A quick search on Google will produce all kinds of answers, with Tuesdays often mentioned as the best days and 6 a.m. mentioned as the best time for email opens. Some recommend targeting right after lunch for people who work or even Saturdays for the best conversion rates. Use your judgment, and test for optimal times.
ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro lets businesses track audience email delivery history to determine the best time to contact them. You can do this by analyzing metrics such as how many emails have been sent, when they were sent, and when they were opened.
We’ll discuss the importance of tracking and analyzing your email marketing campaigns in the next tip.
After you’ve created your email newsletter and sent it to your target audience, you need to test your results. There are various newsletter campaign attributes you can test, for example:
Your email subject lines and preheader text
The times of day or days of the week your newsletters are sent
The call-to-action button in your newsletter
Your newsletter’s layout design
Open rates and click-through rates are helpful in gauging whether your newsletter was successful in getting customers to take action. However, the key question you should be asking is:
Did this newsletter campaign drive calls, booked jobs, and sales?
ServiceTitan lets you assign a unique campaign code for every email campaign you send so you can attribute revenue to it after the campaign is complete. Email marketing solutions that can deliver conversion rates and true ROI (return on investment) will make newsletter campaign analysis much easier and help drive more revenue for your business.
Other common metrics to consider include:
Conversion rate: The percentage of recipients who take a desired action (e.g., make a purchase or fill out a form) after clicking on a link in your email.
List growth rate: The rate at which your email subscriber list is growing.
Revenue generated: The amount of revenue directly attributable to your email campaigns and, specifically, to your newsletter.
Customer retention rate: The percentage of customers who continue to engage with your business or make repeat purchases as a result of your emails.
With ServiceTitan’s reporting tool, you can create a marketing scorecard of all current campaigns, then tie all new customers to the specific email campaign that brought them to you. As you test and review your results, you’ll see what engages your customers and what doesn’t, which will help you make adjustments that make your campaigns more effective.
And, if your company uses call-tracking software, such as our add-on product, ServiceTitan Phones Pro, you can easily track the number of calls, booked appointments, sales, revenue, cost per lead, and ROI for each marketing source, including your email newsletter campaigns.
8 Email Newsletter Templates for Contractors
Here are eight template examples that you can create in ServiceTitan and include in your email newsletters.
Email Newsletter Template Ideas for Homeowners
1. Expiring Memberships
A campaign that deploys our expiring memberships template can boost membership agreement renewals. For HVAC contractors, for example, whose success often depends on maintaining a steady revenue stream during off-seasons, these kinds of customer retention campaigns are especially effective.
2. Seasonal Campaign for Idle Accounts
Many of our Marketing Pro users are especially fond of our seasonal templates. In addition to keeping your company top of mind, this example has been designed to remind existing customers who haven’t booked work in a while that it might be time for a tune-up or a repair.
3. Aging Equipment Campaign
Aging-equipment email campaigns can be lucrative even if they yield only a handful of jobs. In boosting the close rate for aging equipment contracts, email marketing campaigns are uniquely effective at helping contractors grow their share of the most valuable segment of their market.
Email Newsletter Template Ideas for Commercial Customers
4. Company News: Upcoming Events
Newsletters are a good vehicle for announcing company news such as new products and services, company initiatives, and training programs. These demonstrate that your business is dynamic and committed to delivering the best service to your customers.
5. Team News
Sharing team news with commercial partners and general contractors keeps them updated on who’s who in your business. This is especially helpful if it’s a team member that they might be dealing with in the future.
6. Community Events
Sharing work your business has done in the community is effective on two levels. First, it’s an opportunity to show off your skills. Second, it demonstrates that you operate locally and have experience working on community projects.
7. Septic System Repairs & Updates
Show customers that you not only offer repairs to complex systems, but that your business has all the necessary skills, permits, and professionals to carry out new equipment installations to an extremely high standard. Photos of the jobsite can help illustrate these types of stories.
8. Professional Clean-Up & Restoration Services
Showing your contractors on a jobsite, demonstrating your company’s specialty (in this case, clean-up and restoration) is visually effective in a newsletter. Consider including a case study explaining the problem and what you did to solve it, with photos of the property after the work was completed.
8 More Campaign Ideas to Include in Email Newsletters
Finally, here are eight more newsletter topic ideas for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors specifically:
1. Seasonal Campaign: Thanksgiving “Brown Friday”
Clogged up drains and garbage disposals are the cause of the busiest day of the year for plumbers: the day after Thanksgiving. Send an email newsletter to your customer base before Thanksgiving, providing helpful tips on what shouldn’t be thrown down their garbage disposal. Then follow up on Brown Friday letting them know you are there for them if needed.
2. Vendor Campaign: Smart Thermostats
Want to push those smart thermostats? Include product information and benefits in your newsletter, using photos from your vendors and schedule any promotions you have with them, like offering a discount coupon.
3. Severe Weather Campaign
If a big storm is heading your way, send an email newsletter offering consultation for a whole-house generator or offer discounts on whole-house surge protection with the purchase of an electrical safety inspection. Target customers in ZIP codes where the storm is expected to hit.
4. Cross-Trade Campaign: Multiple Trades
Target your customer base that have used you for one type of service (example: plumbing) and let them know you also do electrical or HVAC. Follow up with a special offer on a tune-up as an incentive to call and book a job for your other services.
5. Unsold Estimates Campaign: Water Heater Replacement
Set automated email campaigns to follow up on your open estimates.
For example, let’s say one of your techs realizes a homeowner’s 10-year-old water heater is calcified and provides three options for replacement, but the homeowner is not ready to buy at this time. You can use this information to trigger an automated sequence of emails that remind them of the importance of changing their water heater, then follow up with a discount to help close the sale. You could also include the topic in an email newsletter to this hyper-targeted audience.
6. Membership Renewal Campaign: HVAC
Target HVAC customers with expiring memberships and remind them about the benefits they will continue to receive if they renew. Highlight exclusive discounts on maintenance visits, repairs, priority scheduling, or any other type of benefit that makes your customers feel special and valued.
7. We Miss You Campaign: Garage Door Maintenance
Send emails to homeowners who haven’t had a service or installation for over a year and remind them of the importance of preventative door maintenance. Offer a quick tune-up and add clear, prominent CTAs to call or text you to book an appointment.
8. Anniversary Campaigns
Celebrating your company’s anniversary? Proud of the many years of service to your community? Let customers know how excited and honored you are to serve them and the community. Offer a special “thank you” by offering a percentage off all services.
Get Better Email Conversion Rates with ServiceTitan
ServiceTitan gives you the tools you need to hyper-target your audience and automate email newsletter campaigns based on the goldmine of data already stored within ServiceTitan.
Managing your email campaigns, marketing activities, and business processes from one software tool makes your job a lot easier.
And there’s no need to be a digital marketer. Many of the campaigns mentioned above can be created in just a few clicks, saving you time and driving more revenue from your existing customer base as well as attracting new ones.
Learn more about email marketing in these articles:
If you think ServiceTitan’s email marketing features could help your business, schedule a call for a free product tour.
ServiceTitan Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Our comprehensive, cloud-based platform is used by thousands of electrical, HVAC, plumbing, garage door, and chimney sweep shops across the country—and has increased their revenue by an average of 25% in just their first year with us.
