Email automation for tradies – is it a thing or is it pointless?

This is the fourth video in the series- ‘Does Jonny change his mind?‘ 

I’ve been talking with Matt Jones, tradie digital marketing person, who builds websites, does your SEO, Adwords and the like for trades businesses. And we’ve been arguing the pros and cons of some marketing strategies for trade businesses. 

The main thrust of our discussions have been that Matt believes trades businesses should be making a bigger investment in relationship marketing than I think they should, particularly, maintenance trades like plumbers and electricians. I’ve been saying people don’t do maintenance work very often and they’re going to jump on Google anyway. You better put your money in Google and come up when they search than invest in emails that no one gives a sh*t about reading.

We’re going to put on a webinar where we discuss this topic. It’s free and it’s me and Matt talking through what you might and might not do for your marketing. And we’ll see if he persuades me to change my advice to my customers about whether you should be spending money on email automation.

We agree on most of it, but my views on relationship marketing were different to Matt.

Email marketing is one type of relationship marketing. 

Sending emails is one of the ways you can communicate with and maintain a relationship with your customer.

I’ve always maintained the view that email marketing for a trade business is expensive and requires a lot of effort. You do need to write emails. I’ve said it’s useful for communicating with people in their buying cycle but not so much for generating repeat business, so builders should use it to communicate with people who think about building for example, but plumbers and electricians and fencers, not so much.

Once you’ve built your fence, is it worth spending money to hope you get the next fence you build?

I’m not sure how many fences we are building. I don’t think your customers are interested in reading emails about plumbing or fencing, particularly. And I think next time something breaks, they’re going to hit Google anyway rather than looking in their inbox to talk to you.

Recommended Reading: Email Marketing Campaign For Trades Business – Why I Don’t Recommend It

But Matt thinks you can write emails that are useful and interesting enough, that people will read them and that they’ll look at their inbox to call you rather than finding strangers in Google.

It should be quite interesting. He also says it is cheaper than it used to be so maybe I’m going to change my mind and give different advice.

So why don’t you come along? We’re doing an interview on a podcast. 

Go to tradiewebguys.com.au/smallfish. 

Register for the interview so you get some reminders and see if Matt manages to persuade me to change my advice.