Cleanfax just released their annual Carpet Cleaning Benchmark Survey, and the results aren’t quite what you would expect.
Many of us are accustomed to hearing employers talk about their recent challenges finding an adequate number of employees, and while this is indeed reflected in the survey, most companies polled the survey reported that their largest problem was customer retention: 88 percent of businesses surveyed viewed this as the most important challenge that their business faces.
So how do you address the challenge of customer retention? One of the most effective ways to address it is through email marketing, which I will cover below.
Using Email for Customer Retention
The cleaning industry has become an increasingly competitive marketplace—many cleaners offer similar services, meaning that your customer has many options available to choose from.
In order to distinguish yourself and get repeat business, you need to be able to build a relationship with your customer base. I have talked about the importance of email and personal branding before, and ways that you can use it with your customers.
To review, these are the reasons why you need to be using email for customer retention:
- You save precious time that you can spend doing other things to run your business- With more time to run your business, you will be able to complete more jobs and spend more time focusing on the other areas of your business that are important.
- Your customers check their email on a regular basis- Everyone uses email, and your customers are expecting communication from businesses like yours. You have to be careful about this, though-- make sure to ask your customer’s permission to communicate with them periodically.
- Email is a great way to build a personal relationship- At the end of each job, ask your customer for their email address and for permission to email them. When your customers know that you are thinking of them and you send them periodic reminders, they are much less likely to reach out to another service the next time that they need their carpet cleaned. This is when the magic starts to happen and you begin to form a relationship with your customers.
- Appear authoritative and professional to your customers- There are few things that you can do as a business owner that is more important than establishing trust; your customers are expecting a professional and polished email, and by sending them one you establish yourself as a credible business.
An email automation tool like Hubspot comes with many different templates, fonts, and colors to match your business. This will provide tangible results that make your business correspondence legitimate.
Using HubSpot to Automate Emails
Once you have decided to communicate with your customers via email, you need to choose an email software that meets the needs of your business.
It’s essential to have this software because with dozens or hundreds of customers it’s impractical to use your personal email to maintain all of your client’s contact information and send them regular emails.
Hubspot is a marketing automation/CRM management software that stores your customer’s information and enables you to send them customized emails (note: Hubspot did not pay us to write this article. Our marketing department uses Hubspot, and we are recommending it because it is a great piece of software for creating automated workflows).
On Hubspot, you can create emails that are sent to your entire contact list, and you can set customized rules for them to determine how often they get sent out. For example, if you just cleaned your customer’s home for the first time, you can load the customer's email into your contacts and use the features in Hubspot to send them an email in six months when they are due for their next cleaning.
One of the greatest features of Hubspot is that it comes with incredible support features for subscribers, and an entire database full of support articles that have detailed instructions on how to use all of the features that you are paying for.
The Email Series that You Should Create For Your Customers
After you choose the platform that you are going to use, it’s best to plan your emails out in advance. Later on, you will be busy, and some of your customers are closer to needing their carpet cleaned than others.
Every cleaning business will have different emails that they want to create for their customers; here are the essential ones that I recommend that you create to start:
- A “Thank You”/ Welcome email- This is the email that you send to a customer after your first time cleaning their carpet. It thanks them for their time and lets them know that it was a privilege for doing business with them. This would also be a good time to include a coupon for a discount on their next service.
Purpose: The purpose of this email is to leave a good impression on your customer and plant the seeds of a future business relationship with them.
- Six-month reminder email- When the customer is due for their next email you will send them a reminder that they are due for their next cleaning. The quality of this email will greatly improve if you include a checklist of things for the customer to do to prepare for your next visit. Not only is this helpful, but it enables your customer to anticipate your visit.
Purpose: You want to send this email to remind your customers that you exist and to promote your services to them. The tone of your email and the writing should promote your customers’ well-being and emphasize the importance of a clean
environment.
- A follow-up email after the second visit that offers tips for maintaining a clean carpet between visits- You know things that your customer doesn’t know about how your customer can keep their carpet clean. Provide extra value by offering information on how to preserve their cleaning before your next visit.
Purpose: To retain a customer you don’t just want your customers to view you as a cleaner; you want them to view you as a carpet cleaning expert that serves as a guide that helps them get the most from their carpet.
Conclusion
Large, sustainable profits are made by earning repeat business. To retain customers, you need to invest in email automation software (I use the word invest because I absolutely promise you that if you use it right it will grow your business).
There are many great services besides HubSpot such as Mailchimp and all of the other ones listed here in this article that provides a great overview of the features of different services. I would highly recommend reading it.
Once you have picked a service, the best way to familiarize yourself with all of its features is to play around and experiment. As I mentioned above, you can also use great support articles that provide detailed explanations for every step of creating great emails for your customers.
There is a little bit of a learning curve, but you will get the hang of it. Also, if you have any questions you can reach out to me at drew.crawford@aramsco.com and I will help answer them.
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