Getting Started with Proactive Email Engagement

When you want to proactively share ideas and capabilities with customers and prospects, you can tap into the email addresses you already have to create a list. If you email invoices, use contact management software, have emails in your estimating system, or have saved contacts in your email program, then you have email addresses to begin building a customer engagement email list to regularly and proactively check in with customers.   

You can also grow your list by providing opportunities for people to "opt in" by including a link in your email signature, on your estimates and invoices, and on your website, blog or newsletter to sign up for your email list. You can encourage people to sign up by offering a promotion or discount as a thank you for joining your email list.

Remember to provide recipients an option to easily unsubscribe. When you first start reaching out proactively (especially if you haven't done so in the past), you can reduce unsubscribers by letting people know how often you will be emailing them, what type of content you'll be sharing, and why you are doing so. Here is an example of copy for an initial email:

"I just wanted to give you a heads up to let you know that tomorrow you will be receiving an email from (me/my team) sharing some information about one of our products. We hope you will take a minute to review it and reach out with any questions. We plan to send something similar each month to keep you informed about our capabilities and share ideas."

*If the person you are emailing is a prospect or someone you don't often exchange emails with, you might also include a brief introduction and explain how you received their email address.

One benefit of using an email software platform such as Zoho or Mailchimp, is that the opt-out/unsubscribe link is automatically provided in the email templates, and email addresses are automatically removed from your active list in the platform going forward.

There are some recent requirements for bulk commercial emails covered in the CAN-SPAM Act, and info is available on the FTC’s page. Most these requirements are related to large organizations sending unsolicited bulk emails by the thousands, and do not apply to transactional or existing customer emails.

Whether you're trying to stay in touch with 100 people or 1,000 you can use the ideas shared here to reach more people and be confident that the Sign Promoter Toolkit content will make that easier!