November 8, 2023 | Written by Tom Callinan

When determining how best to reach your clients, it can be difficult to decipher whether email marketing or cold calling will reach them the best. While there’s no simple, fix-all strategy to ensure you’ll reach all your potential customers, there are ways to figure out which option will work best for you.

When to use Email Marketing

Email marketing works great for certain verticals. We, for example, have a robust email marketing business with commercial power washers, and during the season (March through October) we kill it for this vertical. We also do a great job for commercial landscapers getting them opportunities before the maintenance season and at the end of summer for snow removal, where relevant.

What are the characteristics of these two verticals that result in success with email marketing?

Contracts are not a normal foundation of power washers—fleet washing, yes, but not power washing— and there is significant turnover at the decision maker level, which is usually a property or facility manager. These dynamics create an environment where the services are put to bid each year. If we can get in front of the decision maker when that power washing service has gotten to the top of their “to do list,” we can get our client in front of the prospect. Commercial landscaping is primarily on a one-year contract—not always, some are two or three but the most common is one—throw in the same decision maker as power washers so the same level of higher turnover and you run into the same annual bid process.

When does Calling work, and when to use an SDR/BDR

High-value or complex offerings are better suited to a sales professional, commonly referred to as a sales or business development representative (SDR/BDR), calling to identify a business case, and, once that business case is identified, setting an appointment. An SDR is also the correct approach when the prospect is being called on by outside sales professionals from your competitor.

Managed IT is one example where an SDR is the correct approach. We all get multiple emails a day trying to raise interest in some form of IT; maybe it is a new CRM, LinkedIn, SEO, payroll, HRMS, the list goes on. This barrage of IT focused emails results in us not giving any of them two seconds of our time and results in very few leads from email marketing for managed IT.

That doesn’t mean you can’t get an acceptable ROI as selling one $3,500 MRR contract every six months would probably be enough to support the average cost of $2,000 per month for email marketing. However, most owners of managed IT businesses would not take the long game approach, or be happy with that ROI, and I certainly understand that thought process.

Commercial roofing is another vertical better suited for an SDR approach. With an average life of 20 years only 5% of buildings will need new roofs in the next twelve months. Moreover, the project can be $250K – $2M, and many large roofing companies have salespeople calling in their local market. With a low percentage of users in the market and a high dollar value, it’s common to be called on by outside salespeople; this doesn’t bode well for email
marketing.

Like the managed IT situation, if you closed one $250K roof, along with a few annual contracts, and a patch job or two over 12 months you could have a satisfactory ROI spending $2,000 per month for email marketing, but most roofing company’s owners would not stick around for a year to experience this result, and I understand. You need to use a sales strategy to book appointments for high-value, complex or longer contracted services. Determining the best approach to outreach is a big part of developing that strategy.

The Revity Difference

At Revity, we can help you determine which solution will best suit your business’s individual needs. Our team of experts will help you figure out what works best for your client base; you’ll be paired with an expert sales representative to help figure out exactly what you need.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for marketing; figure out a personalized approach with Revity.