Email Marketing for Commercial Painters (Step-by-Step Guide)

Success on this marketing channel starts with a high-quality contact list.

Most Painting Contractors we talk to do not have a contact list, or if they do, it’s extremely small (only a couple of hundred contacts).

This makes sense given that email marketing is an underutilized channel in the Commercial Painting Industry.

Fortunately, building a B2B contact list is easy.

Let’s review the two primary methods of capturing new contacts.

1. First-party (warm) contacts

Any lead you capture from your marketing channels is considered a first-party contact. These are the highest-quality contacts as they have established buyer intent by providing their contact information, they are familiar with your business, and they are exclusive to you.

Here are some common ways we see Commercial Painting Contractors acquire first-party contacts:

2. Third-party (cold) contacts

You can purchase third-party email lists from data aggregators to quickly build up a mailing list of prospects (other business owners) in your local market.

This option expedites the process, but you’re purchasing cold leads, which have some caveats.

First, “cold leads” simply indicate that they have never heard of you, or requested that you contact them. Generally speaking, response rates will be much lower here.

Second, others in your market have likely already contacted these prospects, so your messaging must be captivating to have an impact.

This is why it’s critical to have a volume of contacts to see a return.

We aim for a minimum of 10,000 cold contacts.

Recommended Data Aggregators 

There are two data aggregators we recommend for building your B2B contact list: Coldlytics and Apollo.io.

We find the best results by targeting the following industries:

Commercial Email Marketing results depend entirely on the quality and size of your email list.

For instance, if you’re sending to 100 contacts acquired through your website, lead forms, and other first-party marketing channels, you may have similar results compared to sending to a cold list of 1000 contacts.

Here are some target numbers to aim for:

While email marketing for Commercial Painting Contractors is a high-ROI marketing channel, the success or failure of a campaign is in the setup.

Here are the most common failures we see in a campaign:

1. Validate Your Contact List

This is especially important if you are purchasing a third-party list as the emails you purchase are not always valid. You may be provided a fake email, the address could have been mistyped, or that person may no longer be with the company.

Sending dead emails or “catch-alls” can quickly get your domain blacklisted and put you in the SPAM filter, permanently.

Your contact list must contain 99.9% valid email addresses.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to mitigate this.

Most email service providers have this feature built in. If yours does not, simply upload your email list to NeverBounce and they’ll confirm which emails are valid and which are unreachable.

2. Email Warmup Service

Email warmup is a practice of slowly sending emails to ensure they hit your recipient’s inbox and not their SPAM folder.

If you’re starting from scratch and you have a small mailing list (under 100 contacts) start by manually sending, even if it’s just a few emails each day. This will naturally warm up your domain.

If you have a large contact list, you will need to use a third-party email warmup service first.

We like Warmbox for its simple interface and its ability to integrate with several email service providers.

IMPORTANT: Do NOT use your primary domain name to send marketing emails.

We recommend creating a subdomain, such as hello@mail.yourdomainname.com.

Why?

Because it is extremely easy to burn out a domain name in spam filters, and once you’re blacklisted it can be difficult to have that reinstated. Imagine not being able to communicate with customers or send out invoices.

You want to avoid that at all costs, so be sure to send from a subdomain or purchase a new domain that is completely separate from your primary.

3. FTC Compliance

The FTC has a federal law called CAN-SPAM that sets rules for email marketing.

In short, this act prohibits businesses from using misleading information in the subject or body of the email and requires easy opt-out/unsubscribe options for the recipient.

Be sure that your emails are relevant to your audience and contain an easy method to unsubscribe.

There are several other factors that contribute to inbox placement, but just a few play a significant role:

4. Other SPAM Filter Flags to Avoid

There are several other factors that contribute to inbox placement, but just a few play a significant role:

Your open rate (how many people opened your email/emails sent) is a leading indicator of success.

For instance, if you sent out 1000 emails but only two contacts open them, the likelihood of generating any replies from that campaign is extremely low. There simply isn’t enough VOLUME.

Increasing your open rates will give you more “time at bat.”

This is done with personalization. Here’s how:

What you send your contacts should be relevant and specific to them.

There are two primary types of email campaigns that depend on audience and content segmentation:

Commercial Reactivation

Customers you have already served will likely buy from you again, but more importantly, they can generate referrals and reviews. Examples of this outreach include:

Commercial Prospecting

With prospecting campaigns, you are simply trying to meet your contacts when they are ready to talk. Do this by proactively addressing the common pain points of the commercial painting industry:

It’s can be tempting to use a fancy email template with nice images and buttons to represent your business.

AVOID THIS MISTAKE.

The best emails have the following traits:

There are several schools of thought about the best time of day and days of the week to send emails for optimal engagement.

For instance, you wouldn’t want to send emails on a Monday morning as this is the busiest day of the week for most.

The same applies to Friday afternoons as your audience is likely checked out for the weekend.

For best results send mid-week on Wednesday or Thursday first thing in the morning.

Examples can inspire, so here are a few example email templates you can use in your Commercial Painting Business to target segmented lists with relevant outreach.

Reactivation Template

Use this email template to reactivate past customers:

Subject Line: I wanted to celebrate this win with you

Body:

Hey [First Name],

Our team was really excited to share a recent project we completed at [Business Name].

[Project Image]

[Brief Project Description]

If you’re interested in becoming our next win, don’t hesitate to call/text me at [Phone Number], or just reply to this email. I would be happy to take you out for some coffee.

Talk soon,

[Your Name]
[Company Name]
[Phone Number]

Prospecting Template

For targeting cold B2B contacts, use a simple email like this:

Subject Line: Are you working with unprofessional “professional” painters?

Body:

[First Name]!

I struggle to comprehend how unprofessional our industry is.

It doesn’t take much to do this job:

• Clear communication
• Keep your worksite clean and orderly
• Be respectful

Our Team of Professional Painters are trained on these core values.

I would be happy to prove it.

Talk soon,

[Your Name]
[Company Name – Link to Website]
[Phone Number]

There is no point in marketing if you’re not going to measure the results. Nearly every email service provider records data and measures the results of your email campaigns. Use this!

You measure the success of your email marketing efforts using the following metrics:

Email Marketing is a great way to reach your prospects and generate new opportunities for your Commercial Painting Business.

Most painting contractors overlook this form of marketing. Leverage this.

If you are searching for an experienced team of marketing professionals to lead the charge, click the link below to grab a call on our calendar.