Email Marketing For Landscape Firms

In 2014, email marketing was cited by e-Marketer as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the United States. It's only gotten better.

For many landscape design firms, migrating their new business marketing to the Internet has provided multiple benefits. As an industry that lends itself to visual marketing, the Internet allows you the opportunity to showcase your work, and show who you are, what you do and why consumers should choose your firm for their next project.

Creating a content marketing campaign strategy goes beyond a simple website. Inbound marketing is a process that attracts potential clients to your website by using unique content delivered through various channels like social media, blogging, landing pages, and email to build one-on-one relationships. Driving traffic to your website and then using these techniques to educate, entertain and inform visitors as opposed to using “sales” language and hard sell techniques, is the new methodology of assisting consumers through their buying process. 

Today, most purchases begin online as consumers research and seek out information to educate themselves before making a final buying decision. By publishing creative, unique, targeted content you can educate your visitors about your business, how you work, the benefits of working with a landscape design firm and more. Through this interaction and engagement, you can position yourself as a thought leader in your field and build a personal relationship that encourages trust. 

A typical strategy involves using your website to deliver free premium information in return for your visitor's contact information. Once you've established a connection, you then use email to personalize the relationship and provide additional information to help guide the consumer through their buying decision, turning a website visit into a lead, and a lead into a paying customer.

Let's look at how to develop a simple email marketing campaign using landing pages and automated email with MailChimp (more in a minute) to turn your website into a lead generating powerhouse!

First, Create A “Landing Page”

If your site is built on Squarespace (if it's not, it should be!) you already have all you need to develop your email marketing landing page. Squarespace actually calls their landing pages, “cover pages.” A cover page can function as an additional page on your website, or as a stand-alone page that you can use to gather email addresses from your visitors. Like all pages on Squarespace, a cover page uses a customizable pre-styled layout with built in design functionality. Cover page designs incorporate graphic best practices like strategic placement  for your logo, well-formatted uncluttered page designs and easy to find and navigate calls-to-action buttons to help convert your visitors.

A landing page should concisely explain information about a premium offer,  like a free white paper on the benefits of hardscaping your backyard, for example. The page will include a “call-to-action” like a button or link to click to download the paper in return for your visitor's name and email address. This process is known as conversion and can determine how serious your prospect is (You've gained enough of their trust for them to give you contact information) and how far along they are in their buying process. You can now begin to guide them through your lead funnel to continue to qualify and inform them towards making a purchase by using personalized email marketing. 

MailChimp is Email Marketing For Landscape Firms!

MailChimp is a software product that offers a unique approach to email marketing. Using MailChimp, you can create newsletters and email pieces that can be automated and sent to the email contacts you've generated with your landing page. It's easy to use, intuitive and offers a number of options for designing, saving templates and sending emails. It's also optimized to allow you to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social platforms. 

MailChimp allows you to organize your email campaigns to specifically meet the needs of your contacts by maintaining individual lists for potential clients based on their specific interests or informational needs. For example, you can maintain separate residential and commercial lists with each list member receiving targeted information.

Where MailChimp really shines is in its ability to track responses to your emails easily. This can give you a good idea of what material is working, what materials isn't working and how you can refine and personalize your landing pages and emails to be more effective in order to improve your inbound marketing results.

The best part? MailChimp is free for users with lists of less than 2000 contacts and as your list grows, MailChimp offers affordable options to grow with you. Creating a well designed Squarespace cover page and using MailChimp on the backend to organize your emails can turn your landscape design website into a lead generating machine! Together they offer the perfect solution for creating an email marketing campaign that will grow your business!

About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.