Email Marketing for Construction Industry: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you work in the construction industry, you’re probably wondering if email marketing is a good way to engage with other companies or customers. Should you focus all your efforts on social media instead? 

While social media is more popular today, email marketing still offers unique advantages. It lets you reach people directly in their inboxes, which often means better engagement and conversion rates.

So, let’s go over how you can make email marketing for the construction industry work. 

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Is Email Marketing Effective in the Construction Industry?

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to market your business in 2024. Statista predicts that by 2026, there will be about 4.73 billion email users worldwide. Almost all email users check their emails daily, so you have a great chance to reach your target audience and grow your business.

Another reason email marketing works well is that it gives a high return on investment (ROI). For every dollar you spend on email marketing, businesses typically make upwards of $40.

And if you’re still not convinced, consider this: email is 40 times more effective than social media for getting new customers.

With all these compelling reasons, email marketing can undoubtedly be a valuable tool for marketing in the construction industry.

Let’s get into the details of email marketing for construction companies. 

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Step 1. Compile Your Email List

A strong B2B email marketing strategy in the construction industry starts with a list of engaged contacts. 

How do you get your hands on a solid list? 

You build it. Organically. 

You should never spend money on buying email lists. Purchased lists often include people who have no interest in your business. So, you’ll see low engagement and high spam complaints, which will ruin your reputation as an email sender and a business. 

We already have a full guide on building email lists for the construction industry. So, we won’t go into more details here. But we’ll give you two important pieces of advice: 

1. Re-engage Your Old Contacts 

If you already have an email list but haven’t reached out in a while, run a re-engagement campaign. Send a sequence of emails to remind your subscribers of the value you offer and ask if they still want to hear from you. 

You could offer a special discount, share useful content, or ask them to update their preferences. This helps you clean your list by removing inactive subscribers and boosts your overall email performance.

At Campaign Refinery, we used this re-engagement strategy to turn GymLaunch’s struggling list into a thriving success. The company went from zero email leads to 20 percent of their sales calls coming from email. The initiative has generated over $3.6 million in one year for the company, and GymLaunch now enjoys high open rates consistently above 50 percent.

2. Always Use Double Opt-in 

Whatever method you choose to grow your list, make sure your contacts show their interest using a double opt-in. Double opt-in means after someone signs up, they get a confirmation email and must click a link to confirm their subscription. 

This way, you know your subscribers really want to hear from you, which helps keep your engagement rates high and reduces spam complaints.

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Step 2. Segment Your List

Now that you have a highly relevant and interested audience, you can start emailing them, right? 

Well, not yet!

Before you begin, there’s one more important step: You need to categorize your subscribers based on their interests and interactions. 

Audience segmentation helps you send the most engaging content to your subscribers, which means higher conversions and lower unsubscribe rates. 

For example, are your subscribers other construction companies or B2C clients looking for a contractor? These groups of subscribers have different interests, so you can target them with the same content. 

Use website analytics, sign-up forms, questionnaires, and surveys to understand subscriber preferences. This will help you tailor your content to meet their specific needs.

The table below compares different segmentation criteria you can apply to your audience in the construction industry. 

Segmentation criteria	B2B	B2C
Client type	Contractors, construction companies, renovators, construction service providers, residential, commercial, subcontractors	Homeowners, individual customers
Demographics and firmographics	Geographical location, income level, age, gender	Geographical location, income level, section of the industry, number of employees in the construction company, role in the decision-making chain
Preferences	Buying products or services	Boosting their ROI
Behaviors	Purchase history, engagement with your website, place in the customer journey	Buying patterns, product preferences

At Campaign Refinery, we use tags for segmentation instead of lists like many other mass email services. Our system lets you add or remove tags during your campaigns. So you’ll have much more control over your strategy.

For example, if you want to boost sales towards the end of a campaign, you can quickly remove subscribers who have already responded to your calls to action. Then you can send the remaining subscribers more sales-oriented emails. 

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Step 3. Plan Your Campaigns 

An email marketing campaign is a series of emails you send to your subscribers to promote your products or services, share updates, or build relationships. It helps you stay connected with your audience, provide valuable information to them, and encourage them to take action. 

Your campaigns can be promotional or educational. Maintaining a balanced mix of both helps build trust with your subscribers while also increasing the chances of selling your products or services. 

Lead Nurture Campaigns Build Strong Connections

The construction industry is highly competitive, and clients take time to make decisions. They often don’t have the budget to buy your products or services immediately. That’s why lead nurturing is a crucial step. 

Lead nurturing means regularly communicating with your subscribers, providing valuable information, and building trust until they are ready to buy.

In a nurture sequence, after a subscriber takes action, you can send them a series of relevant emails. 

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Step 4. Craft Compelling Content for Your Construction Emails

Writing content for construction email marketing can be challenging because of the industry’s competitive nature, but if you focus on your audience, the process becomes less intimidating.

Let’s unpack these steps. 

Put Yourself in the Audience’s Shoes

If you’ve done a thorough job in the segmentation stage, you know who you’re writing for. 

Start with your audience type: B2B vs. B2C. While you need to show your expertise with both audiences, you should also consider the differences in preferred content types and email tones. 

Then, think about the audience’s place in the customer lifecycle and their pain points. Are they actively looking for a solution? Do they know your company offers that solution? Or have they already made a purchase and now need assurance that they made the right decision? 

B2C clients, like homeowners, tend to go through a straightforward decision-making process.

However, the process isn’t that straightforward for B2B clients. These are contractors looking for professional relationships with your business. They expect more in-depth and technical information. 

Like any B2B business, different people are involved in decision-making in the construction industry, as shown in the table below. 

Decision-making unit	Role	Content
Initiator	Suggest products or services	Industry news and insights, latest trends
Decider	Makes the final decision	Case studies, ROI indicators
Buyer	Makes the final purchase	Price comparisons, special offers
User	The end user of a product or service	How-to guides, tutorials

Start With a Compelling Subject Line

Even the most engaged subscribers need a push to open your emails, and that’s the job of the subject line. A good subject line should catch the reader’s attention without seeming spammy or revealing all the content.

Writing the perfect subject line is more art than science, but our guide covers everything you need to know.

Write Clear and Concise Content  

Today’s internet users have a limited attention span and quickly lose interest. If you ramble on with big blocks of text, even your most engaged users may stop interacting with you. 

That’s even more important because most users open their emails on mobile devices. 

So, try to keep things brief but value-packed, especially for contractors who want to make decisions based on clear facts. 

Personalize Your Message

Email personalization involves tailoring your email content to each subscriber based on their specific needs, preferences, and history with your brand. This strategy can boost engagement and build brand loyalty.

You can personalize different parts of the email, including the subject line and the email copy. 

However, don’t go overboard with personalization. Too much of it can make you seem unprofessional. It’s better to focus on providing valuable, relevant information without overdoing the personalization.

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Mistakes To Avoid in Email Marketing for the Construction Industry

Email marketing is complex. There are so many moving parts, from crafting the perfect subject line to creating engaging content and segmenting your audience. It gets even tougher when you pick a niche like the construction industry.

That’s why you need to make sure small mistakes don’t ruin your entire campaign by killing your visibility or landing you in the spam folder. 

These are three common mistakes to avoid.

Don’t Send Too Many Emails at Once 

If you suddenly start sending a large volume of emails, ISPs like Google and Microsoft will likely classify you as a spammer. So they can block your emails or send them to the junk folder. This means fewer people will see your messages, and your future emails might also get blocked.

Instead, start by sending 100 emails per day. Then, double the number each day. This gradual warm-up process helps you avoid looking like a spammer and makes sure your emails reach your audience. This way, you build a good sender reputation and maximize your email deliverability over time.

Don’t Send Emails Haphazardly  

Most people check their emails daily, but this doesn’t mean you can send them at any time. Users are more likely to open emails at specific times of the day and on certain days of the week.

This is especially true for B2B clients, who are often busier and less likely to check work emails on mobile devices. The best time to send emails to B2B subscribers is early in the morning on Tuesday or Wednesday. This timing gives your emails a higher chance of being opened.

Don’t Use Too Many Images 

The construction industry thrives on images. Whether you’re an architect, an interior designer, or even a plumber, images can highlight your abilities much better than text. 

Visuals also make your emails more attractive and easier to read, but some email clients might block or remove these images. 

So, your email’s text should make sense on its own. We recommend using plain-text emails instead of HTML messages for optimal deliverability. 

If you do use images, keep them small and limit the number you include. Balance text and visuals. Use images strategically to enhance readability, but never replace text with images.

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Pick the Mass Email Service with Unmatched Deliverability

You can craft the most helpful email content, but it won’t matter if your subscribers don’t see your emails in their inbox.

At Campaign Refinery, email deliverability is our top focus, which is why we’re the top choice among companies with ambitious email marketing goals. We boast the highest deliverability rates in the business thanks to our deep understanding of what it takes to go straight to the inbox. 

If you want to beat your construction industry competitors at email marketing, Campaign Refinery is the platform to pick. Apply today to join us!