A Complete Guide to Solar Email Marketing: How to Improve Your Campaigns

Do you believe in renewable energy and your business focuses on selling solar panels and equipment? If so, you need to include solar email marketing in your strategy. Here’s why.

Recently, more and more people have been exploring the potential of green energy. The reasons are obvious — it is cost-effective, simple, and it helps save the planet!

Still, not many people recognize the true power solar energy offers. For solar companies, all the advantages are apparent, but they still need to work on educating the public and expanding their outreach. One of the best channels to employ such educational marketing practices is email marketing.

As one of the most effective marketing methods, solar email marketing can make a world of difference and transform your green business. That’s why we’ve compiled the guide with the best practices for solar companies eager to work towards a better future through email.

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The Importance of Solar Panels Today

Today, there are over 11,000 companies in the U.S. offering ways to convert sunlight into electricity and minimize the need for fossil fuels. On top of that, generating electricity with solar panels is cheaper compared to conventional methods.

Consumers will need to pay for the solar panels, installation, and regular maintenance. It takes between seven and ten years to reach the break-even point for residential solar panels.

With the growing popularity of solar panels, companies selling them need to focus on marketing and new ways to attract customers.

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The Most Effective Marketing Campaigns for Solar Companies

How you approach marketing can make or break your product. Properly targeted email marketing can help spread the green gospel and increase brand awareness even in a specific environment, such as the solar energy industry.

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Types of Solar Email Marketing Campaigns

For a better understanding of the potential campaign types and their use cases, check out the table below.

Type of email campaign	Purpose
Newsletters	They provide useful info, engage, and build relationships with recipients.
Promotional emails	They promote a product or a service, offer discounts, subscriber offers, holiday campaigns, and others.
Re-engagement emails	They invite existing customers to return or build loyalty through email campaigns.
Transactional emails	They’re related to a recent interaction or transaction. It could be password recovery, shipping updates, purchase confirmations, and others.

Newsletter Campaigns

Newsletter campaigns are a way to engage, inform, and create relationships with your customers. The best practice is to send out a newsletter at least once per month, and be careful about the sending frequency if you have too much content to share.

Newsletters can also inform your subscribers about various updates, new blog posts, new products, etc. Bear in mind what message you’re conveying and focus on solar power when writing your newsletters, filling them with useful and informative facts.

Promotional Campaigns

Use promotional campaigns to announce sales, promotions, special offers, new products, or discounts. You can engage your customers by offering exclusive discount codes or coupons.

In solar email marketing, promoting your core product and equipment will likely need a carefully written copy, explaining the technology and innovation applied and how they benefit the buyers or how to use them. Your email copy should focus on environmentalism and ethics, while your technical info should highlight the simplicity and durability of the promoted products.

Re-engagement Campaigns

Solar panels are not exactly consumer goods, so it’s not likely that people — or companies — would buy them often. You get them once and then focus on maintenance. So, it’s expected your email audience might become disengaged once the purchase is made.

That’s where you’ll want to employ re-engagement campaigns as the means to reach out to your customers and encourage them to keep in touch. You can share product updates, manuals, or ask for their feedback while informing them of the new equipment they may need for the products they already purchased.

Finally, if you segment your list properly, you can set up regular maintenance reminders for your customers and give them regular tips on how to increase the durability of your product. This will help you build long-term relationships with them and encourage buyer return.

Transactional Campaigns

Triggered by customer actions, transactional campaigns will inform your prospects of the purchase they’ve made or the interest they expressed in your product. They usually have a higher open rate than the regular promotions and you will need them to send order confirmations, shipping information, subscription notifications, password resets, and similar.

Transactional emails present your business operations in a transparent manner and are a vital part of building trust and loyalty, ensuring your customers are satisfied.

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Starting Your Solar Email Marketing Campaigns

As a solar–focused business, email marketing might seem somewhat foreign, but spending time learning how to do it right will prove as a worthy time investment.

If you’re just starting out, it’s a good idea to define your ideal customer’s email journey and fill out the stages with pertinent campaigns and information, iterating and automating them along the way.

Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing

On average, users spend over two hours on social media each day. By integrating social media campaigns with your email operations you can significantly increase reach and help your email list grow.

Social media also allows you to create different types of content. Along with blogs and newsletters, you can create short videos and infographics that are easy to follow but still provide enough information about your company, solar power, and green energy.

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Solar Email Marketing Strategies You Can Explore

The following strategies by applying a solar power focus to them will allow you to have an easier time while running your campaigns.

Each of these methods can improve engagement and broaden your audience reach.

Targeted Email List Segmentation

Applying email segmentation while spreading the word about solar power is fundamental because your audience is likely to be diverse. Some of them might already be familiar with the world of solar energy, while others could be curious novices. And then, there’s everyone in between. That’s why creating email list segments based on customers’ behaviors, demographics, preferences, and engagement could be the key to your open and engagement rates.

Analyze your users carefully and strive to make your emails highly relevant to each of them. The table below will help you differentiate between the initial segmentation groups.

Segmentation group	Type of data	Type of email to send
Type of property they have (to install solar panels at)	Residential or commercial	The size of solar panels, efficiency, and designs will vary based on the group.
Behavior	First-time buyers or returning buyers	Installation instructions, equipment promotion, discounts, latest updates
Activity	Loyal customer or newcomer	Exclusive deals, targeted information vs. welcome emails, general information
Email status	Active or inactive	Newsletter vs. re-engagement emails

At Campaign Refinery, we believe segmentation is the key to successful conversions. That’s why we created a suite of powerful tools to give you full control over your email lists. More on that below.

Email Personalization

The simplest form of personalization in email marketing is addressing your recipients by their name. You can also check the analytics and use data from their visits to send them emails that will feel unique and directed at their unique needs.

Collecting data is necessary for proper personalization, and you will need to request details such as name, birthday, age, email, phone number, and location, along with information about their interests. As all the personal information needs to be volunteered, you will have to offer something in exchange, a special deal or attention.

What Type of Content to Share for Solar Email Marketing?

On average, recipients will spend nine seconds reading an email, so focus on delivering precise and effective messages. Writing about solar power and green energy has endless potential, from basic information to specific, even scientific information you can share.

Remember — if your recipients opted-in to receive your content, they are likely interested in learning everything there is about solar energy, so you can start by educating and inspiring them.

You should align your email design with your email copywriting to achieve the best results. Follow the visual and communication trends in the solar panel industry and discover what colors, fonts, and wording to use. Your content needs to be accurate, updated, and clear, while the information you share depends on your goals.

Case Studies and Testimonials

Sharing testimonials from satisfied customers is one of the most reliable strategies and you should include it in your email marketing campaigns.

New buyers often use customer reviews as personal recommendations. Testimonials can help you build a reputation in the industry and attract new prospects.

Get in touch with your customers and ask them to share their stories with you or through an online review platform. They can send you a video, write a message, a product review, or anything else that can serve as proof of work well done. For example, solar panel customers can share photos before and after the installation, showcasing the ease of installation, the real-life look of the product, and the positive atmosphere.

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Improving the Results of Your Solar Email Marketing Campaigns

To improve the results of your email marketing efforts, you’ll need to monitor the email metrics.

Once you recognize the space for improvement, you can adjust future campaigns and achieve better results.

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Benefits of Solar Email Marketing

According to market projections, email marketing revenue is expected to hit $12.5 billion in 2024 and cross $18 billion by 2027. It’s a viable marketing strategy for any industry, including solar, but there are more advantages that concern feasibility, as listed below.

Benefits of email marketing	Description
High ROI	As one of the marketing methods with the highest ROI, it’s a viable investment.
Flexibility	It’s easy to test and explore the potential of different campaigns and see how the audiences react.
Scalability	High scalability means you can use it for both larger and smaller audiences.
Permission-based approach	Permission-based approach means that all recipients are certainly interested in your content, making the likelihood of conversion higher.
Measurable results	All results in email marketing are easy to measure, so you can check what works and what doesn’t.

The ultimate benefit of solar email marketing is having another channel to spread awareness about the global green movement and the products you’re promoting.

To help you grow further, relieve technical concerns related to email, and allow you to focus on your campaign content, you should pick a reliable email service provider as your partner. And there’s no one more reliable than Campaign Refinery.

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Elevate Your Marketing Campaign with Campaign Refinery

Campaign Refinery offers powerful email marketing solutions that will help you start effortlessly and bring your campaigns to another new level. We have the best email deliverability rates on the market and are dedicated to following the best-sending practices.

We understand the dedication solar power companies have and share the same passion when it comes to email. That’s why we launched our latest customer segmentation feature, Audience Groups, which allows you to group different segments of your list and target them with akin information when needed.

If you want to join our cohort of elite email senders and make the most out of your email marketing operation, apply to join Campaign Refinery and see your numbers soar!