Mike Andes says skip cold calling and robocalls. Instead, send monthly email newsletters to existing customers. He claims newsletters recover 20-30% of lost revenue and hit 50-60% open rates, letting you upsell seasonal services like leaf cleanup, snow work, and paver patios.
Questions this video answers
20 to 30% of your revenue.
50 to 60% open ratio.
Recipients replying to the email with the word 'yes' will receive an estimate in their inbox within 24 hours.
Mid-month (they do billing at the end of the month).
Every two weeks (1st and 15th).
Chapters
What I would be looking for if I was you is one thing. Just take one thing away from the entire conference.
I'm gonna have to go fast. Robocalls, for instance. Robocalls. Cold calling used to be a thing. Our second year I used cold calling. Now everyone is so incredibly annoyed with robocalls if they don't know who you are. They are so annoyed with you. And I would highly recommend you do not go down that route in terms of cold calling. Monthly Email Newsletters if you do not have a monthly email newsletter going out to your existing client base, I promise you you are leaving 20 to 30% of your revenue on the table. You will absolutely the fastest way to get more revenue is create a monthly newsletter. In that newsletter you're going to have to make sure it's the same as all marketing. If you if your copy isn't good, if your pictures aren't good, if your call to action is not good, it will do nothing for you. But if it is good copy and it's interesting content, it's behind the scenes, it's showing the personality that is working for you. It's giving big announcements, it's showing off some work, it's giving videos of behind the scenes and jobs. If it's that kind of content, you will have a 50 to 60% open ratio and you will sell work out to wazoo when you send that email out. We have several thousand customers and when we click send in our monthly newsletter, I know that we're gonna book out another week of work. So when it's slow newsletters go I can book out my work. You are controlling the flow of leads. Your goal with marketing is to be able to control the flow of leads so that when they slow down, you pump something into the engine that is an email marketing campaign to your existing clients come fall. That fall newsletter needs to be around leaf cleanups or trimming their bushes. Come winter snow, spring, spring cleanups and getting on the mowing services, upselling them. All of those things that need to be done to your existing customers. If you have not tracked this is something you must do. You need to know what dollar per customer you are making per year. You need to know how many dollars are you averaging from every single customer and you need to do everything in your power to increase that number. If we ever have a year where that number decreases in my business, that is the moment I will step in and take control of marketing again. Like I will get back into the business if that is not happening because we have to continually be upselling and getting better at the way that we are getting our existing customers to buy again. We have to learn how to upsell it on gutter cleanings, how to upsell them on cleanups, how to upsell them on the most profitable services that we are not doing for them. All of us like to get the money from the mowing because it just prints out every week we go mowing. But guess what? Mowing is not where the profit margin's at. It's in all the other services that you can upsell them. If you're going to do treatments, that's a great way to get it. Newsletter that newsletter is the three most common ways to reduce weeds in your lawn. And you're going to go over coreration, you're going to go over liming, you're going to go over weed and feed and what weed and feed is and the nitrogen and break it down for them. And have one button at the bottom that says click here to get a free estimate for weed control in your lawn. One that's been very successful for us in our newsletters recently is Reply back to this email with the word yes and you will have an estimate in your inbox within 24 hours, making it very simple for them. They don't even have to click it's reply yes. That's all they send back to us. And we know they want an estimate for winter cleanup. You'll get like, you gotta make it easy for them to get asked for an estimate. Easy to raise their hand and say, hey, I need your help. So do you only do monthly newsletters or hey, I need work, send it out. So is there any set schedule on how many we do monthly? We do mid month because we do billing at the end of the month. So mid month. So I don't want to bombard them. So they email from us every two weeks if they're a regular mowing customer. Because we will have the 1st, the 15th, the 1st, the 15th every two weeks and we're staying top of mind. We will not service all several thousand of those customers every year. But when they need a project three years down the road and they've opened up our emails for the past three years, guess who they're going to call? You've allowed too many of your customers to go cold. You got to keep them warm by staying in contact with them. You gotta keep those leads warm. They might be a customer in five years. They might mow their lawn now and you install the paver patio. But when five years go by, now their grandchildren are getting older, and they want to spend time with them, they're gonna call you. If you've kept that relationship open, we're like, peace out. We just did a paver patio. Thank you for that $10,000 check. And they never hear back from us again. That's absolute travesty. For your business, you must stay in contact with them, and you must keep all leads warm. A warm lead will buy from us far, far more often than a cold lead. Like, the percentages are out of this world comparison. If I go out and pitch 100 people right now that have never done business with us, maybe one or two will raise their hand and do business with me. If I get 100 people in this room of our existing clients and I pitch something, I'm going to get 50% of them to raise their hand and say, we want that service. All right.
