Your business revolves around residential HVAC units. Your and your technicians handle servicing calls, maintenance, repairs, upgrades, repairs, and installations. Given how much time you spend on all that hardware and equipment, it might be the only thing you remember your customers actually having.
If you’re trying to get more customers, however, then there’s something else on their property that you need to target. That would be their mailboxes.
As you prepare your marketing plans for 2022, knowing six different HVAC direct mail marketing ideas can help you post record profits thanks to postal mail.
What Is a Direct Mail Campaign?
If you’re not sure what a direct mail campaign is, then you should know that it’s simply mailing paper advertisements to residential addresses to let them know about your HVAC business. This might sound old fashioned, but it’s still successful and cost-effective even in a digital age. You can get people to contact your business via phone or online, and you might just garner some business you’d never get online.
A successful direct mail campaign typically has three primary components:
- Targeted Mailing List: You can include commercial businesses in your mailing list if you want, but the real prize is homeowners of single-dwelling units or standalone homes in your service area.
- The Right Message: Make sure that your message is personalized, drives action, has a clear call to action, is sparing with copy and imagery, and has a compelling headline to capture attention.
- Consistent Effort: As soon as you stop doing direct mailings, you’ll also stop getting results.
6 HVAC Direct Mail Ideas for 2022
If you’ve never done a direct mail before for your HVAC franchise, then you have yet to discover the power of it. However, even if it’s your first time, you’re far from the first to do it. Take advantage of known tactics from those who have preceded you:
- Send Reminders: Send out reminders for people to get their HVAC units serviced. If your seasonal peaks are in the summer for air conditioners and the winter for heaters, then your dead spots might be spring and fall. To benefit the most from direct mail, target times when you know business will be slow. Preventative repairs and routine maintenance service calls during these times of year make money for your business and help homeowners prepare their systems for the upcoming weather. Many homeowners intend to do this, but things that might not be daily, weekly, or monthly tasks for them can fall to the wayside. Help them know when it’s time to call a professional in for this. Looking out for them can earn some gratitude.
- Use Postcards: Direct mailing can be any paper form, including fliers, newsletters, pamphlets, postcards. Postcards work really well. Anything that has to be physically opened might never be the minute a homeowner realizes it’s marketing material. On the other hand, when they look at a postcard, they’ll inevitably read it for a second. Your marketing message should make a concise point and quickly, so the attention span a homeowner gives a postcard is all the time you need. They’ll only give you a second or two, so don’t bother wasting anything more.
- Target Mature Neighborhoods: Older neighborhoods mean older homes. That’s not to say you can’t get business from anything built in the last 10 years. However, if they’re still on their original air conditioners, you’re not going to get as many service calls, nor will you likely get those high-dollar replacements and installations you bank on. Aging homes are more likely to have HVAC needs that are higher in terms of both frequency and profitability.
- Greet New Residents: There are two ways to do this. First, mail them to any homeowner or family that moves into your service area, and welcome them to the community. Secondly, do the same for any communities that fall into your service area when you expand the boundaries or open a new location.
- Run Promotions: Let current and future clients alike know about particular deals that they might have interest in. For previous clients, use sales history data to send mailings specifically in reference to business that they’ve done with you before.
- Target Your Own Clients: Direct mail is a great way to get more business out of people that have already spent money with you. Thank-you notes help customers feel appreciated. Make sure that any such mailings have their name, but also include the specific service that they had done. Anything customized to them individually will get more attention and response than a mass mailing that could apply to a hundred other homes.
Make Sure Your Online Home Is Ready
When residential homeowners are ready for HVAC or other services and decide to give you a chance based on the direct mail you sent to their home, they’re more than likely to visit your online home. Have your website ready to convert and capture the traffic and visitors you generate.
Related Post: Why The Best HVAC Contractor Websites Run on WordPress
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