How to Use Email Marketing for Solar Lead Generation Successfully?

Want to multiply leads for your solar business? You are at the right place!

In this post, we will introduce you to some powerful methods to use email marketing for solar lead generation that would help your solar business boost sales. Let’s begin!

Low cost and high rewards that what email marketing is all about.

It is one of the most effective methods for solar lead generation. Why? 

70% of internet users prefer email when it comes to professional communication.

Moreover, many marketing experts say that email marketing converts 3 times more customers than any social media platform.

If we talk about email marketing costs, you can make approx $42 on every $1 spent on the campaign. This means a 4200% return on investment, isn’t it lucrative?

However, using this marketing tactic and getting results from it are both different things.

Many solar businesses complain about not getting anticipated outcomes from email marketing. Either they are not capitalizing on this technique the way they should, not designing solar proposals well, or their campaign is falling short on some essential ingredients.

Don’t worry! We have jotted down all the crucial elements to help you use email marketing for solar lead generation in the right way and hit your conversion goals soon. Let’s dive in!

Email marketing: The basics

Before we start off, let us discuss the basics requirement of email marketing for solar businesses to make the campaign successful.

• Form to gather email addresses on your business website.
• A sheet or CRM (customer relationship management) to keep all the email IDs organized.
• A structured format to gather solar leads.

Having a clean contact email list will save you a lot of time. Now let’s quickly understand how email marketing for solar lead generation works.

How does email marketing help solar businesses in lead generation?

Email marketing helps solar companies to generate new leads and attract new prospects. This marketing technique outpaces other promotional methods when we talk about some important metrics such as engagement, conversion, and much more.

The following section will help you understand how email marketing for solar lead generation works and aids solar businesses.

Targeted marketing campaign

Traditional marketing methods like TV ads, billboards, radio ads, etc. helps solar business reach a wide audience. However, it doesn’t mean that people who see or listen to the ads are even interested in solar installation.

Here, email marketing helps you reach your target audience who have shown an interest in green energy recently or a couple of months back. Mostly email campaigns encompass those prospects who are likely to take the next course of action.

To get more solar leads, you can craft an email according to your prospect position in the sales process. If a few prospects have signed up for premium content or the company’s newsletter, you can convey thanks via email for their subscription. This will help your solar company in building good and long-term relationships with your customers.

Cold emails to reach prospects

Local solar companies offer their services in specific regions or cities. This limits their reach and their target. Such solar providers cannot afford to miss a single lead and opportunity to convert them into customers. Here, they can utilize cold emails to avoid ending up as spammy emails. You can reach thousands of prospects in your targeted area easily through emails.

You can also utilize email tracking to identify the level of engagement. Once you know that the prospect has a little interest in going solar, you can craft a customized email in the next solar lead follow-up.

Personalized content

You can send personalized email content to your potential customers. Email personalization increases the effectiveness of your campaign. You can send targeted emails focussing on solar benefits and how you are best at providing them.

Your emails should be crafted around the reduced price of the installation and the future solar energy benefits after opting for it. Once your prospects start showing interest in your services, you can send them prices for other solar products, customer testimonials, etc.

Build brand awareness

Email marketing greatly helps in building brand awareness and visibility. Maintaining a consistent thread of communication that always keeps your brand in your customer’s minds is beneficial. Even if they are not interested in going solar today, whenever they opt for green energy, they will think of your brand name first.

If you keep in regular touch with your potential customers, they will always remember your name. Not every person who signs up for the company’s newsletter will purchase your service immediately. You need to convince new leads to buy from you with consistent communication via emails.

Now this was all about how email marketing for solar lead generations works for solar businesses in increasing conversion rates.

Let us move to the most important section that tells you how to use email marketing for solar lead generation.

Some powerful tips to use email marketing for solar lead generation 

The goal of every solar business is to sell the solar system and make profits. However, the path to attaining this objective is full of challenges. You need to try your hand at tried and tested solar marketing ideas as losing a single lead is just not affordable.

Email marketing is one tool that helps you nurture relationships with your existing customers and attract new leads. However, not all email marketing campaigns churn out desired results.

To successfully use email marketing for solar lead generation, you need to be very careful at every step. Here are some powerful email marketing tips that will help you generate high-quality solar leads in no time.

1.   Setup your objectives

The first thing in using email marketing for solar lead generation is to ‘define your objective. You need to set a goal because it guides you in your entire email marketing campaign. To define a clear goal, decide whether you want short-term results or devote a good amount of time to the campaign. Set a target that you seek to accomplish from a particular email marketing campaign.

You can start sending informative emails on solar installation. It is one of the effective ways to stimulate interest in your potential clients. When they start showing their interest in your solar services, you can send a follow-up mail with your offerings. This will be a beneficial attempt to convert the solar leads into sales.

2.   Characterize your target audience

Nowadays, most individuals are aware of the benefits of solar installation. This is why the demand for solar systems is rising. But to find these highly qualified leads, you need to define your target audience first. To use email marketing for solar lead generation successfully, you need to set up a goal, you can start creating buyer personas.

There are innumerable types of buyers with different sets of expectations. Some look for money-saving options, some are concerned about the changing climate, and others seek more choices in the design.

So, understand what your target audience is majorly looking for. Once you know your potential client, you can create more personalized content matching the customer profile and their needs and considerations.

3.   Generate a list of emails

Before commencing an email marketing campaign, you need to have the list of recipients ready with you. The process of collecting email addresses from your prospects is continuous. It is also the key to success in the long run.

To gather as many addresses from potential and new clients, you need to collect them in the very first interaction only.

For instance, if prospects try to learn more about your solar services, tell them to provide their email address to offer comprehensive information. This interaction can start on the ‘contact us’ page of your site, trade show, or door-to-door service.

You can also add a pop-up on your site that asks for email addresses from the visitors. You can also collect prospects’ information when they try opening demo videos, infographics, eBooks, templates, webinars, etc. Make sure you collect as many as possible.

4.   Segment the list

Once you set up your objective and create the list of emails, you will segment the list according to the buyer persona you created in the previous point. Sending incorrect emails to inappropriate recipients (mismatched with created buyer persona) can really backfire on your conversion rate.

For instance, content that is sent to a lead is completely different from an email that is sent to an existing customer. To utilize email marketing for solar lead generation correctly and get more quality solar leads, you need to send the right message to the right person. This way you can build good connections with your prospects, potential, existing, and former customers.

Some clients need to get more awareness about solar installation and its benefits. Others have enough knowledge about green energy but need to be persuaded for the purchase. You need to segment your email list on the basis of the position of your potential buyers in the sales funnel.

You can go to any limit when it comes to segmentation in an email marketing campaign. It can be done on the basis of location, residential or commercial solar installation, etc.

5.   Choose the email type

Once you segment your email list on the basis of different customer journeys. You need to decide on the email format to put the right message across to your target audience, in a better way. You can also utilize a solar email template to craft compelling messages. However, choose it cautiously because the new lead email template, solar proposal template, and regular email template differ from each other.

To use email marketing for solar lead generation, the following are the major types of emails that you can send to segmented email recipients.

• Greeting emails: Greeting emails are sent to the people who have already signed the contract to do business with you. 

Once they make a decision to partner with your company, you can share what your customers will expect in the next stages.

• Nurturing emails: Nurturing emails is one of the best methods to build a good relationship with your prospects. Once you send the first mail which contains an introduction to your offerings, send another follow-up mail with compelling CTAs.

This type of email includes success stories of your solar company, FAQs that help the recipient with their queries, etc.

• Promotional emails: Promotional emails can be used as informing as well as selling content. These emails can be sent to potential and existing customers. 

You can introduce your new solar products or offer special discounts in promotional emails. Also, sharing upcoming discounted deals, period of coupon expiry, etc. are all part of promotional emails.

• Newsletters: Newsletters are a great method of sharing about solar products and the company with your prospects and existing customers. 

Remember to include the option for unsubscribing from your newsletters. They can always opt in again if they want more info about solar panel companies like yours.

• Follow-up emails: Solar installers should always send a follow-up email after the first mail. Your potential customers are not just receiving promotional emails from your end, but multiple solar companies bombarding their inboxes with such emails.

To stand out, you need to send follow-up emails to push them closer to buying the solar system.

• Reconnecting emails: Reconnecting emails is a great way to engage those prospects who were interested in solar installation a couple of months back.

You can send reconnecting emails to these solar leads. This will help you in keeping your company services in their mind again if they ever think of going green.

• Post-purchase emails: Once you gain a customer, you just can’t forget them. You need to keep them equally engaged and build good relationships by sending post-purchase emails.

You can send a ‘welcome to the family’ message along with information regarding the next stage of the installation process.

Check More- How to Get Solar Leads: The Do’s and Don’ts

6.   Define a schedule

You need to maintain consistency if want to use email marketing for solar lead generation successfully. However, you cannot put pressure on the recipient to go for solar installation.

Based on the created buyers’ personas and the goal of a marketing campaign, you can schedule and set the frequency of emails to get good results. You can easily automate the mailing process and run the campaign without wasting resources.

7.   Monitoring and analyzation

Analyzing the performance of email marketing campaigns is a significant step to making your efforts worthwhile. Deep monitoring and examination help you churn out the plusses and minuses of the campaign.

Once you have your findings, you can improve on the pitfalls and work harder on those areas which are weeding out results. Other than the rate of conversion, there are other things in email marketing that help you know its success. The following is the list of key performance indicators (KPIs) to examine the success of your email marketing campaign.

• Rate of email subscription.
• The ratio of conversion.
• The growth rate of email lists.
• Click-through rate.
• Email open rate.
• Email forward/sharing rate.
• The number of unsubscriptions.

Based on your findings, do the needed tweaking on your email content, reanalyze your segmenting, target audience, etc. You can also try talking to the people personally and addressing the issues they might be facing.

Also, you can update about the company policies (if any), industry changes, and other things that might influence their purchase decision.

Check More- How a Reliable Solar Lead Source Can Reduce Your Cost Per Action

Email marketing for solar lead generation: How to do it the right way?

As already discussed, all email marketing doesn’t offer the desired outcomes. There are several advantages of email marketing, but not all campaigns can create the anticipated impact on your customers.

If you want your email campaigns to work and bring results for your solar business, you need to focus on the right execution. 

The following tips will make your email marketing for solar lead generation work and churn out the best outcomes.

Avoid overdoing it

People don’t like getting bombarded with frequent emails. If you keep sending emails and they will keep seeing your name in their inbox, there are high odds they will hit the unsubscribe button very soon. To avoid this, you should know the correct number of emails that should be sent to your prospects.

Figure out how many emails are consumable. Avoid sending frequent emails to your prospects with the same message. The main motive for sending emails is to educate your prospects about solar, its benefits, and how you are best at providing it. Persuade them in the right way but avoid overdoing it.

Address your customer’s queries

Many people are interested in going solar but they are still getting ready for it. When they know you sell solar, conveying the same point, again and again, won’t make any sense. Focus more on engaging, persuading them with entertaining content, and addressing their queries one by one.

This will help you build a good rapport with them. So, whenever they make up their mind to make the purchase, out of all solar panel companies, you would be the first to get contacted. Offer free rewards like discounted solar installation, free consultation, insightful content, ebooks, and more as a way to thank them.

Segment the email list

If someone is opting in for the newsletter, content, or any other thing that means they are interested in going solar. However, you should better segment your email list to save time and effort. If you do it, you can efficiently offer content according to the user’s interest and experience.

Simply put, you need to segregate homeowners and business owners or people who reside in sunny areas and colder regions. Always remember, email personalization offers conversions better results than just sending a standard one to all prospects.

Add appealing buttons

No matter what, people like to see and click buttons. There is something appealing about buttons that persuade the looker to click them. Try playing with the CTAs button in the right way.

Emails with a single yet appealing CTA gets 371% more clicks than those comprised of multiple. A single direct call to action in an email simply shows the recipient what to do next. Provide an appealing button that takes them to your website, blog, post, etc. This will soar your click-through rates in no time.

Email marketing for solar lead generation: 03 critical tactics

As a long sale cycle is involved in the solar business, an email marketing plan can help you experience more conversions. You can provide personalized answers and build a lasting relationship with your customers.

Provide help

There is huge competition in the solar industry. Many companies are already utilizing email marketing to increase their conversion rate.

So, what is your plan to outperform them all?

Offer them useful information. Answer common queries about solar installation. As solar is scaling with time, keep them updated and tell them the right time to invest in green energy.

Stay authentic

Every piece of email should reflect what your company is all about. But when you include something, make sure it is authentic. You can also share the name of the employees working in your company to build trust.

You can flag up the name of a specific employee who performed the best in a particular timeframe. Share customer testimonials about the experience of the entire installation process from your company.

No matter what you choose, it should reflect your solar company. This will help you build a connection with the recipient.

Be realistic

Before deciding the correct length of the email or the frequency of sending it to your prospects, there is one important thing to do, ‘be realistic.

Be realistic and see how many emails you can send in the first place. If are new to email marketing, you can start with one in a month. Then send a monthly newsletter. Increase the frequency and share recent news and updates about the solar industry.

Avoid overloading the email with abundant info at once. Keep it simple and appealing.

Concluding Thoughts

From building relationships and capturing and qualifying solar leads to converting them into sales and establishing your solar brand, each step has its own level of difficulty.

Email marketing for solar companies proves a valuable and cost-effective marketing tool to generate quality solar leads. However, your return highly depends on the efficiency of your email marketing campaign.  

A successful email marketing campaign is a powerful tool to soar the rate of conversion. Using this tactic, you can attract new leads in abundance and convert them into paying customers.

So, this was all about how to use email marketing for solar lead generation. Now, it’s time to get your email marketing plan back on the right track!