Tag Archives: Content Marketing

Email Marketing for Plumbers: 11 (Awesome) Tips for 2025

Email marketing for plumbers produces an average ROI of $40 for every dollar spent and an impressive return compared to other plumbing marketing strategies.

With careful segmentation, consistent scheduling, and regular testing, any plumber can craft a sophisticated (and productive) email campaign.

Considering how easy and cheap the marketing channel is, it’s a wonder that more businesses haven’t tried to enhance their plumbing marketing campaign through email.

Below, Plumbing Webmasters explores eleven easy ideas to power up your email marketing campaigns for more substantial lead generation.

If you’ve struggled to get your email list off the ground, these tips will help you a bunch.

Email Marketing for Plumbers (Blog Cover)

Setting Plumbing Email Marketing Goals

Many plumbers neglect their email marketing campaigns because they lack defined goals and a vision for how they will contribute to their broader marketing strategy.

Below, we’ll outline how you can set goals related to your email marketing process:

Marketing Integration

Successful email campaigns align with broader marketing objectives such as lead generation, brand building, and website traffic.

At Plumbing Webmasters, we stress the importance of building a digital brand through multiple digital assets, including a website, Google Business Profile, and social media accounts.

Integrating your email marketing campaign with your other assets helps foster digital brand signals that strengthen every aspect of your marketing effort.

SMART Goals

We recommend defining your email marketing goals within the SMART goal parameters. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-sensitive.

Examples of SMART goals for email marketing are:

Increase open rates by 20% in 90 days
Increase website traffic by 30% in 180 days
Increase qualified weekly leads by 15% in 300 days

Each plumbing company’s goals will differ based on its budget, resources, and location, but every business can set objectives using the SMART parameters.

Develop a Plumbing Marketing Strategy with Email Campaigns

Plumbing email marketing works best as part of a broader campaign that includes SEO, Google Business Profile optimization, DataPins, and brand building.

The goal is to generate consistent plumbing leads for your local business without relying on paid advertising channels such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads or buying third-party leads.

Email marketing is one part of this equation but should not be used as a standalone marketing strategy. Consumers are less likely to trust emails from brands they don’t recognize.

When your brand is visible on organic search results and has accumulated positive reviews, people are likelier to open and engage with your emails.

Email Marketing Tips for Plumbers

Industry statistics showcase the upside of plumber email marketing when used in the proper context.

However, subpar email marketing campaigns can lower brand favorability and make homeowners unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam.

To achieve the best-case scenario and avoid the worst, follow these email marketing tips for plumbers:

1) Focus on Ideal Customers

Aimlessly blasting emails to a massive subscriber list is the fastest way to earn a negative reputation with your users.

To maximize open rates and increase deliverability, only send specific email campaigns to your ideal customers (for that campaign).

Some studies have shown that this practice, called audience segmenting, increases click-through rates by up to 100%.

Segmented email campaigns reduce the number of emails sent in a single campaign and lower bounce rates, mitigating the risk of being marked as spam.

Examples of segmented customers would include:

Repeat Customers: Subscribers who’ve used your plumbing services multiple times are the most responsive to using them again.
First-time Homeowners: Subscribers who are first-time homeowners typically constitute specific types of plumbing services at particular points in the home ownership.
New Subscribers: New email subscribers are likely seeking more information about your company, including customer reviews and testimonials.

The more information you gather about your customers through a plumbing CRM, the more detailed you can segment them into your email list.

2) Optimize Subject Lines to Improve Open Rates

Homeowners receive over 100 daily emails from businesses, which means your subject line must stand out to earn an open.

The easiest way to optimize your subject line is to personalize it with a short code like (subscriber_name), automatically inserting the recipient’s name into the subject line.

While personalization is a good start, you need more to compel users to open your email. That’s why inserting emojis into your subject line is another way to draw engagement.

Even with emojis and personalization, your subject line must still showcase clear value for users to consider opening it.

You can expand on this value proposition in your preview text, which generally ranges from 50 to 80 characters.

3) Craft User-Friendly Email Copy and Formatting

After earning the open with a compelling subject line, the next step is to keep users engaged with your email.

To achieve this, you need easy-to-read content with user-friendly formatting. As consumers’ attention spans grow shorter, so does their tolerance for long, cumbersome emails.

Emails should be brief and concise and revolve around a single call-to-action (CTA), which has been shown to increase click-through rates by more than 370%.

Like your subject line, your email copy should also address the subscriber by first name to personalize the message.

If you’ve correctly segmented your list, this combination of copywriting tactics should drive high conversion rates.

4) Ensure Consistent Branding

Email users are pre-positioned to open, engage, and convert when they trust the brand sending the email.

The numbers back this up, with 90% of consumers admitting to buying from trustworthy brands.

Building that trust requires a multi-channel branding effort that includes Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google Business Profile, and more.

Brand consistency relies on your company name, logo, color scheme, and website URL, which should not change (even slightly) across platforms.

Consistent branding will increase your open rates and conversions and strengthen other parts of your digital marketing strategy, especially your SEO rankings.

5) Clean Your Email List to Increase Delivery Rates

Plumbers who want to maximize delivery rates must commit to a clean and lean email list with engaged subscribers.

Cleaning email lists starts with removing disengaged subscribers and merging duplicates, both of which should be done at least once per month.

Studies show that over 15% of emails are undeliverable, which wastes the senders’ resources.

Cleaning your lists can improve your deliverability rate while saving resources and increasing engagement rates.

These measures combine to keep you out of spam folders and into your consumers’ inboxes.

6) Create a Mobile-First Email Experience

Just as modern visitors access plumbing websites through mobile devices like smartphones, the same can be said about emails.

Whether consumers use the Gmail app, Apple’s Mail app, or another mobile email application, they will read your promotional emails on their phones or tablets.

That’s why a mobile-first email experience with shorter subject lines (30 characters maximum) will perform best in 2025.

Concise emails perform better across all devices (who wants to read a novel about plumbing services?), but this is particularly true for mobile users.

In addition, ensure your CTA is mobile-optimized and easily clickable from a smartphone.

7) Utilize Email Campaign Automation

Email automation can streamline your professional strategy, saving time that would otherwise be spent running other aspects of your business.

By using an email marketing campaign automation, plumbers can:

Automatically send hundreds of emails in one click
Send emails a defined time of day or the day of the week
Send personalized emails based on the subscriber’s form information
Alter the subscriber’s following email based on their response

Doing this legwork upfront can turn your email marketing campaigns into a well-oiled machine that takes every new subscriber through a customized journey that results in consistent sales.

In addition to automatically engaging with new prospects, email automation can also be used to reactivate dormant subscribers or those who fell out of the sales funnel at some point.

8) Use Email to Request Reviews

One of the most overlooked use cases for plumber email marketing is generating reviews and testimonials.

Google Reviews are an SEO ranking factor for plumbers, and reviews across all credible platforms (Facebook, Yelp, Angi’ BBB, etc.) contribute to branding and conversion rates.

That’s why plumbing companies should utilize email marketing for review requests if nothing else.

Plumbers can use a tool like DataPins, which includes an email review request feature that helps increase your Google reviews.

9) Insert Customer Testimonial Videos into Emails

Your longest-tenured customers may be willing to record a video testimonial for your plumbing business.

If you can secure these videos, ask the client if you can include these in your marketing materials, including emails.

By including video testimonials within your emails, you can increase engagement by 200%.

If you cannot get video testimonials, include text-based reviews from credible platforms like Google and Yelp, which also help with conversions.

Prospects are influenced by the experience of other customers they can relate to.

10) Abide by a Consistent Schedule

Most people check their emails between 9 AM and 2 PM, increasing open rates during this timeframe.

As a local plumbing company, all or most of your subscribers will be in the same timezone, which makes it easier to schedule emails within this window.

Determine how many emails you will send per week or month to specific lists (the number may vary by list segment) and set a time between 9 AM and 2 PM.

Don’t alter this schedule unless your performance analytics give you a reason to improve CTR or open rates.

By and large, customers value consistency with email scheduling.

How to Schedule Delayed Email Marketing for Plumbers

11) Measure Email Campaign Performance

Email marketing software tools like Aweber and Mailchimp include analytics tracking, which measures your campaign performance.

This is a critical component of email marketing, as monitoring the effectiveness of various emails and campaigns is crucial to improving your messaging over time.

It’s critical to evaluate the following metrics:

Open Rate
Click-through Rate
Conversion Rate
Bounce Rate

If your numbers are lower than expected or drop suddenly, it’s time to improve some aspects of your email marketing process.

Just as you use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to measure website performance, you can use these metrics to measure your email campaign’s effectiveness.

Aweber Email Campaign Performance Analytics (Screenshot)

source: aweber.com

Elevate Your Plumbing Email Marketing

Plumbing email marketing is essential to an effective digital marketing strategy in 2025.

Email campaigns have been shown to produce higher ROI than several other forms of business promotions, particularly PPC ads.

Still, it’s crucial to view email marketing within a broader marketing strategy that includes a multi-channel approach of SEO, DataPins, social media marketing, Google Business Profile optimization, and digital brand building.

Investing in plumbing marketing on each channel will increase your email open, engagement, and conversion rates.

Still, it’s essential to familiarize yourself with email marketing techniques that lead to better performance, such as setting SMART goals, optimizing subject lines, and maintaining brand consistency.

While favorable open rates are attainable, they are not guaranteed, especially given the number of business emails consumers receive daily.

Standing out in your prospect’s inbox requires a strategic approach that aligns with your plumbing brand.

When adequately executed, email marketing for plumbers can produce a substantial ROI.

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How a Content Writer Works: Insights From Blair Fawcett

What does it look like when a content writer plans out their newest website? Today, we’ll take a close look at their process as we interview Blair Fawcett, one of the skilled content writers at Plumbing Webmasters.

You can view the whole interview on YouTube, or explore our Content Marketing section for additional details about our services.

Introductions With Blair Fawcett

Madison: Hey guys! Welcome back to the Plumbing Webmasters Podcast. I’m Madison. Today, we’re going to shake things up a little bit. We’re going to be talking about content creation, but from the perspective of one of our content writers. We have Blair Fawcett with us today. She is one of our spunky content writers here at the Webmasters. I’m going to be interviewing her, asking her some questions about her process.

Blair: Yes, indeed. Very spunky!

Madison: Let’s go ahead and jump right in. Blair, can you tell us a little bit about what led up to working with the Webmasters?

Blair: Absolutely. I have a degree in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. After I graduated, I became a teacher for a few years in the public school system. After that, I decided I really wanted to focus on journaling, writing, becoming a journalist. That’s where I found the Webmasters.

Madison: Cool! You caught the bug and you’ve been writing since you’ve been in grade school? That’s awesome. A lot of our content writers start with one different degree – anthropology I think was Shabnam’s (one of our other writers) – and they end up in a few years writing as a career. But I think it’s cool to see somebody who’s been writing her entire adult life.

The Content Writer Planning Process

Keyword Research and Placement

Madison: Why don’t we go ahead and get started on your writing process? Before we start big though, let’s go on a smaller scale. Let’s take a single service page, say “Water Heater Installation” or something like that. How would you start planning that page and what’s your process for working that page?

Blair: I’m so glad you asked! I focus on two different parts of the question. One: How do I optimize the page for SEO? The other: How do I make it where it’s really easy for the customer to read?

The first thing that I do to make sure that I’m optimizing for SEO is that I make sure the word count is correct, that the headers are aligned with the subject matter. I make sure that there’s a call to action, there’s a linked phone number so the customer always has easy access to the company. They know what the company does, so they can say “Okay. Clearly this company does…” What did you say?

Madison: Water heater installation.

Blair: So if I’m the customer and I say “You know what? I need a new water heater.” This is the company that popped up and they popped up because I had my page SEO optimized. That’s great.

Madison: Okay, so you’ve clearly done your keyword research and made sure that’s ingrained into the page itself.

Blair: Keyword research is so crucial for this aspect.

Writing Content for People

Madison: Now you said you had a second goal, which was making for an easier reading experience. How are you going about that?

Blair: So I do this thing called “Kiss it. Don’t kill it.” K.I.S.S it means “Keep it short and sweet.” K.I.L.L. it means “Keep it long and lengthy”.

Madison: That’s cute. Kiss it; don’t kill it. Nice.

Blair: What I do there, I make sure it’s direct. It’s to the point, and I also make sure that the customer has access to what’s going on in that page, as opposed to it’s just long/length/tedious sentences that are missing the point.

Courting Customers and Converting Leads

Madison: That’s so important! A natural reading experience makes for great reading for the [consumer], but it also feeds back into the conversion process of actually turning a prospect into a sale, which is what our clients want. So what sort of stuff are you doing to create that natural experience and to maximize that conversion process?

Blair: I think perspective is so important. I imagine two things. I imagine that I am the customer who’s looking for service (like I mentioned earlier), and I also imagine that I’m the company. What is the message that I want to convey from the company? I do one thing that is really important: I do a logical, an ethical, and emotional appeal.

Let’s say that I have a burst pipe in my home. I’m the customer, and I want a service. I’m going to look for something that’s logical, that makes sense to me. “Yes, I need a plumbing repair right now.” Ethical: “Okay, this company is insured, they have the right certifications. Those are important from an ethical standpoint.” Then finally, we have the pathos, which is emotional. I’ve actually had a burst pipe in my home, and it was terrible! I really feel for the customer there.

Madison: That’s so cool! So you’ve been able to take a lot of your own experience (both as a teacher and as a homeowner) and feed that back into your writing. That’s great. You mentioned different sorts of appeals you can make: the ethical, the emotional, and the logical. That’s really feeding back into that natural reading experience. So many plumbing websites are missing that. They focus on the sale, sale, sale. “This is why our services are great…” but they don’t relate it back to the customer.

Blending SEO With Natural Reading Experience

Madison: That’s something that many websites struggle with. How do you make sure that you have that balance with those SEO elements (and clearly displaying services) with that natural reading experience? Is that a struggle to balance those?

Blair: No! I actually have a really good team that works with me all the time. I have graphic designers that make sure the website layout is really clean, pristine, and nice. That all the buttons click where they’re supposed to go. Also, something that I personally do is make sure that all of the pictures that are associated with the services they match what exactly is going on in that page.

Here’s something that I love! Sometimes the companies will give us a whole bunch of pictures that we can work with.

Madison: Oh yes! Pictures are so nice when [clients] actually give them to us. We sometimes have to work with stock photos. We definitely don’t want to if we can avoid it. It’s okay, but if we can get those original photos…that’s fantastic.

Blair: It is. It’s authentic!

Non-Text Elements Crucial to Content Writers

Madison: Now, taking a tangent off that, you’ve mentioned that this is just one of many non-text elements. What other sort of non-text elements really feed into your process that are really important for the page?

Blair: Something that we do is incorporate Righteous Reviews…for the customers to have easy access to the reviews and then also have access to the services themselves. We have a really clean look. We really work with our [clients] to make sure that their plumbing website looks exactly the way they want their plumbing website to look like. We personalize it. We make it really stand out as a beacon of what that company’s message is and what they’re about.

Madison: Now is that from a graphical standpoint, or formatting? What sort of styling are you thinking of?

Blair: From my end as a content writer…I do a lot of research into the company. I see what they’re about. I see how long they’ve been around. Every single company is different. Whenever I work with a company, I make sure to incorporate those individual characteristics (those little details) are worked into the page as much as I can, while also continuing to have it SEO optimized and have all the easy reading.

TLDR, a Challenge for Content Writers

Madison: Speaking of reading, there’s a challenge that many content writers and businesses in general face today. There’s a saying that you’ll see on the internet:TLDR which stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read.”

Blair: Ah! What a travesty!

Madison: So many people are crunched for time. Maybe they’re browsing for services while they’re at work or they’re at their pilates class, and they need to find information quickly. How do you deal with this challenge in a way that ensures that people actually get to the content that you want them to?

Blair: Madison! You’ve actually hit the heart of the issue. The best way to address that is to make sure that it is a pleasant reading experience. I never want my customers to feel like “Wow. I’ve gotten sold to.” I want them to feel like “Oh. This is informative. It’s telling me about this company. It’s telling me about the service.” That’s what a good website will do. That is what a good message will do.

Madison: Mmhmm. I think a lot of great websites, when you’re reading them it feels almost like a conversation that you’re having with a person, not somebody telling you “Okay, this is how X, Y, and Z goes.” It’s such a relatable experience, that it feels like you’re talking with a person.

Key Takeaways for Great Reading

Madison: What do you think are the most important elements in your content writing that are providing a great user experience for somebody that’s visiting the site (maybe for the first time)? They need services and they’re trying to get information.

Blair: I put in some imagery. I put in some metaphors; I put in some details…

Madison: There’s that creative writing for you!

Blair: Ya! Exactly…describe a burst pipe. “Ah! A burst pipe is in your home and that’s terrible.” That way everybody feels emotionally invested in the process.

Madison: So you’re scene setting?

Blair: Exactly. Scene setting; getting some imagery in there. Everyone likes a good metaphor.

Madison: So many plumbing websites when you read through them, they’re just so dry. I’m like “Ya, I know what plumbing is, but this doesn’t really relate to me.” But the way you’re describing it like a person can see the situation going on in the page. That’s really cool!

A Broader Point of View

Madison: Let’s blow up this perspective and look at it from a whole, cross-site view. How are you going to make sure, as a whole, that your content across the entire website is successful (cohesive, informative, not overlapping)? What are you going to do to try and ensure that?

Blair: Whenever you’re managing a really big website, you’ve got a lot of pages. You’ve got 60 pages that you’ve gotta make sure have a really similar message. That it all works together. To that end, on the front end [it’s about] all the research you do on the front end from the very get go. You’re going to reap the benefits of that as you go through the website and create the content.

Madison: That’s a good point. So you know ahead of time what all the services are so you’re not accidentally overlapping on content. And what else are you doing?

Clear Messaging in Website Content

Blair: Something else that I’m doing is that I’m making sure to review and convey the company’s message in a succinct way. Again, I’m making sure that… “You know what? This company really advertises trenchless plumbing repairs. Let’s make sure that message is clear, and let’s hyperlink back to it.” Because if there’s a related service, let’s hop back there. Let’s make it really easy for the customer to have access to these different pages in this big website. It’s a great undertaking to create a website, and with that comes a lot of responsibility.

Madison: Oh ya! I know from experience that process can take weeks to go through, maybe even a month depending on the size of the site. A lot of formatting, a lot of navigational structure is going in. The graphic design team is helping with that, and of course we have people like Amberlynn [our top editor] who are going in and editing it and making sure the message is consistent. There’s so much going in.

Key Takeaways for Plumbers

Madison: Now Blair. Let’s say that up to this point nobody was listening whatsoever. What would you say to plumbers if you had one thing you wanted them to take away from our discussion? What advice would you give to them?

Blair: I would say “Hi! How are you?” Dear plumbing friends, a well-designed website can work wonders for your company’s image. A really good website can tell the customers who you are in a clear way. Your website is your first point of contact with a lot of your new customers, and some of your old customers. By getting a good website, you’re putting a good foot forward on the internet and in real life.

Madison: And you’re balancing that SEO with natural reading experience so that people can not only find you, but choose you as well. Thanks for coming in, Blair. We’ll see what we’re gonna talk about next time. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening in plumbers. We’ll see you next time.

Blair: Thank you!

Online Marketing Confusion – Buzzwords Explained

Lately, we’ve talked with many plumbing companies about highly technical services that marketing agencies try to sell. In today’s podcast, Nolen and Jason talk about the dangers of single-service “cure-all” solutions.

We’ve also provided a short terminology guide to help you understand some of these crucial terms. If you’ve struggled to determine what your plumbing company needs to succeed online, be sure to listen in!

Look Out for These Key Points

Can a singular service improve my rankings online?

Is a low-dollar service package a good deal?

What do these online marketing terms mean?

Confusion Regarding Online Marketing

Explaining concepts and processes to homeowners is a crucial portion of the job for plumbing contractors. Not only do you manage expectations better this way, but you also enable your customers to make informed decisions based on their needs.

Now imagine a homeowner that claims they need a particular service (which you know to be unnecessary) because a shady plumber said so. Naturally, you’d want to guide your client toward the best solution and steer them away from potentially wasteful suggestions.

When it comes to online marketing, plumbing contractors often rest at a significant disadvantage to the professionals within the marketing industry. That’s because marketing experts spend countless hours researching the latest trends in an online search.

Most businesses use this information to serve their current and future clients better. Unfortunately, some marketing companies try to exploit this knowledge gap for their own ends.

That’s where we see the rise in buzzword marketing, promoting a technical service in a way that sensationalizes both the function and the results of the solution. In buzzword marketing, an agency salesman often takes a service out of context with the rest of search engine optimization (SEO), making it difficult to understand its purpose.

Of course, the sales pitch usually comes with dramatic claims of soaring site traffic and customer leads.

Be Careful of Cure-All Solutions

Plumber SEO is influenced by hundreds of different factors. Many rest within the confines of your commercial website and how well it’s optimized for search.

Other external factors include your business’ reviews, the completion of your Google My Business listing, and your social media marketing activities. All of these points contribute towards your overall online marketing success.

If a business struggles with low rankings, slow traffic, and poor lead generation, it’s almost never because of one factor. So when a marketing firm comes along and promotes a singular service to turn everything around, plumbing contractors should automatically be suspicious.

If a company approaches you with a brand new, highly complex solution, take it with a pound of salt!

Taking a Full Health Approach

The most successful (results-producing) marketing companies always examine their clients from a broad point of view first. Our team at the Plumbing Webmasters examines hundreds of data points whenever we take on a new client.

That’s because your search engine marketing (SEM) success depends on your success in several key areas.

Crucial Factors for Success

Factor #1: Your Company Website – Coding, Keywords, Content, and Management

Factor #2: Your Advertising – Adwords PPC Campaigns, Facebook Ads, etc.

Factor #3: Social Media Content – Visitor Experience, Reviews, Response Speed

Factor #4: Citations – Reviews on Google; Listings on Yelp and Angie’s List

Factor #5: Phone and Email – Employee Courtesy, Responsiveness, Organization

Factor #6: Credentials – Licenses and Certifications (Including Their Promotion)

All of these elements contribute to your lead generation and online search rankings. If that seems like too much to handle for your plumbing business, don’t worry! Experienced digital marketing companies have both the time and the experience needed to handle all of these elements (minus the credentials, that’s on you).

Below, we’ve taken some of the big industry buzzwords and provided a brief explanation for each. The next time a marketing company tries to sell you something you don’t need, you’ll have a wonderful surprise waiting for them!

8 Fancy SEO Buzzwords Explained

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

This broad term encompasses all the activities devoted to promoting your business on Google and other search engines. Practically every element of online marketing falls under SEM.

Another broad term, typically referring to website design and other activities meant to get your site acknowledged, analyzed, and (highly) ranked by Google and other search engines. It can be divided into two categories:

On-site SEO: activities and elements inside of your website meant to improve rankings

Off-site SEO: activities and elements outside of your website meant to drive better site rankings

Keywords / Key Phrases

These are words and phrases intentionally placed inside your site content. Ideally, your content should include words and phrases frequently searched by people in the Google Search Bar.

The search engine identifies these words inside your site and uses them to determine a page’s relevance during a consumer’s search query.

Content

This short but profound term refers to any material created by a business, organization, or individual for the purpose of consumption. This may include written material, videos, infographics, pictures, and more.

In the context of a plumbing website, content usually refers to the material in your service pages, homepage, “Contact Us,” “About Us,” and blog posts.

Content Marketing

This concept made its popular debut over 5 years ago now. It refers to the development and distribution of non-sales-oriented content for the purpose of creating followers. This is why businesses now produce so many guides, top 10 lists, industry FAQs, blog posts, and podcasts (like this one).

While the process takes time and consistent effort, content marketing is designed to grow brand value, enhance rankings, and establish your company as an authority.

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