Email marketing for building product manufacturers
Email marketing for a building product manufacturer is a short, useful note sent monthly, or every other month, to the specifiers and contractors your reps already know. A specifier can go months between projects that use your product. The email keeps your name familiar until the next one arrives.
Why it matters
Why email works in an industry that runs on relationships
Relationships have gaps, and email covers the time between visits. Your best rep cannot call each specifier and each repeat contractor every month. The calls a rep does make go to whoever has a live project, which is the right use of the rep's time. The email reaches the rest of the list.
Consider how a product gets specified. A structural engineer may detail hollow-core plank on one project and then go months before the next. An architect may specify a wall panel once and leave the category alone for a year or longer. Nothing went wrong with the relationship in that gap. The designer had other projects to think about. When the next relevant project arrives, the designer calls the manufacturer whose name comes to mind without a search.
Email is a low-cost way to be that manufacturer. An issue takes a few hours to write and very little to send. It reaches the whole list at once, including the contacts no rep will get to this quarter. Email does not close work. It keeps the name current, so the next call or plant tour has somewhere to start.
The email earns its place when readers expect it and can use it. Keep it short. An issue about the company itself teaches readers to delete the next one.
The program
Build the program in five parts
Take the five parts in order. The program needs all of them.
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The list
Start with the people your reps already know, such as specifiers who have called with questions and contractors who have priced your product. Ask each rep for names and get permission before adding anyone. Make unsubscribing take one click. Never buy a list. A bought list sends your name to strangers and draws the bounces and spam complaints that damage your domain's sending reputation.
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The promise
Tell a specifier what they will get and how often, then keep both promises through pour season. One line covers it: a short note each month with a project worth seeing and an answer worth keeping. A reader who was told what to expect opens the email as a habit. If you promise monthly and then go quiet, the next issue arrives from a sender the reader has forgotten.
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The content
Send notes a specifier can use, such as a project photo with the lesson it taught or a connection detail worth borrowing. Write down the spec question your reps answer each month, so the whole list gets the answer once. Test each item by asking whether a specifier would forward it to a colleague. Cut the items that fail and send a shorter issue.
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The schedule
Send monthly or every other month, and hold that through busy season. The email works by keeping your name current, and a skipped quarter gives the list time to forget it. The pull to skip is strongest in busy season, which is also when projects are arriving on designers' desks. Put the send date on the calendar the way you do payroll.
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The reply path
Send each issue from a named person and route replies to an inbox someone checks daily. Leave the no-reply address unused. A specifier who answers an email is starting a conversation. The speed and quality of your first answer shows them what working with you is like.
What to skip
Emails to skip
Company news
Skip the issues written for the people inside your building, such as the new-hire announcement, the anniversary issue, the booth recap and the award photo. Your team will enjoy them. Your list will leave them unopened, because nothing in them helps a specifier do the job.
The gated PDF
If the detail sheet is useful, send the detail sheet. A form in front of the download tells the reader the email exists to collect contact information, which they gave you when they joined the list. Each gate costs some of the reader's trust.
The send after a long silence
A list that last heard from you a year ago has forgotten it signed up. A sudden send reads as spam and draws unsubscribes, and it hurts the domain reputation your later issues depend on. If the program lapsed, restart with one short, useful issue and a plain sentence about what to expect from here.
One test before each send
Before each send, ask who the issue was written for. An issue written to impress the owner of your company gets deleted. A note written to help a specifier gets kept and sometimes forwarded.
Questions and answers
Questions manufacturers ask
How often should a building products company email specifiers?
A building products company should email specifiers monthly, or every other month at the least. A list that hears from you less often forgets who you are between issues. Weekly is too often for this audience, and a manufacturer rarely has that much useful material. Pick a schedule you can hold through busy season.
What should be in the emails?
Send notes a specifier would keep or forward. Good items include a project photo with the lesson it taught and answers to the spec questions your reps hear often. Keep the whole issue short enough to read between meetings. Leave company news out.
How do we build the list without buying one?
Start with the contacts your reps already have, such as specifiers who have called with questions and contractors who keep coming back. Add a simple signup wherever you already talk to people: quote responses, sample requests, trade show conversations and your resource pages. Ask permission when you add a name and make leaving easy. The list grows slowly this way, and the people on it chose to be there.
Does email influence specification?
Email keeps a manufacturer among the products a designer has in mind when a concept starts, and specification begins from that set. The manufacturer a designer remembers gets the call and often the basis-of-design listing. Email cannot rescue a weak product or replace a rep. It protects the rep's work from six quiet months.
Old Plank Group runs email programs for building product manufacturers.
The first part takes an afternoon with your reps, so you can start this week. If you want the emails written and sent for you, email is part of our marketing work for manufacturers. Send a note and we answer within one business day.