Email Marketing Tips for Busy Pest Control Companies

Now that summer is here and we’re in the swing of busy season, now is a great time for pest control company leaders to capitalize on the demand and activity out there – and there are great ways to do that outside of paid advertising.

Email marketing offers tremendous reach and, when paired with automation, excellent scale. This means that once you find which messages and tactics work for your business, you can quickly optimize and repeat over time for amazing success.

"Being able to market new services and launch new services is easier than it's ever been,” says Kirby Oscar, senior vice president and general manager of Scorpion. “You can be running marketing back to customers that already trust you for wildlife services or new termite services or mosquito services. Legitimately, in days.”

Here are some email marketing best practices you’ll want to consider if you’re a pest control company looking to get the most out of email marketing.

Start With Determining Your Goals

Clearly defining the right goals for your email marketing campaigns is critical to overall success because setting those dictates each subsequent step in the process. You want the goals to be measurable and realistic. If your objectives aren’t well-defined, then your email efforts will be scattered and it will become unclear whether they are effective or how you can optimize them.

Here are some examples:

• Target generating a certain number of new appointments or service bookings over a specific time period using a lead follow-up campaign.

• Use a referral request email campaign to increase customer referrals by a target number within a season.

• Aim for a certain amount of new business with inactive or canceled customers using a "win-back campaign" across a year.

Explore Different Ways of Segmenting Your Audience

There are many different ways to dice up your audience based on what you’re trying to accomplish, but here are some examples that go along with common campaigns.

"You should be marketing to them (your customer database),” Oscar says. “There's so much opportunity, especially when you're looking at demographics and you can see income. You can say, 'I want these customers because they're the most likely to buy two, three, four services from me. I want to go acquire that customer, maybe for the same cost as acquiring a customer that's only going to buy one."

Craft Compelling Emails: Finding the Right Message

• Go beyond generic newsletters and start using seasonal campaigns, testing special promotions, and even including educational content to build engagement and drive more demand.

• Automate thank-you emails after a service is completed and experiment with "we miss you" or similar emails to win back inactive customers.

• Try educating your audience about important subjects, like pest prevention or specific threats. Link to helpful resources like blog posts or videos where it makes sense.

• Show your customers that you understand their needs by sending timely emails about seasonality and factors unique to your location. 

• Check your footer for correct information and links.

• Verify all links work before sending.

• Include a clear call-to-action.

Subject Lines

Overall, it’s important to keep subject lines short and focus on the most important information, then test different approaches over time to see what works best.

• Avoid phrasing that might flag your content as spam (e.g., "FREE!!!" with multiple exclamation points, using all caps).

• Create urgency: "Summer special ending this week!"

• Ask a question: "Sick of mosquitos spoiling your fun?"

• Add a number: "3 ways to know if your yard may have ticks."

Design and Branding

• Go for templates that look professional and are easy to read.

• Maintain consistent branding with your logo and colors, but make sure there’s good color contrast, avoid clashing, and don’t overuse bright colors.

• Ensure your emails are easy to read on mobile devices.

Automate the Easy Way

Marketing automation is crucial for scaling marketing efforts effectively, and if you’re not using,  you’ll always be playing catch-up and working harder than your competitors for sub-par results. 

In short, using marketing automation tools to set up recurring email campaigns that trigger at key moments in the lead and customer journeys can give you better results, reach, and ROI than manual efforts can in a fraction of the time. And Marketing Pro is the best solution out there for pest companies for several reasons.

First, Marketing Pro is integrated with FieldRoutes and works with the customer data you already have, eliminating the need for multiple systems and sloppy, frustrating data exports. Creating targeted campaigns that run based on specific types of customer groups and their characteristics, like what services they do or don’t have, is incredibly simple. Marketing Pro is the easy way to quickly automate messages that are personalized and capable of building loyalty and revenue, and all in just a few clicks.

"We've set up a couple of drip campaigns, and we don't even touch it anymore,” says Dan Farah, chief administrative officer of RIDD Pest Control in Lehi, UT. “It's been great. Really easy to use. Love the drip campaign and automation to it."

With thoughtful planning and a test-driven approach, field service businesses can scale revenue through targeted campaigns for their customer base and prospects, all made simple with Marketing Pro.

Send Timing

• Test different days and times to see what works best for your audience.

• Consider sending emails right after lunch or on Saturdays for better engagement.

Campaign Ideas

• New customer welcome email.

• Request referrals email.

• Win-back campaigns for canceled/frozen customers.

• Anniversary campaigns.

• Monthly newsletter with tips, news (e.g., which pests to look out for right now) and timely promotions.

• Renewal reminders.

• Follow-up with leads or open estimates.

• Upsell/cross-sell promotions (e.g., add mosquito control to a bundled package for savings).

Key Metrics to Track and Optimize

To optimize your email marketing over time, keep it simple as 1, 2, 3:

1. Track open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

2. Analyze ROI to see which campaigns generate revenue.

3. Adjust your strategy based on the data.

You Don’t Have to Go It Alone

Feel overwhelmed by the idea of running full marketing operations all on your own? Scorpion, FieldRoutes’ preferred digital marketing partner and member of the FieldRoutes Marketplace, is here to help. Whether you’re looking for help executing Marketing Pro campaigns or you need a strategic marketing partner to take your business to the next level, FieldRoutes’ partnership with Scorpion can help. 

Scorpion handles much of the marketing for you, so you’re left with a clear path to more revenue and a better return on investment thanks to decades of experience, best practices, and AI technology.

"Build that database, get a marketing partner, or if you've got a really good strategy in place today, go deploy that and then circle back to, 'OK, how am I actually maximizing the revenue out of each contact I have in my database?'” Oscar says. “And the best way to do that is with email and direct mail."

Get better customers, scale successfully, and make smarter decisions for your business without having to figure it out all on your own. FieldRoutes and Scorpion take the guesswork out of running and marketing your business so you can focus on what you do best: serving your community.

Don’t Wait

Pest control companies shouldn’t leave opportunities on the table when it comes to selling or connecting with customers. Automate important and routine marketing messages, trigger campaigns automatically to prevent business from falling through the cracks, and free up manual efforts to spend more time on strategic business tasks. 

"FieldRoutes makes it really easy to have that all automated,” Farah adds. “We wouldn't be able to do that if there was no automation."